What have you been doing with branded searches? If the answer is "not much," it may be time to shift your focus a bit. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores the huge benefits of turning some of your unbranded searches into branded and offers some key tactical advice.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat a little bit about how to influence branded search and get a load of benefit out of that. Some of these things that I'm going to talk about today are more theoretical. Like we think they work. We've experimented. We've seen some other folks experiment. We're pretty sure. Then some of them are solid. We know that these things influence. Regardless, I think I can persuade you that trying to turn more of your unbranded search into branded search is a hugely positive thing. Generating more branded search in general is also hugely positive. Let me show you what I mean with some examples first.
Non-branded search
Non-branded search, these are essentially the search terms, the queries and phrases that we are all pursuing. We're trying to rank for them. This is searchers who have not yet expressed a brand preference. They're searching. Let's say we're talking to a chemist or a lab instructor at a school and they're trying to put together all their materials for their lab. So they're searching for things like test tubes and lab equipment and chemical safety goggles. They're trying to figure out the best prices and the best products, the ones that'll be the safest, the ones that'll be best for their class. Those are unbranded. They have expressed no brand preference. They haven't said, "Oh I want this kind and I know that."
Branded search
Branded searches are more like, "Oh I know I want a Fisher test tube, Fisher Scientific." Fisher test tubes is what I'm looking for, or lab equipment from Thermo. Thermo Scientific makes a bunch of lab equipment that you can buy prepackaged, kind of all together. Or chemical goggles, "I know I want the 3M variety." 3M has, like, these awesome chemical goggles. They're very safe, very good for this stuff.
These branded searches are preferable in many ways for the brands that own and control these companies than the non-branded searches. Here's why.
A. Increase ease of ranking and conversion
Obviously it is way, way easier to rank well for "3M chemical goggles" if you are 3M than ranking for just "chemical goggles" if you're 3M. You're competing against far fewer folks. A lot of people won't even use your brand name. Even the people who do, like maybe on Amazon.com, you'll still get some benefit from that because they're searching for your brand.
It also increases the propensity to convert, meaning that if someone performs that branded search, they're more likely to actually buy that product. They're generally speaking further down the funnel. They've sort of decided to at least investigate your brand, and now you have a chance to pitch them. They're familiar. They know your brand name at least. That's a real positive thing.
B. Affecting search suggest
The second thing that's nice is you can affect search suggest, meaning that if lots of people, for example, started searching for "3M chemical goggles" instead of "chemical safety goggles" or "chemical goggles," it would actually be the case that over time what you'd see Google do is in the dropdown box for "chemical safety goggles," 3M, the word, would start to be associated with it. You'd see that in search suggest. It might be at the very bottom.
For example, if you do a search for "whiteboard," today in Google, Whiteboard Friday is somewhere on that list, but it's usually way down towards the bottom. In some geographies it's probably not there at all. Over time if we get more and more people searching for Whiteboard Friday, it'll move up in search suggest. So that means people will be more likely to perform that query. At least they'll see it and say, "Oh that must be a brand," or "I must have some association with that, or maybe I'm supposed to," or "I want to investigate that, I'm curious about it."
C. Improve rankings for non-branded queries
This is one of those speculative things. We believe that right now search volume for branded terms does have an impact on ranking for the non-branded version of the query.
We saw Google file some patents around this, but we also saw some tests in this direction that looked promising, basically saying that if . . . Let's do Fisher for this one. Let's say people start searching for Fisher test tubes a lot more. Google might say, "You know, I think Fisher is very relevant to the search query 'test tubes.' Let's move Fisher up in the rankings for just the unbranded phrase 'test tubes,' because that volume is suggesting to us that this brand is more relevant to this query than maybe we initially presumed." That's huge as well. If you can drive up that search volume, now you can start to get benefit in the non-branded rankings.
