SEO Blog

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Google generally have a soft spot for the big brands in their listings. Whether it is for product searches or terms related to the businesses themselves, more often than not a corporate big hitter will be at the top.

Now we can’t discredit SEO work entirely on these sites. If they’re a multi-national corporation then there’s a fair chance that they’ve got the marketing budget to employ a pretty decent team of search engine optimisation services. But what happens if they start buying up paid links, are involved in huge link farms, what then?

If a small business decides that they’re getting nowhere with ethical SEO efforts (patience is a virtue remember) and decide that they want to invest in a few links they might well see a rankings boost as a consequence. However, if they then get caught out by Google they are in line for some pretty rough treatment, possibly even being banished from their index entirely.

Can you see that happening to a massive corporate brand?  Absolutely not. If I search for Cadbury’s then there’s a fair chance I want to find their site or some information about it. This is why you’ll always find the business site first and possibly a Wikipedia entry lying around somewhere.

However, say Cadbury had been up to some SEO shenanigans, what would happen if their site just disappeared to searchers? They’d be lost, why isn’t it appearing? They may be so lost that they might go off and try Bing to see if that is working. Herein lies the problem.

Google has to have double standards. One rule for us and another for the rest. If it didn’t then the wider world might become disappointed with its search and decide to go elsewhere. Then their whole business model collapses and before you know it Bing has the 90% market share and Google are playing catch-up.

However, just because it ‘has to be that way’ it doesn’t mean that we have to like it. But you can’t fight that kind of preferential treatment, it has and will continue to happen. By the way at this point I should just say that I’ve not got something against Cadbury or their SEO, they were just the first brand that came to mind.

Okay so we can complain about how easy it is for them to leverage more strength, but ultimately most online businesses are actually trying to emulate the big brands in some way. So one day you might be in the position to be a big player who can’t be damaged by a little blackhat foolery.

The issue though is that you have to find your own way of strengthening until you are able to reach this level of search invincibility. Whilst smaller companies might feel rightfully downtrodden, it is their job to make sure that they earn visibility where nobody else is. Get your own traffic stream, build your customer base and develop a strong brand reputation.

It might not be the easy option, but fighting big brands head on is always going to be a challenge on Google or anywhere else. Their need to balance user expectation with their own rules ensures constant double standards. But that’s all part of the industry we’re in I’m afraid.