SEO for Branded Search - Why it is vital to Your Bottom Line and What You Need to Do
SEO for branded search may sound complicated, but when we break it down, it's both straightforward and one of the essential building blocks for getting our SEO strategy up and running.
What is SEO for branded search?
This is required when someone jumps onto a search engine and starts punching in your company name. It is a very important factor, especially for start-up businesses. If someone's heard about your business, they need to be able to find you as quickly as possible.
Why is it important for most websites?
If you can't be found for your own company name, it is going to make it more difficult to be found for your key products or services. And the great news is that being found for your own company name can be very straightforward.
How easy is it to rank for branded search?
The answer is how long is a piece of string. Let's take this example: If you have a business called Sony engineering and you want to be found for 'Sony', then that is going to be very difficult. So wherever possible, we need to choose names that are straightforward and easy to search for, but also not too common. Not only does the name need to be easy to search for and memorable, it also can't be overly competitive.
Where to start with SEO for branded search
We are going to be taking you through some tips that I have used with small business owners that will give them a good boost on search engines looking for branded search and also we'll delve into a little bit of local search as well.
1. Company name in your URL - Selecting ideal website addresses e.g. yourcompanyname.com
This first point is probably the most obvious. But I thought I'd cover anyway, just in case.
If you have your company name in your website URL, it will give you an instant boost and it's probably one of the strongest ranking factors to rank for your own company name. Sometimes it's not possible, especially if you have a very competitive company name.
Therefore, we may look for domain name extensions that focus on our industry, location or options that are presented in a more playful manner.
2. Keyword density - The number of times that your brand or company name appears on your website (without spamming).
This is the process of making sure your company name is represented in multiple areas of your website. Examples include browser title, page title and headings and paragraphs in the page content.
So why do all of this? We are grabbing a loudspeaker and signalling to Google that this brand name is extremely important to this particular website. That is pretty much it. However, we always tried to strike the balance of increasing our density without spamming.
Here's an extreme example of keyword spamming which is to be avoided:
““Hey, welcome to this PixelHaze website. We the team at PixelHaze are really excited to show you some of the products and services related to PixelHaze and PixelHaze Academy. For other PixelHaze related questions, just contact the PixelHaze team, by going to the PixelHaze contact page.””
You get it!
Not only is spammed content irritating to read, but it also comes across as completely unnatural
3. Backlinks - Building inbound links from 3rd party websites.
Bulking up your backlinks is a very good SEO strategy across the board, and not just with branded SEO. Google doesn't care about you, the website publisher. It only truly cares about the audience. Those weird and wonderful people scurry around Google search engines looking for the content they need at that moment in time.
By understanding this simple, but essential point of view, we can begin to understand how Google goes about matching the best experience with its treasured audience.
Google's ranking algorithm uses over 200 ranking signals to sort the hierarchy of websites that are best matched for those particular keywords. One of the most important of these signals is getting backlinks.
In simple terms, these are links from third-party websites, to your website. And they can range considerably by their level of impact. One holy grail of backlinks would be from an international organisation, like the BBC news website.
4. Google Local listings - In particular photos and reviews on your Google My Business listing. It would be great to hear about your own experiences with branded search, feel free to leave a message below.
You can use GoogleMyBusiness to literally get your business on the map
Any business owner with a physical address can set up a Google My Business account and showcase their organisation via Google Maps. It is quick to set up and can have an instant impact, meaning that you start gaining credibility with Google.
The Google map listing profile is what usually sits on the SERP or Search Engine Results Page when someone searches for your brand name
Once your profile is active, then it's likely it will appear as a sizable profile on either the right or central column depending on the user's device.
You can fill out your profile by adding photos of your location, or even some of the products or services that you sell. This is a mini directory profile that you can get for free and in a matter of no time. What's more, you can also start harvesting reviews from customers.
