Dan Ouellette's

How does a big brand with millions of advertising and innovation dollars not dominate the unbranded, organic search landscape?

On a daily basis, I run through a variety of different strategies and tactics designed to push brand awareness online through search optimization. Fortunately, because larger brands have millions of dollars to spend offline, brand awareness becomes much easier for search online - you see an ad for Dell on TV, and then you do a search on Google for Dell's latest specials.

That's easy.

What's not as easy is associating that brand with a certain lifestyle or category that may not be entirely relevant to the brand. Sometimes brand messaging, via other channels, makes it easier for a Search professional to bring awareness in that Search space. For example, Coca Cola taught the world to sing in perfect harmony back in the 70's. I'm sure millions of dollars were dumped into that campaign, made even more evident by the fact that I am still writing about it today. But how do I drive people to the site on a lifestyle-based set of keywords like "teach the world to sing" or "perfect harmony"? The answer has probably less to do with Google and more to do with Facebook and how social media is now permeating our activities online. 

I think the answer to this teaser lies in the process of evangelizing the importance of an organic search campaign while delivering a solution on how to meet that objective. SEO has always been an afterthought in a digital campaign and only as of late have I seen a shift from other activities that now bring SEO to the forefront. I believe that some of the strategies influencing that shift include digital asset optimization, using content as strategy, and of course, the increase in social media activities.

Maybe the answer is to have a Coke and a smile :-)

Thanks to Meredith McPherron and Joe Pulizzi

Successful Digital Asset Optimization (DAO)?