Last week was a trying week for me as on top of the normal day to day responsibilities of managing a search blog and a search marketing company, I was also managing multiple projects which were a bit out of my field of expertise.

We decided to renovate my condo just in time for the holidays with a major overhaul including tiling the kitchen, installing a new tub shower and toilet, tiling the bathroom floor and walls, painting and lastly, installing new carpeting. The carpet warehouse type places were a little overwhelming, and many had to actually order the carpeting from a much larger warehouse, then have it shipped, and installation would take another week. I remembered that Empire Today, which was a competitor to a past client of mine, promised next day installation on carpets, so I called them.

Their salesman came to my place Friday evening, showed me some samples, I selected the colors, I paid, then he placed the order. The result was swift and precise marketing and sales … the kind of environment I’m used to being a search marketer. Today, on Christmas Eve, Empire Today is going to install the carpet. Perfect.

In anticipation of the delivery, I searched for them on Google this morning and found quite an interesting array of search results which is a great example of the anatomy of a balanced and branded Google listing which is not very beneficial to the company and needs to be optimized : Empire Today.

First and foremost, Empire Today rules the top results for their brand on Google, for both paid and organic search. If anything, the AdWords copy kind of leads to the organic link itself, perhaps resulting in the user focusing in on the information and links given in the organic results. Very nice. (more…)