D. Appear in "related searches" feature
You can appear in the related search feature. Related searches is usually somewhere between the middle of the page and the very bottom of the page, most of the time at the very bottom of the search page. That's a powerful way for those 10% to 20% of people that scroll all the way to the bottom before making a click selection or before deciding to change their query, those related searches are a powerful way to suggest, just like search suggest is, that they should, instead of searching for the non-branded term, search for your branded query. The related searches, by the way, is also we think influenced by content, which I'll talk about in a second.
E. Create an association between your brand and a keyphrase
Create an entity-style association. This is essentially the idea of co-occurring keywords. If Google is crawling the web and they see tons of documents, high-quality, trustworthy documents that contain the word "test tubes" that also contain the word "3M," oftentimes in close proximity to the word "test tubes," they'll over time start to associate the word "test tubes" with the word "3M." That can impact suggest. It can impact related. It can impact rankings. It has a bunch of positive potential impact. That can make you more relevant for all sorts of things around search that are just awesome.
F. Affect future searches and personalization
Then the last one, which is also cool and powerful, is that this can affect search personalization, meaning, for example, let's say someone does a search for "3M chemical goggles." They click on 3m.com. Maybe they buy them. Maybe they don't. Next time they do a search, for example let's say "chemical aprons," well it turns out that Google already knows that person has visited 3M in the past. They might see that behavior and, because they're logged into their account, they might show them 3M higher up in the rankings. They might show them 3M higher in the search suggest as they start typing. That personalization is another powerful way that you're getting benefit from branded search.
There are all these benefits. We want to make this happen. How do we do it?
What are the tactics that an SEO can actually use?
It turns out SEOs, we're going to have to work pretty cross-departmentally in our marketing teams to be able to make this happen because some of the best tactics require things that SEO doesn't always own and control entirely. Sometimes you do, sometimes not.
The first one, if we can create curiosity and drive search volume via brand advertising, that's an awesome way to go.
You've seen more and more of this. You have seen advertisements probably on television and YouTube ads. You've seen branded ads on display ads. You've probably heard things on the radio that say search for us, all that kind of stuff. All that classic media, everything from billboards to radio — I know I'm drawing televisions with rabbit ears still. There are probably no TVs in the US that still have rabbit ears. Magazines, print, whatever, billboards, all of that brand advertising can drive people to then be curious about the brand and to want to investigate them more. If you hear a lot about 3M goggles and the cool stuff they're doing, well, you might be tempted to perform a search.
You can embed searches as well.
Be careful with this one. This can get spammy and manipulative and could get you into trouble. You can do it. If you do it in authentic white hat ways, you'll probably be okay.
The idea is basically telling customers like, "Hey, if you want to research us, learn more about 3M's goggles, don't just take our word for it. Search Google. Go find what people are saying, what reviews are saying about our product." You see I think it was LG or Samsung ran a big one of these where they were suggesting people do a Google search, because it turns out their phone had been very, very highly rated by all the top folks who'd done a review of them. You can do that in email. You could do it over social networks. You could do it in content. You're essentially driving people directly to the Google search result page. That could be an embedded link, or it simply could be a suggestion to search and check people out.
You can also use public relations and content marketing, especially guest contributions and content marketing.
You can use events and sponsorship, all of that stuff to essentially drive latent interest and curiosity, kind of like we did with brand advertising but in a little more organic fashion. If The New York Times writes a piece about you, if you speak at a conference . . . This is me wildly gesticulating at a conference. It looks like I'm very dangerously, precariously perched to fall into the crowd there. Guest contributions on a website, maybe something like a Fortune.com, which takes some guest posts, driving people to want to learn more about the brand or the product that you've mentioned.
Then finally, you can create those keyword associations that we talked about, the entity-style associations, through word proximity and co-occurrence in web documents.
I put just web documents here, but really it's important, trustworthy web documents from sources that Google likes and trusts and indexes. That means looking at: Where are all the places potentially on the web that lab equipment is talked about or would be talked about maybe in the future? How do I influence those authors, those creators, those publications to potentially consider including my brand, Thermo Scientific, in their documents? Or how do I create content for places like these that include my brand and include the unbranded term "lab equipment?"
