Your Brand is What Google Says
I was having a drink last week with a friend of mine who comes from a traditional marketing background and she was explaining how she’d come up with the marketing logo for her company.
She spent a great of time discussing what the image portrayed and why people would associate it with her company. It was quite compelling; however, I told her I disagreed. Her brand was her URL first and what people said about the functionality of the website second (they are Web company).
Now, there’s lots of reasons why the icon is important (syndication, for instance), but ultimately, the success of her company is going to come down to two things: how easy is it for people to find you through Google and how are you going to communicate with those people in the blogosphere who are engaged in your product.
It’s impossible for her — or other companies — to control the marketing message. The people will decide. The most important area she should focus on: tapping into the conversation and becoming a partner with her clients.
It’s a never-ending job; however, the game industry has the right model. They hire community managers who attend to, seed, answer to and advocate for the people who are using their products. They are known entities, actual people speaking in plain language.
Of course, not every product will have a community, but that doesn’t meant that you can’t build communities around lifestyles associated with a product (although in her case, the community should form rather easily).
And that’s where her efforts should be: creating a dynamic community that becomes associated with her company (and her URL).
and there are some that can get your site booted out of the Google index. If you think you have a penalty - especially after you’ve implemented something new for your site, such as a shady link exchange - change it. Fix it. The power is in your hands. Then monitor the rankings and see if your site’s rankings going back up.