SEO and brand mentions: a new day in search engine marketing
If there has been a major focus in search engine marketing (SEM) over the past few years, it would be brand recognition. Today’s consumer wants to identify with the brands they deal with and therefore brand recognition has been a major focus of literally every successful search engine marketing campaign. This was a major shift from marketing for baby boomers as this generation was all about offerings and value for money. Millennials and Gen Z, however, want something more from the brands they deal with.
The younger generations are committed to sustainability and conservation. As a result, the focus has shifted in SEM with a much more focus on brands and what brands do to promote the common good. In response to this consumer need, Google (NASDAQ 🙂 implemented a new algorithm quite unlike anything that existed before. It’s called “Brand Mentions†and the concept is amazing when it comes to SEO, search engine optimization.
A break with tradition
According to Boris Dzhingarov, CEO of ESBO Ltd, “Brand mentions are a totally unique concept in that there is no need for backlinks which have been the foundation of any marketing strategy so far. What he’s referring to is the fact that brand mentions work whenever a brand is mentioned in text on the web. It is not necessary to have a backlink to the site as the bots will come up with names and start ranking based on visibility and the number of times a brand is mentioned. It’s a break with tradition because there is no laborious backlinking to undertake. Just mention the brand name and Google will do the rest!
SEO, brand mentions and build ranking
The CEO of ESBO ltd goes on to explain that brand mentions rely on SEO silently in the background. Every time a brand is mentioned on another site, Google rates it accordingly and this strategy boosts rankings in the SERPs, the search engine results pages.
“Our goal has always been to use SEO effectively with the aim of moving our customers to the first page of the SERPs and as close to the top as possible,” Boris Dzhingarov continues, explaining that the average person looking for a product or service generally, click only on the first entries of the first page of the SERPs.
This is a rare consumer who will navigate to the second or third page of results. As brand mentions help boost rankings alongside more traditional SEO strategies, you will find that your site will rank higher through a combination of brand mentions and SEO. Both improve rankings and when working together the results are beyond what most marketers might have hoped for in the past.
Another look at SEO
As far back as we can remember, the basis of a successful SEO strategy has been link building. These were tucked away in the content so that every time someone clicked on the site, Google would give them a score, plus one, if you will. This helped build the rankings and over time a site could climb to the top spot on the first page of the SERPs. That was the goal, and it was the job of the SEO experts to bring it to the top. Brand mentions, however, are not links but they work the same way.
It is, for all intents and purposes, a link that is not a link! Every time your brand is mentioned, especially on social media and blogs, you earn a point / mention / link. This is what Google calls an “implicit link”. So when isn’t a link a link? You got it! When it comes to branding, and this is especially going to come into play when your brand becomes a buzzword.
Make the city talk!
“That’s why we find influencers who will promote your products, your brand, just by mentioning you,†says Boris Dzhingarov, CEO of ESBO. “There’s no longer a need to link to your website or product pages because just having an influencer talking about you online works like a link. Google sees it as an implicit link, and you get the credit for it. “
He goes on to say that this in no way implies that SEO is dead. On the contrary, these links and backlinks are also needed. He wants us to understand that the reason brand mentions build rankings is because they work the same as a link, so an “implicit link.” In other words, brand mentions work like a link but are not a link. So when isn’t a link a link? When it comes to branding, of course!
The bottom line
We are only in the early days of branding mentions and there are still some marketers out there who do not yet fully understand the concept. This can be a bit confusing due to the fact that a brand statement isn’t really a link but functions as a link, so how do you use the two together? The main thing is to remember and use all other ranking strategies as well, with brand mentions being perhaps one of the easiest to master.
It really only takes high authority sites to talk about your brand and you’ll see how quickly your own personal brand mentions snowball gathers momentum as it rolls down the mountain, garnering buzz as it goes. . Anytime a high authority site mentions your brand, it will be picked up by crawlers, but perhaps more importantly, other high authority sites will want to mention your brand as well. It’s all about trust and if you earn that trust from an influencer, their audience will trust you as well.
Yes, this is totally confusing, but as long as you remember that no linking is necessary as long as you are being talked about, branding mentions have done their job for you.
Continue reading on BTC Peers