Bunch of tactics, bunch of great opportunities here. I'd love to hear from you folks about what you've done around influencing branded search and how you've seen it affect your SEO campaigns overall. I'll look forward to catching up with you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
You nailed it Rand and so surprised to see the new WBF intro but I love the previous one..
I think Branded keywords are just like specific or generic keywords. Isn’t it?
In case of generating more branded search volume especially in case of small businesses providing services not product is so hard. In a case when my company is new people are not much aware about my brand so it will take a lot of time to hold the position. It became easier in the case of low competition; competition also plays a key role in this.
Love the last point using community relation and embedding searches. If this will be done in a proper way then results became fascinating and can be easily seen in few days.
Thanks for another WBF Rand!
Fantastic tips here. I'm speaking at an event in front of 500 people where I'm planning to get them to carry out some searches on their mobile devices - including branded queries (results in blog to follow). I'm guessing you've probably tried something like this before - have you any insight you could share? I've also been looking at sub brands and I've been advising recently that organisations should include the core brand within the names of products and services so they can leverage the equity of the brand both from search and awareness perspective it seems to be working well.
Great idea about the live request for searches during an event!
You could even ask them all to share the search in tiwter ie. if a good reason to do that is found
Great idea to see the result of live searches.
I agree
Very, very interesting, as always. I often feel like Rand is speaking directly to me. In this case, Rand is ACTUALLY speaking directly to me. I am a Content Marketing Manager in 3M's Personal Safety Division, which manufacturers and markets our 3M Safety eyewear, including our Chemical Goggles and other offerings. I will be sharing this with my entire team.
We have a new product line of Safety eyewear featuring our Scotchgard Antifog lens coating. From a marketing perspective, one of our major strategies is implementing a strategy to own all search for "anti-fog" search phrases. We have developed a SEM plan to be timed with seasonal initiated customer journeys in the "heat stress" season from May to August. In addition to our keyword and page tagging, our pagecraft included a vanity URL that specifically links "3M" to "anti-fog". At events and tradeshows, our product media and show personnel direct interested parties to find us via search with "3M Anti-fog". We re already seeing some very strong results.
I am not providing a link to the page, for obvious reasons...
Thank you again!
Hey Rand,
Here is what happened to me smi- accidentally. We decided to add a discount code/promo code on our site for clients. We added the feature but did not get to creating an actual code for almost 6 months. What happened after that is pretty awesome.
When someone would land on our site and would try to get a quote they'd see a box that said enter promo code, but there was no code any where to be found since we didn't create one. Within few months google auto suggest when typing our company name would suggest- Company name promo code and company name discount code. I added 2 codes one for FB one for a particular Landing page on our site. During this 6 months we had more business than we could handel so we focused on hiring new employees and etc, no content was made, not a single cent was spent on advertising anywhere. From what I could see no one even linked to our site during this timeframe( checked by OSE) but the funny thing is our rankings kept going up and up. The only thing that was happening was good reviews were being left on Yelp, Google and FB that's pretty much it. I can not say exactly what was the reason but my thinking is the following:
Someone does a general search and lands on our page- sees the promo code box, goes again to google searches our company name plus promo code or discount code- lands on a page that has the code-comes back either directly to our site or searches again on google - enters the promo code and checks out. This persons 1 search turns into 3 or 4 branded searches with a positive out come.
Any thoughts on this???
Hi Rand,
I love this topic. In fact, your WBF last year about branding as a ranking factor changed my perception of branding for SEO.
If I filter our brand name in Search Analytics and then compare it with our rankings, the correlation is quite amazing. This is such a powerful ranking factor today!
One of the most competitive keywords we rank number 1 for is the 1st one in that filtered Search Analytics list. And I see that again and again with different terms across all of our languages.
To improve that and expand to additional terms, we added (and continue adding) new features that our competitors don't have. It could be features we added to our individual communities we have, or personalized tools and alerts people come back for.
I can write quite a lot about the things we currently work on to improve that, but if to make it short--the bottom line here is that today branding has more and more advantages. You can push your brand through advertising, PR, Content Marketing, but you can also focus on making the product better than your competition. Well, now it sounds like a discussion about 10x content. Internally, I use "10x product" quite often.
