Oddly enough, my nice little Saturday turned into a blog topic. I was doing some flooring work at my house and needed to buy some tile. Typically, I choose to shop at HOBO when making larger purchases like this. That’s because HOBO uses its business model to pass savings along to customers, and who doesn’t like saving money?

Afterwards, I started thinking about the genius behind the HOBO brand name. It implies the price level where HOBO competes, while the acronym’s meaning (Home Owners Bargain Outlet) gives an indication of its target market and offer — unique and changing product lines.

Since I work in online marketing, it also made me think about the SEO value of the brand name and whether it impacted search visibility. By looking at the keyword density for the term “HOBO,” we find the average across four pages on HoboOnline.com is over four percent. Obviously, the HOBO name doesn’t have an advantage on search engines since search requires relevancy in the form of keywords, not implication.

So, an SEO-conscious brand name would certainly impact visibility. The questions, then, become: When during the development process does an enterprise consider a brand name’s SEO value? And is making decisions based on this worth the cost in creativity?

Failing to consider a brand’s SEO potential isn’t a barrier to search visibility, though. For example, the second result retuned for the term “pizza” is Papa John’s, followed by Pizza Hut. Asking these questions, however, does give you the opportunity to explore additional competitive advantages. This is significant in a world in which local businesses compete globally, 50 percent of clicks go to the first four search results, and SERPs include more barriers like Google’s 7-Pack and universal attributes.

It would be interesting to hear from brand and product developers about whether this is being considered, and what the process is behind it.