Why Google Loves Strong Brands and How You Can Use It in Your Favor

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A “brand” is notoriously difficult to define. David Ogilvy defined it as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes.” Of course, a brand can offer a service rather than a product, so even this isn’t entirely accurate.

Google’s idea of a brand
is perhaps less nebulous, as Google does not have this intangible conception of
a “brand.” Instead, the search engine sees a variety of indirect factors that
contribute to what we consider a brand — real business signals, branded
searches, brand mentions, etc.

Brand Signals

You may have heard of or gotten caught up in the recent discussions of E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) in the SEO-sphere. Opinions on the importance or validity of E-A-T aside, an oft-recommended part of the remedy has been to bolster brand or real business signals.

Tweet from HubSpot about branding

Brand Signals

If you’re wondering what
exactly these signals might be, here’s a quick guide:

A real address on your website (footer or About page)Tip: Connect this to a Google My Business account for your company, even if you’re not a typical “local” business A phone number as a contact point on your sitePreferably a local number rather than an 800 or call-tracking numberA strong About page with employee information and detailed company informationReference competitors or others in your industry to assess an average of how much (and what quality) content is on their About pages—and aim to make yours even betterPublic reviews and company information on applicable sites (Glassdoor, Trustpilot, Yelp, etc.)The higher ratings, the number of reviews, and sentiment of what’s expressed may all be factors that Google partly relies onActive social media presenceAt least focus on the big players in social media today: Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (maybe TikTok if you’re feeling hip and trendy)

Number of Branded
Searches

The number of Google
searches that occur with your brand name is a clear signal to Google that you
exist outside of just the search landscape and that you’re a real brand that
users are interested in.

It may not seem like
radio ads, billboards, TV, or other traditional advertising methods could have
an impact on organic search rankings, but if the people seeing these ads are
then searching for your brand name, won’t that bolster your brand presence?

The answer appears to be yes.

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This is a small
component of search rankings, but every piece of the puzzle matters in SEO. If
you’re looking to get a leg up on the competition, don’t discount the potential
for completely offline marketing efforts to have a joint impact on organic
search as well.

You can use tools like
SEMrush or Ahrefs to estimate the number of brand searches you and/or
competitors are currently receiving.

For example, HubSpot
receives hundreds of thousands of branded search mentions each month. The sheer
volume of searches (and positive sentiment) signals to Google the strength of
the HubSpot brand. Check out just a few of the various branded searches that HubSpot
receives each month:

Picture courtesy of SEMrush.

Online Brand Mentions (Including Nofollow Links)

Online brand mentions
without links back to your website (also known as co-citations) are a powerful
indication of legitimacy to Google.

Although they don’t
carry the “link juice” that you’d ideally obtain, they act similarly to local
citations for local businesses — the more of them you have, the more you
demonstrate to Google that you’re a real business with a trusted, known, or
respected brand.

Here’s my favorite part:
The part where I get to tell you why nofollow links actually do matter.
Nofollow links are often thought of as a wash, as they don’t carry PageRank,
the quintessential point of a link.

So why would you care
about them?

Studies have demonstrated the general and objective ranking value of nofollow links as a whole. Besides that, nofollow links with branded anchor texts are powerful because of the aforementioned dual reason of being a co-citation.

Can a Strong Brand be Considered a Ranking
Factor?

Your brand is not a
direct ranking factor.

Again, search engines
don’t know anything directly about your brand. To Google, your brand is
essentially an accumulation of various factors equaling what we consider a
brand or branding.

With that being said,
users tend to prefer brands; they’re more likely to click on a link from a
brand that they know and trust. Click-through rates (CTRs) are not a direct
ranking factor, but we can say with fair confidence that user behavior signals
do have an impact on organic rankings.

So although it’s not a
direct ranking factor, a strong brand absolutely has a tangible impact on SEO
and organic rankings.

Steps You Can Take to Improve Your Brand for
Google Search

Follow the advice outlined here to improve your brand business signals. Be actively engaged on your company’s social media profiles. Consider traditional advertising to help spread your name, as it could have a tangible effect on SEO. Conduct PR efforts to secure co-citations and brand mentions online (remember, these don’t even need to be actual links!).

But most importantly: Do what would improve your brand and make customers love it. This will translate over to SEO eventually, but more importantly—it’ll improve what your prospective customers think of your brand. Even if you earn the top spot for every query you want, if people hate your brand, they won’t click on your website in their search results.

And if they don’t click
on your website, they won’t buy your product or service. All of your efforts to
work with search engines will have been a waste of time.

So, focus on the customer first and Google second!

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