It all goes hand in hand now.
P.S. - just noticed you have the charge HR as well, do people also ask you what's that green light? :)
Thanks for the tactics Rand. It seems there are still lands that are not conquered in internet. Nobody tries to rank well on brand searchs other than the searched brand. But if you focus on such keywords, you may definitely take advantage of your effort.
I always follow this strategy with my Team and I get easily Result. I think Branded terms is already promoted then why not use this branded terms.
Great information about branded searches. But if I haven't any brand name than what should I do?
Then you have to build a brand first.
Thanks for this, very interesting!
Excellent for large brands for sure, I think it can also be powerful for smaller brands and it is worth trying
I´d like to share 3 ideas to help with the discussion
1- We tried a simple association of our brand with a keyword with a simple "=" We did it in print advertising, pr and also in a google ad.
This was a important keyword for us and we basically did "Keyword? = brand"
I am not sure to what extent this contributed to this, but we rank Number 1 for that keyword (no deep analysis done to undesrtand the contribution to this of different actions)
2- Claims. Some corporate claims are very poor. I would not suggest this for a fantastic, inspirational claim, but for a claim which is poor and adds nothing could be reconsider and a very important keyword added
Example:
From "ABC, special for your baby"
To: "ABC, the baby clothes brand"
3- a Third idea could be to us twitter for this. If for instance a landing page is created with a nice video, study, etc and then it gets published in twitter as "Super interesting baby clothes study by ABC"...
I hope this helps
Hi Luis!
Thanks for the input.
Regarding p.1, did I get you right - you created title for Google Ad in a form "KW = brand name"? Did you check if SV for this combination increased afterwards?
Super useful tips! I think social media campaigns will play a vital role in order to influence popular search patterns about branded queries. In fact, this is what a lot of start-ups are doing these days. They are creating buzz around their product and services across the social web, setting off curiosity around their brand which eventually prompts people to Google them.
Thanks for covering this Rand,
About 3 months ago, we were looking to increase our branded searches + target keyword to influence our brand association with our industry.
"E. Create an association between your brand and a keyphrase"
We created a 5X7 flyer for our local market that was our business name and Web Design on one line in the same font family, color and style. Our company name appeared to be "ABC COMPANY WEB DESIGN" on the flyer.
We paid someone $10 an hour to go through our local business parks and pass out these flyers ad so far our analytics have started to show these exact searches coming in:
I am assuming the problem with this; theres not a huge residual effect, if any at all. We will consistently need to push print items but hey it is starting to work.
We need to do a post on this and cover the results.
Hello Brenan,
I would love to see the post on your results!
I have a question if you don't mind (I am sorry if this is very 'novice') but when you say you saw an increase in 'exact searches' from 'analytics' is that from your paid search adwords campaign, Google analytics organic traffic keyword source, or search console's queries report? I only ask because, given the (not provided) in google analytics and the sampled nature of queries in google search console, I am impressed you saw results for what I presumed would be very small traffic (possibly treated as personal low search volume searches?).
High PR Social Media Media accounts & profiles creation can help to boost your Brand identity in Google. Thanks for share a Great about Branding @Rand
The problem is 'related searches' can be extremely unrelated. I see plenty of search results where they are completely off topic and influencing related searches can be extremely hard to accomplish.
The only question / doubt I am having here is - What should be the approximate searches should be done in order to see the changes? Searches by how many unique searches.? (irrespective of incognito mode and normal one) can anyone put some light on this.?
This is awesome! The example of LG is so rad. Love when marketers leverage different mediums to influence search behavior. Reminds me of the TV commercial Wayfair came out with a couple years ago that told viewers to google "Wayfair my [room in house]" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u__uW360fsw such genius.
Hi Rand
Excellent advices. It is to brand activities in other fields such as social networks and later to attack the name of a brand within the SEO
Excellent tips! They are creating buzz around their product and services across the social web, setting off curiosity around their brand which eventually prompts people to Google them. I think social media campaigns will play a vital role in order to influence popular search patterns about branded queries. In fact, this is what a lot of start-ups are doing these days.
