How to Improve Brand Signals For Better SEO

SEO is an important component of your digital branding efforts. To increase your visibility, you need to improve brand signals for better SEO.

Google utilizes brand signals as a search ranking factor when determining a website’s authority.

Similar to consumer preference, there is strong evidence that search engines also appear to give a ranking advantage to well-known brands.

What Are Brand Signals?

Basically, the more a brand is mentioned from external sources, the more search engines will perceive it as important — which improves search results.

Rand Fishkin of Moz provides insight on how Google’s brand-signal algorithm might function:

brand-signals-dbi

Potential Brand Signals

There are several ways to increase the volume of brand searches to your site, and most methods involve your traditional digital brand building activities.

Some potential brand signals include:

  • Brand Name Anchor Text: Branded anchor text is a strong brand signal.
  • Branded Searches: If people search for your site in Google (ie. “DBI twitter”, DBI + “branding”), search engines may take this into consideration when determining a brand.
  • Brand has Facebook Page and Likes: Brands tend to have Facebook pages with lots of likes.
  • Brand has Twitter Profile with Followers: Twitter profiles with a lot of followers convey a popular brand.
  • Official Linkedin Company Page: Most real businesses have company Linkedin pages.
  • Employees Listed at Linkedin: Rand Fishkin thinks that having Linkedin profiles that say they work for your company is a brand signal.
  • Brand Mentions on News Sites: Really big brands get mentioned on Google News sites all the time.
  • Co-Citations: Brands get mentioned without getting linked to. Google likely looks at non-hyperlinked brand mentions as a brand signal.

How to Improve Brand Signals For Better SEO

Now that you understand the importance of brand signals to increase visibility in search rankings, here are specific tactics to implement.

Produce Content on Brand’s Expertise

When you consistently produce content highlighting solutions to consumer’s challenges, it will establish your brand as an industry authority.

A brand’s content makes it easier for search engines to understand the brand, and allows the brand name to be associated with the search.

 

SEE ALSO: How to Use Content Marketing to Build Your Digital Brand

Get Press Coverage

Using press coverage to build authority is one of the best methods you can implement. Similar to human perception, search engines will also perceive someone as an authority if the press mentions the brand.

One of the advantages of getting featured by the press is that it boosts the perceived authority by both people and search engines.

DBI TIP: HARO emails reporter queries related to your industry straight to your inbox so you don’t miss out on potential PR opportunities.

Become A Guest Contributor

Becoming a guest contributor on an influential media outlet has its benefits. To start, you can get your brand in front of more people which will increase the number of customers, clients, and leads into your sales pipeline.

In addition, the authority of an influential media outlet will be passed through your brand as well.

This tactic is a way to generate traffic, brand impressions, and build trusted signals that search engines can use to gauge your site’s importance and expertise.

DBI TIP: If you’re struggling to find guest posting opportunities, you can try the following search strings in Google. “Keyword” + “Write for us”

Build Your Social Media Following

One of your brand’s biggest sources of branded signals is the activities that take place on social media. It is important to have your brand represented on all social media networks.

 

DBI TIP: Use http://knowem.com/ to search for your brand name across all social media networks.

 

A proven tactic to acquire a larger social media following is to create awesome content. The more you create awesome and useful content, the more incremental brand signals it will create.

Share stuff from others, particularly those that you think will bring value to your followers as well. It’s also a great strategy to get on your target influencers’ radars, and eventually in absorbing their followers along the way.

In Conclusion

To sum it all up, the more quality signals coming from external sources that pertain to a brand, the more search engines will understand how important the brand is.

If you want to establish your brand as a trusted source and increase your search visibility, you should consider the strength of your brand signals.

So how do you create more brand signals to your site? I would love to read your comments below…

Written by
Juntae DeLane

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