Controlling the conversation around your brand is critical to upholding and improving reputation and converting more customers. Here's how to make sure you monopolize all the available paid and organic brand real estate on the first page of Google.

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Paid Search

While it seems obvious to buy your brand terms in paid search to acquire more real estate, many additional tactics exist to maximize this space. The following are ad extensions available in Google that increase the depth of your brand listing:

• Location extensions
• Call extensions
• Offer extensions
• Sitelinks extensions
• Product extensions
• Social extensions
• Dynamic search ad extensions
• App extensions

Google+

Brands that have verified Google+ accounts can capture side rail real estate for brand terms by utilizing rel="publisher". This works similarly to authorship but is tied to Google+ pages as opposed to individual accounts. The result is a rather large piece of real estate that includes your follower count and a link with image to your latest post.

Google Images

Optimizing key images on your site such as your logos is another great way to take up potential search engine results page (SERP) real estate. Image search has the potential to drive more incremental visits than you might expect.

YouTube & Other Video

In an effort for Google to continually promote their own properties, videos from YouTube are becoming more prevalent for a variety of different search queries, including brand terms. Having branded YouTube videos is a great way to own your brand terms. In order to take advantage you need to have at least one video hosted on YouTube.

Google+ Local

Local presents another great opportunity to occupy additional brand real estate. Make sure you have a verified business listing and your feed is optimized.

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In the battle for marketing dollars, many businesses are torn between search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

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As businesses plan their 2014 marketing budgets, many are wondering if these death knells mean they should move completely away from SEO. But businesses shouldn’t move so quickly. Google’s changes were designed to stop those who were trying to work the system. For honest businesses, keywords and backlinks can still improve search results, especially when those tools flow naturally throughout a business’s well-crafted, informative copy.

Meanwhile, PPC seems to be just as popular as ever with marketers. In its report, The 2013 State of Paid Search, 72 percent of businesses surveyed reported they plan to spend more on PPC in 2014, up from 70 percent who increased spending in 2013. Google AdWords was by far the area where businesses planned to spend the most money on paid search, followed by Bing Ads, display networks, and Facebook.

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Your competitors are competing for your buyers' attention in search results. B2B Marketers should do these 3 things to stand out.

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The competition to capture your buyers' attention in search results is as fierce as ever, so B2B marketers need to do the following in order to stand out:

1. Know the keywords your buyers don't use.

2. Make your search listing scan-friendly. Your buyers scan, they don't read.

3. Deliver the most amount of information scent in the shortest amount of time.