Hi Rand! Thanks a lot for the presentation - really enjoyed it, and it also made me think about some things. Would be happy to hear your comments on them or from anyone in the round :)
So, we did some MKT campaigns with a purpose to make users search us in Google. The effect was immediate - we went 5 positions up (9th -> 4th position in Google) with the respective page and stayed there until the number of search quires dropped to the previous level. I guess (well and it is pretty logical) that in order to get all benefits from BS such activities should run all year round, and not happen from time to time. But...here is the point. I spotted many competitors manipulating with brand search, what keep them in top3. Totally unfair.
You mentioned that once the brand is searched it will appear in search suggest at some point. But how can we estimate number of such brand search requests? Should it be equal to search volume of generic KW? Should it grow progressively?
Thanks!
Great as Rand Fishkin do it always, Branding Keywords are important in 2016 though SEO is changing day by day before a major update comes we should focus on branding.
I have realised after my few experiments that google has started to rank Brands first in it's SERP, it's all about the anchor collection of your brand name in your backlink profile.
So I am using social media and guest posting as much as I can to build brand name for my projects.
Thanks Rand Fishkin
I noticed down lots of things which I wanted to know.
Do you think that "C) Improve rankings for non-branded queries" could be more affected by clicks that just searches?
For example, if a lot of people search for "3M Chemical Goggles", click on the 3M website, and then stay there for a while (and theoretically perform a transaction), I could see Google thinking of that as a pretty positive signal.
On the other hand, if a lot of people search for "3M Chemical Goggles", click on the 3M website, and then immediately leave and search for something else, it's pretty clear that people aren't finding what they're looking for and Google would take that as a negative signal.
No data related to this yet, but it would be a great thing to test. We've already basically concluded that CTR factors into search results at least a little.
I thinks that last click is what would be counted int the end. If the user came to the website from "3M Chemical Goggles", then he will most likely stay on the page and not bounce back to SERP. Right?
This great post. Thanks for sharing .
Branded searches can make a big influence on organic rankings. I would say participating in relevant forums and asking them to Google Brand specific phrases. Not everyone can go big with Media advertising but for small business the forum and community engagement can work wonders.
I have some doubts to ask ...suppose I am owner of some company say abc ....and I have created a profile by my company's name on Quora https://www.quora.com/ (Q&A ) site ,so can I answer some questions on quora related to product/services I am promoting /selling and giving link to my website
will I be penalized by Google for doing that ?
Rand, your key tactical advice is really useful as always.
A very informative Post... Indeed! Thumbs up
Excellent ideas about the value of influencing branded searches! These branded searches likely have a higher conversion than non-branded searches, so it would be fairly simple to establish the value of pursuing this tactic to leadership. The only tactic that makes me hesitate is the embedded search - it would be interesting to try, but is a little too gray for me.
Point C - you have mentioned that "Google might say, "You know, I think Fisher is very relevant to the search query 'test tubes.'".
But how Google will come to know that "Fisher" is a brand?
Because lots of users have searched for "Fisher test tubes" as per the example given by Rand.
Great talk, Rand. I do have to say that I liked the old intro better :(
Another great way to increase your branded search is to make up your own words. Brian Dean did that with his “Skyscraper Tactic”. I read in an article that he gets a decent amount of traffic with that term. Mainly because he ranks on #1, 2 and 3 in Google for that term.
We’re trying to do the same at RaulTiru.com (a platform where Marketers and Designers come to help Social Enterprises). We would like to introduce the words “Social Marketers” and “Social Designers” and rank for those on social media and search engines. Social Marketer being a marketers that gives back to the community.
It’s going to take a while to get it right. We’re adding the #SocialMarketer and #SocialDesigner in our Tweets, on the website and other promotions.
Hi Raul,
I love your idea of "Social Marketers". I come from a background of nonprofit performance management, benefit corporations, and CSR. Looking forward to getting involved.
