Once upon a time small grocery stores were the kings of the neighborhood and then came the big shopping malls that attracted shoppers who prefer to take a drive rather than take a walk to the community grocery store. It's not that they were missing anything at the grocery store, it's that bigger brands took the places of the non branded less familiar businesses.

That is what happening online now days, the non branded websites, the affiliate websites with the sole purpose of promoting a brand are slowly disappearing and making room for the real brands.

There are several reasons for that:

1. Google - Google executives have mentioned in several occasions in the past that the brands are more important than any other type of websites and recent ranking updates have taken these remarks into action.

2. The brand offers a true value to the customer - unlike an affiliate website, the brand is the one that actually serves the customer, provides the product and the added value of sales, promos and support.

3. A brand is memorable - unlike "Mike's website" or "Best Web Hosting Sites Reviewed", GoDaddy, Mashable are more memorable and most likely to benefit from recurring visitors.

No Brand, No Future

If you still didn't take the step to brand yourself, now is the perfect time to do so. You don't have to be Coca Cola but you do need to consider a few things on your way to become a brand:

1. Memorable name and a catchy identity - keep in mind that exact match domains (e.g. buybitcoins.com) are less effective so you need to make sure that your name will be short and catchy.

2. What do you really offer your customers - Google knows it and your visitors will quickly find out what you really offer for your customers, this is why websites that offer little or no content to visitors are ranked nowhere, furthermore a brand that sells a product or a service is more likely to be revisited in the future (which is another ranking factor by Google).

3. Added value and sharing - visitors that benefit from your products will share it with their friends. This means that you need to provide a true added value so your customers will have a reason to spread the word.

The bottom line is that even if you are an affiliate and sell someone else's product you can still brand yourself and possibly become even better than the source, it's all a matter of what and how you do it.