What do search engines consider brand signals?
-
After being hit by the Penguin stick, like good content marketers we are trying to focus on improving brand signals for our site. But I keep coming up against what exactly brand signals are.
I can understand that if you are called 'Ziggle' and someone links to you with that in anchor text or mentions that name, that would be a brand signal. But we're on a generic domain (descriptive of the produt type), so what would constitute brand signals in our case?
-
I'd forgotten about that post, nice one, and it usefully widens the scope of brand signals.
-
I was about to edit my original post to include it, but check out this Feb 2011 article from Rand - he writes specifically about brand signals in some detail.
Lately, I've noticed some big multinationals using search phrases in TV campaigns instead of URLs. I assumed it was largely an SEO play to strengthen brand signals, although some of it could be to do with cutting costs (of creating satellite sites for a promo, maintaining hundreds of random promo-specific domains, etc).
-
That's an interesting idea riplash, I had thought before that a search for our domain with or without the .com might be considered a brand signal - that is, rather than the search being 'keyword1 keyword2' the search is performed as 'keyword1keyword2'. It seems that if that is the case, encouraging search in offline could feed into that.
-
Another key brand signal in my mind (and if it's not, it should be) is people searching for your brand name, or brand name + anchor, in Google to find you, for example SEOmoz must get a lot of traffic every day for people searching "SEOmoz", "SEOmoz rank tracker", etc.
This is obviously more difficult for Google to determine if your brand is also an exact match anchor phrase.
One way to strengthen the signal is to use a search phrase instead of a URL in your real world/print marketing. This could sometimes take a little SEO groundwork to do, but for example, if you are Electric Fan Services Ltd and you have a promo for Honeywell fans, instead of using the URL on your print marketing, add a footer saying something like, "Google 'electric fan services honeywell promo' to discover the deals".
-
Great example in the Electric Fan Services thanks Adam, it applies directly to our situation. We have Keyword Ltd in the footer (as that is actually our registered company name). The trick now will be to see how we can get Keyword Ltd in anchor text. I smell some guest posts approaching.
-
'Would you say then that a link with 'Keywords' as the anchor pointing at http://www.keywords.com would be considered a brand signal?'
Not unless the brand/company name is 'Keywords' also. Even then I would be tempted to use any identifying business extension such as Inc, Ltd etc. So as an example,
Business is called 'Electric Fan Services' website is 'http://www.electricfanservices.com' and main keyword phrase is 'electric fan services' I would make sure the majority of anchors are either 'Electric Fan Services' or 'http://www.electricfanservices.com'. If the business was actually 'Electric Fan Services Ltd.' I would probably adjust the anchor text term accordingly.
Adam.
-
Got it, thanks for taking the time to explain that Ben.
-
That would be my assumption. I'm sure there is some value placed on the links you place from your Facebook page timeline as well but not as much. I would consider this type of stuff to be "signals" not direct brand ranking factors that Google would see. Signals are the first step though and seem to be having a big impact on my client's brand recognition.
-
Thanks for clarifying that Ben. Tell me, how would Google know which Facebook page to associate with your site - I am guessing simply the one that you link to from the site?
-
As far as I can tell, social is a big part of the authentication process and filter of Google for Brand signals. If you establish solid (not spam) social accounts with your brand identity then, yes, I am saying that will help with branding.
A good way to test is by searching your "brand" in google and see what shows up.
-
Thanks Adam. That's interesting - so a link with http://www.keywords.com as the link text is considered a brand signal. That makes sense.
Would you say then that a link with 'Keywords' as the anchor pointing at http://www.keywords.com would be considered a brand signal? This is where it gets fuzzy for me. Clearly, a generic description phrase cannot be claimed as a brand trademark in legal terms, but I'm not sure if the delineation is as stark in the view of the engines.
In our case, our brand is effectively Keywords(.com) which is great if we end up getting the 'Hoover' effect, but not so great if it prevents us from creating a brand strong enough for Google. And of course, as branding decisions go, it was a bad one. Damn you Google and your former preference for exact matches. Damn me and my former preference for easy wins.
One signal we saw on this was that we used to get sitelinks for our generic phrase - in other words, Google considered us the brand for that phrase. That stopped probably 2 years ago and hasn't reappeared since. We still rank 1 for the phrase of course, but that is not as good as being considered a strong brand in our market.
-
Thanks Ben. Are you're saying that social signals to a page on the site would be considered a brand signal?
-
Let's say your brand is 'Ziggle' and your website is http://www.keywords.com then you could simply use 'Ziggle' or 'Ziggle Inc.' or 'http://www.keywords.com' or 'www.keywords.com' as your brand anchors.
Your website, even though it has keywords in it, is still regarded as a brand signal albeit not as strong a signal as just 'Ziggle'. Of course if you just used the commercial keywords as your anchor without the web address, then this is not good.
Ultimately, the point of the Penguin update is over-optimization, that is a very unnatural looking link profile. Therefore you have to ask what anchors to your site would look natural? It is of course absolutely natural to have anchors that contain your entire web address (http://www.keywords.com) even though it has keywords in the domain. Again, it does not look natural when anchors have been over-optimized with keyword rich commercial terms.
Personally, I try to avoid using exact match domains wherever possible.
Hope this helps.
Adam.
-
Social networks, citation sites, and local directories would probably be a good place to start. Since I began a social campaign for one of my (non)brands I've seen a big improvementsin rankings for branded results.
