[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/seo\/remember-to-protect-and-keep-your-google-brand-seo-basics-refresher\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/seo\/remember-to-protect-and-keep-your-google-brand-seo-basics-refresher\/","headline":"Remember to protect and keep your Google Brand.  SEO Basics Refresher.","name":"Remember to protect and keep your Google Brand.  SEO Basics Refresher.","description":"If you remember about 5 to 7 years ago the category meta tags pretty much died off.\u00a0 DMOZ also pretty much became a thing of the past.\u00a0 As Google got more advanced the need for things like these human created categories disappeared from SEO’s opinions on how to optimize and their priorities.\u00a0\u00a0 The reality is […]","datePublished":"2011-01-13","dateModified":"2011-01-13","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/author\/adamriemer\/#Person","name":"Adam Riemer","url":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/author\/adamriemer\/","identifier":2,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fda62f751f2a6c2ec2b079fedff69720852e4a65633212ffb11832454c29160a?s=96&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fda62f751f2a6c2ec2b079fedff69720852e4a65633212ffb11832454c29160a?s=96&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Adam Riemer Marketing, LLC.","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/arm-logo-2.jpg","url":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/arm-logo-2.jpg","width":600,"height":60}},"url":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/seo\/remember-to-protect-and-keep-your-google-brand-seo-basics-refresher\/","about":["SEO"],"wordCount":908,"keywords":["Google Brand","Search Engine Marketing","Search Engine Optimization","SEO","SEO Basics"],"articleBody":"If you remember about 5 to 7 years ago the category meta tags pretty much died off.\u00a0 DMOZ also pretty much became a thing of the past.\u00a0 As Google got more advanced the need for things like these human created categories disappeared from SEO’s opinions on how to optimize and their priorities.\u00a0\u00a0 The reality is that even though Google no longer needs you to tell it the category your site belongs in (my favorite was the Google PR meta tag, not to get off track lol), that doesn’t mean that Google does categorize the content and the brand of your site.\u00a0 It just means that Google thinks it is smart enough to do it on its own.\u00a0 My niche sites dominate any relevant term in their niche and optimize quickly for new products without an issue.\u00a0 They also sometimes index and rank without the keywords even existing on them.\u00a0 The reason I believe this is true is that even though I create brand extensions and new categories I keep them all in the same main category with proper links, content and partners.Google Brand – The category that Google recognizes you are a part of.\u00a0\u00a0 You may get categorized through content rich backlinks, copy and authority.If you think about how you search and what you like, Google tries to predict what you would want to find.\u00a0 If you are always reading about blue widgets and love shopping for blue widgets, pink widgets probably aren’t going to do it for you.\u00a0 Google is also smart enough now to show you sites that feature blue widgets.\u00a0 Because those sites focus on relevant content to blue widgets and build links from other sites about blue widgets as well as get backlinks from news sites talking about blue widgets, Google categorizes it as the authority on Blue Widgets.\u00a0 That brand is now set with Google and if it is broken can be extremely damaging.\u00a0 If it is kept in tact it can dominate blue widget product lines and extensions as well as get long tail search terms much easier since Google recognizes it is where people go for Blue Widgets.Now you get tired or think you have maxed out your potential for blue widgets so you decide that pink widgets are the perfect option for a second section.\u00a0 Although it may make sense to you, especially because you are now passionate about pink widgets, so you decide to go for it.\u00a0 The problem with this is that pink widgets and blue widgets may not categorize perfectly inside Google like you have in your mind.Suppose you run a site about Las Vegas (Blue widgets) because you love the shows and enjoy talking about the variety of shows, local news and the touristy things like hotels, the Grand Canyon, the Hoover Dam and everything else there.\u00a0 A few years later you get tired of writing about Las Vegas tourism and develop a love for the game poker.\u00a0 Because you know about Las Vegas and know that many people that go to Las Vegas like to play poker, it makes an obvious fit in your mind.\u00a0 Most people would probably agree with that statement as well.\u00a0 The problem is that Google doesn’t have a brain and cannot associate the two like you did.\u00a0 Something that it can associate are the online poker sites, which aren’t kid friendly and may be illegal, with the other part of Las Vegas sites that are for actual online gambling and Poker.\u00a0 Your site may now start to lose some of its authority and traffic because where it was once very family friendly in the indexes, it now looks like an adult oriented poker and gambling site.\u00a0 Because of the cross over into the new category it may appear to Google that the site has a new owner or you got indexed into a new category.\u00a0 Where you used to show up for a ton of terms because you were family friendly, you are now falling because you lost your family friend travel category for adult oriented gambling.The reality is that your brand does count but probably won’t be the end of your site or thing that kills your traffic if you screw up.\u00a0 If a few hundred or thousand backlinks off of words like gambling would kick you out of a search engine or change your category then all your competitors would have to do is buy or build them and you would be gone.\u00a0 Google is a bit to smart for that.\u00a0 If you already have large penalizations and you end up losing your Google brand, that is when you may find your rankings falling and a loss of getting long tail and new keyword phrases easily when you add new pages.\u00a0 Try to remember when you are adding a new section to your site that Google cannot think on its own.\u00a0 Google can only know what it is programmed to know.\u00a0 Las Vegas is a city with travel and entertainment.\u00a0 Gambling is something that is illegal in certain states and something that is Adult oriented.\u00a0 Even though people gamble in Las Vegas, a spider or bot without a brain cannot know the difference or associate the two like you did on its own.\u00a0 Be careful with your Google brand because when you end up with enough penalizations, the loss of your categorization and brand can be what kills your site."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Seo","item":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/seo\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Remember to protect and keep your Google Brand.  SEO Basics Refresher.","item":"https:\/\/www.adamriemer.me\/seo\/remember-to-protect-and-keep-your-google-brand-seo-basics-refresher\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]