As always great Post Rand! I really like your below words:
The idea is basically telling customers like, "Hey, if you want to research us, learn more about 3M's goggles, don't just take our word for it. Search Google. Go find what people are saying, what reviews are saying about our product
Thanks
"Although there's been some speculation to whether branded search can influence non-branbed rankings", I'm almost 100% positive, if your brand name appears in "search suggest", Google already thinks that your brand is highly relevant to the query, hence is more likely to push your rankings up for non-branded queries.
With these tactics I have made it into "people also searched for" part at the bottom for a client - just with the brand name for some great Keywords. That drives a lot of traffic to the page and pushed branded searches a lot.
If you can get into suggest, related or people also searched for - it is worth all the work :)
Great post thanks Rand
Thank you Rand for another brilliant Whiteboard Friday.
Bringing your brand to the public and urging them to search for something (your example with conferences) is, what I believe, a very powerful tool. For example, this is exactly what Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is doing with their show and Twitter. Constatly they are coming up with original, funny and "twitterable" hashtags like #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain and ##LetLetItGoGo. And it's not only Twitter, Google is also booming with such hashtag searches (Google and Twitter partnership, anyone?). Combining such Buzzfeed marketing strategy allows users to reach the brand (the show) further down the tunnel.
By the way, anyone else a fan of John Oliver?!
Hi Rand,
You have a super power of always talking about the exact topic I was thinking about and researching! You are my hero man! :)
Great WBF as always!
Cheers,
Laszlo
I think there is something to this. That Google is associating search terms (KEYWORD) + (BRAND or WEBSITE). Over time, if enough people are searching (KEYWORD + BRAND), I believe it can have a significant effect on rankings for non-branded keyword terms.
It makes sense too that if Google sees people are specifically searching for BRAND A with KEYWORD A, that this brand is highly relevant for that term.
I am not sure on the specifics of how it might work. To see any positive effect, I would guess that there would have to be a significant amount of searches (branded + keyword searches), over a relatively sustained period. This phenomenon is also likely influenced by brand + KW associations across the web.
Wow. What a fantastic Whiteboard Friday from Rand. I think companies could create more branded searches for their products by going viral on a consistent basis. This can be the most effective and cheapest marketing tactic to increase branded searches.
Hi Rand
Great tips
But when we are working with small marks all this work seems more expensive. At least to me it seems more expensive.
However, I will try to apply some of the tips that expose us
Good weekend!!
In cases like this you always have too look at the long run. You basically invest energy and money in "Time". :)
I like the way you present in whiteboard it really creative idea for blogger it really inspired me!!!
I think the way you post it is really good for SEO the article clear and easy to understand espcially come up with video and image....
Thanks
I think capitalizing on branded search is super important for a site. Wil Reynolds has talked about doing a search for your brand name, seeing what people are looking for on your site, and then making sure to highlight that information on your site. I really like that idea.
Some interesting ideas about trying to get your customers or prospective customers to search on Google first to find out more about your brand in order to increase your branded results. This can work out well if the click through to your site, but what happens if they all click through to a competitor that is already ranking higher then you for your brand? This can therefore push you down even further, especially if the new CTR ranking algorithm is taken into account.
Hello Rand and sorry for my english.
With the publication today I feel very identified because it has given me great results in my country (Spain), so I recommend this strategy for their good results. My ecommerce toys is divided into 3 main sections "toys by age" "categories" (eg, puzzles, dolls houses walker) and "brands". After about 9 months I have managed to be positioned in the top10 with just the word of the brand, such as "moulin roty" or "janod". Position the brand followed by the country also has given me great results putting myself in the top3 with only write in meta title.
Obviously things do not magically. You have to work hard with original content and seo on page, put the keyword "brand" several times in the text without abusing (keyword stuffing), and keyword in h1, h2 and h3 to be possible with different combinations of long tails.
Another insightful WBF Rand. especially your face impressions :P
I've definitely been seeing positive impacts from linking up branded campaigns across traditional media with my online. may have to steal the the "search us on" idea.
Cute intro
awesome post