It is really interesting to see you pose your question this way. We have been seeing all the big dogs say that the exact match TLD is going to matter less and less over the coming years. I wonder if this is an indirect attack on that form of SERP manipulation. (note: I'm not saying you were trying to manipulate anything but that is the general use of generic TLDs)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site Architecture for Sub-Brands
I am working on launching a few industry specific sub-brands for our marketing agency and am trying to figure out the best way to deliver a tailored user experience using subfolders instead of subdomains, if this is indeed the best option... Since I am trying to provide separate experiences, I looking at housing microsites in sub-folders - say /technology or /medical. Each with its own navigation, home page, and industry specific content/blog/portfolio. A couple things I am considering: Will my microsite "home pages" and site pages rank as well in a sub-folder versus if they were actually the primary pages on their own sub-domain? Will separate Wordpress and theme installs and separate primary navigations have any affect on SEO if they are in sub-folders of the same site? Thanks in advance for any input. I really appreciate it!
Branding | | Alaniz0 -
Spam in search engine results for company brand name
Hi, I'm having a strange problem with a certain comapny. When you Google their brand name the first 8 results or so are related - their site, Google+ page, Twitter etc. The rest of the results are completely unrelated to the site and much of it is in another language and looks really spammy. According to the site owner until recently the first 50-60 results were related - mostly local results, press releases, and franchise companies listing his business. They don't have a great link profile but that shouldn't have them dropping out of the results, especially since they're still ranking in the top 1-8 positions. Here's the strangest part: the company name is Libertana. All the spammy results are not so much spammy, they're related to the syllable "na". Examples: Ivanyukite-Na Mineral Data įt$koka!na's sounds on SoundCloud - Hear the world's sounds Bosiniya na Herizegovina - Wikipedia What on earth is going on? Why would they rank for the last syllable of their name?
Branding | | storemachine0 -
Is there any downside to have a product name (branded keyword) that has a top keyword in it?
The company I work for recently purchased another company. We are currently re-branding their product into our solution offering and are working on coming up with a new product name, while keeping SEO in mind. The product names that we are thinking of also includes a non-branded keyword that we actively look to rank for. We currently rank relatively high for this keyword. Is there any negative to having a product name that has a non-branded keyword in it. My first thought is that it is great because that non-branded keyword will be used repeatedly on our site when we mention the product. Things that I don't know though are: will it appear we are keyword stuffing does Google recognize that its a branded keyword and doesn't rank us for the non-branded aspect Any feedback or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Vince
Branding | | IFSNA0 -
Brand Search Results- how do you make sure spammy links don't hurt your brand
We are seeing a spammer start ranking #4 for our branded search result on google. This could potentially be hurting our brand. Any suggestions that have worked for you recently? For more context we already have: Create Social profiles (Linkedin, G+, FB etc) which are engaged and frequently updated Analyzed Domain Authority, Links and recency of the spammy article. The domain and the page authority seems weak, and the spammy article is dated Dec of last year Looked at various posts on http://moz.com/community/q/reputation-management. Thanks in advance!
Branding | | SEMEnthusiast0 -
Naming a brand & domain
Hi Experts, We are selecting a brand name and domain for a new ecommerce website. The major keyword in this industry is lets assume xyz. It is by far the most searched keyword in this industry, but it just sounds horrible for branding purposes. For SEO purposes how important is it to keep that keyword in the domain / brand name? can we make up for the lack of that keyword in the domain / brand name if we decide to pick a brand name that does not have xyz in it? Thanks for the help 🙂
Branding | | TVape0 -
Subject: Brand anchor text distribution. Does the HP url classify as brand anchor?
Hi guys, I just wanted to know what your take is on this and whether anyone knows if google has published any info on this. I am wanting to analyse a fairly large backlink profile. The idea is to discover how far it correlates alongside recent SERPS ranking data (based on anchor text distribution) information that has been published across the web. There is so much data to categorise and segment. This is due to overlaps in categorisation, (which is possibly a good thing as it appears more natural) though I often it difficult to decide which goes where. My question today relates to brand anchor text - in determining the % of overall brand distribution for a backlink profile - Which out of the below do you think rings true? 1.) Should I be considering the homepage url anchor text as a branded link anchor? 2.) Should the brand % just be 'pure brand' anchor text? 3.) Should it contain partial brand + KWD data? 4.) Should it comprise of all of the above elements? 5.) Should I divvy up / segment partial brand, pure brand, brand + kwd, citations etc into new sub categories and see how this individual data correlates to current ranking factors in the SERPS? (Not sure if there is any recent published data in this amount of detail) Anyway, I just wondered what you guys thought about this in the eyes of Google., and also to find out how you go about classifying and segmenting backlink profile data. Thanks for now
Branding | | Turkey0 -
List Quick and Dirty places to seo-tag images/content for new brands
I'm helping a new brand (service industry) to try to dominate the first page for their own name. They have a name that also exists in another state AND a negative Yelp review which (shows up #4, whilst they show up #1 on google unpersonalized search). Aside from Linkedin/Facebook/twitter, what are good places to Tag Images and have them show up under the search for this company's name. This is a picture/heavy industry (jewelry) and I'm looking to create profiles on several sites that would immediately show up if I tag the content properly. Are quora/pinterest good choices? I need to grab-bag as many properties as possible. Secondary question: would these properties on quora etc, respond well to exact-match anchor text links to shoot them past the negative yelp rating that is showing up #4 for their brand?
Branding | | ilyaelbert0 -
Brand & engagement study?
I believe I saw a study put out one time that showed that recognized brands have higher engagement metrics than non-branded sites, but I can't seem to find it. Can anyone point me in the direction of such a study?
Branding | | nicole.healthline0