Brand mentions? Put them to work for SEO.
The Power of Brand Mentions for SEO
How often is your brand mentioned on websites other than your own?
Do you know brand mentions are a powerful lever for your off-page SEO?
If this is the first you’re hearing about mentions, don't fret. Most of our clients aren't in the know about business shout-outs either.
Yet, you may be surprised at how often other sites include your brand name, product names, or even the names of your team members in their content.
And this is where things get interesting.
By linking from those brand, product, or employee mentions back to the appropriate pages on your own website, you can support your other off-page SEO work for an overall boost to your organic search performance.
Where to look for mentions of your brand
If you’re unsure where to start, here are a few opportunities to look for right off the bat:
Interviews – Has anyone from your team been interviewed for an online article, podcast, or video? Go straight to the source to find callouts of your company or employees, and then ask the author to provide a link from those mentions back to the pages you designate. (If they’ll only link back to your home page, that’s fine. It’s still an SEO win.)
Business Announcements – Do you have any press releases, promotions, or IPO filings that are available online? If so, you’re sure to find brand mentions in any of those that are ripe for linking back to your website.
Events – If you've ever hosted or participated in any events – charity, affiliate, promotional, you name it – there may be a mention available in the online coverage. Do a search for the event and see if there are any opportunities for linking.
Employee Quotes – Has anyone from your team been asked to contribute to an article before? Or perhaps they commented in a forum or a blog previously. All of these scenarios provide you the chance to link back to your website, whether it’s to your home page or elsewhere.
What to do next
Before you start asking for or placing links, you’ll want to check the domain authority of the site you’re linking from to ensure it won’t look spammy to search engines. Ideally, you want to link from third-party sites that are relevant to your own and that have a high domain authority.
Once you have links in place, be sure they “follow” to your own site (that is, readers actually make it to your site from the third-party site they’re coming from). “Nofollow” links won’t help your SEO.
Finally, be sure to monitor the effectiveness of your brand mention links over time. You can use Google Analytics to analyze traffic and other KPIs to determine if this approach is working or not.
For more information, be sure to read how off-page SEO techniques boost SEO performance.
