Google Friendly Brand Names

Social Media in Food is a topic dear to my heart and a blog post from Rachael Narins, aka @chickswknives on Twitter really hit home. The Top 5 Least-Google-Friendly L.A. Restaurants blog post has implications far beyond L.A. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the art and science of facilitating great "visibility" for your web site or blog post in search engine results, the first page being the most coveted.

The name you select for your brand is now driven by how easily it can be found on the internet; research suggest 50% to 85% of consumers incorporate Internet search as part of their purchase decisions process.

After reading the blog, social media in food is quite different for restaurants compared to retailer tactics used by the likes of Whole Foods.  This is in part due to the burgeoning use of mobile apps in searching for restaurants. The best example she gave was a restaurant called Food. Food experts and consultants will tell you that the name of your brand should be easily identifiable with the product or service you provide to make it easier for the consumer to buy. There are exceptions and the one I like to use in my marketing classes is Verizon. How is that relevant to what they provide? It is a contrived name. Envision a friend recommending that you dine at Food in LA and you forgot where it was, you would probably Google the name, right? I tried this and received hits on the first page mostly related to restaurant reviews of food in LA and not the restaurant.

Naming a product is an important AND costly endeavor for budding food entrepreneurs and existing specialty food businesses. Having the product name in the URL makes it more relevant to the search engine rankings. The name should be relevant to the products attributes, benefits and consumer aspirations. Before you cast the name in stone, try tools such as Google Adwords to check out how it "sounds" on the internet because your consumers are trying to find you through the blogosphere!

All the best.