How Brand Reputation and Brand Mentions Impact Your SEO

Improving brand reputation and managing brand mentions have one ultimate goal: boosting the company’s profits and revenue. Positive brand perception also influences customer retention rates and reduces churn. Having your target market trust your brand can cultivate brand loyalty and advocacy that leads to long-term and steady repeat sales.

In addition to all those benefits, brand reputation management also boosts organic traffic to your website, leading to better search engine optimization (SEO) results.

In this post, we will show how business reputation impacts SEO performance. Learn the answers to several key questions, such as:

1. How can a brand mention impact your site’s organic rank?
2. What affects local SEO and its benefits for direct traffic?
3. What are the benefits of having a brand trend?
4. How does an increased search volume of your brand name impact your business reputation and SEO results?
5. How to build brand awareness

Brand Mentions and Their Impact on Your Organic Ranking

Every brand mention directly impacts your site’s organic rank. Winning more positive brand mentions indicates improved brand awareness and correlates to higher customer loyalty. Remember, people tend to trust the things they’re comfortable and familiar with, boosting brand perception.

1. Effect on Customer Confidence

A brand mention can go either way. Your business reputation can reflect how consumers feel about your business. A more positive brand perception translates to improved customer trust and more people doing business with you. Statistics show that 46 percent (Oberlo, 2022) of consumers will pay more for brands they trust.

Think of them as votes of confidence in your brand, increasing your site authority. On the other hand, negative reviews have the opposite effect – they lower consumer confidence and trust. Inaccuracies in business listings also have a negative brand impact. Therefore, duplicate citations and business listings should be managed promptly.

Studies show that 94 percent of consumers avoid businesses with negative reviews or inaccurate citations (Qualtrics, 2022). Because of this, reviews need to be monitored, and adequate and timely review responses should be made ASAP.

2. Impact on Direct Traffic

Google uses brand mentions as one of the factors to determine a website’s reliability (Search Quality Raters Guidelines or QRG). In addition, online mentions of your brand give clues to search algorithms and help search engines understand subjects related to your brand. Algorithms give external mentions precedence over those found internally on your site.

If you want more direct traffic, prioritize getting more positive mentions from external sources rather than just reviews you post on your company website. Some of the best sources that can impact your SEO performance include:

• Expert recommendations
• Prestigious awards
• Wikipedia
• News articles
• Forum discussions
• Customer reviews

The Value of a Brand Trend

Trends tend to keep brands fresh in the eyes of the general public. You can align your brand with current trends, keeping up with the times and ensuring brand relevance. Your business can also start its brand trend, which can boost your branding strategy, helping keep your business in the minds of your target audience.

Influencer Impact on Your SEO

Other factors that Google considers are comments and articles by authors, journalists, YouTubers, vloggers and other influencers. Search engines use these sources to get more information about your brand. With this in mind, it is best to include influencer marketing when hiring local SEO services for your company. It’s a strategic way to boost organic traffic and increase brand loyalty.

One study (Moz, 2015) shows that working with influencers can help your site generate more natural backlinks, which boosts site ranking. This strategy benefits your brand if the influencer’s niche is relevant to your business. Influencers can recommend your brand to their followers, and your site gains more domain authority and better rankings.

Consider Getting Rated

Google has denied using information from third-party review sites, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB), as a ranking factor. However, it is interesting that Google’s QRG mentions the BBB mentioned earlier and other similar consumer resources as indicators of a site’s trustworthiness. The guidelines state that getting low ratings from these sites can be used as evidence of a negative brand reputation.

In a patent registered by Google, the search engine giant doesn’t explicitly say “brand mentions” as one of the means for calculating the reliability of websites. The term they used there is “implied links.”

So, what is an “implied link?” Inbound links or backlinks are the links you can find from one website to another. Consider backlinks as votes of confidence from other sites, which validate your niche authority and increase organic traffic.

The more backlinks you have, the better it is for your rankings. In addition, it’s more than just getting more incoming links. Higher-quality inbound links improve your site’s niche authority and boost your search engine rankings.

On the other hand, an implied link is a reference to a resource on the web, such as a website or citation. It doesn’t have a direct link to a website, but it mentions the resource, and users can search for it if needed. Implied links are references to resources, which aren’t links – they are brand mentions.

This means that even though BBB ratings aren’t ranking factors, brand mentions from third-party review sites are used to measure the reliability of a brand’s trustworthiness, and they are factored into the quality control of search algorithms.

Getting better ratings from third-party review sites should be part of a company’s brand reputation management strategy. If you have challenges getting more brand mentions from these review portals, consider working with specialists providing expert reputation management services. They can equip you with effective tools to manage negative reviews and capitalize on positive brand mentions.

The Impact of Increased Search Volume

After understanding the value of brand mentions, businesses should pay attention to increasing the search volume. It is a metric you can use to measure the effectiveness of your search strategy.

Search volume is also known as brand awareness, and it directly affects your site’s SEO performance. Search volume refers to the number of online queries made using specific terms within a given timeframe, which is an important tool in brand reputation management.

Local SEO services will use this metric to measure how many site visits have been made to your website using branded and unbranded keywords. The trends in search volume indicate how well a company is growing its brand awareness.

Branded searches are queries that contain brand names, such as:

• Microsoft
• Apple
• Google

These queries are made by people interested in the products of the brands they’re looking for. On the other hand, examples of non-branded search terms include:

• Laptop
• Smartphone
• Tablet 

People who use non-branded searches may be interested in your products or services but aren’t yet aware of your brand. Branded searches tend to have better conversion rates, which means a higher branded search volume can boost your sales. Non-branded search volume, on the other hand, feeds the lower part of your conversion funnel.

Specialists providing local SEO services will use non-branded search terms to improve your brand’s keyword rankings, generate more leads and boost brand awareness. Furthermore, companies providing reputation management services can give you insights into what affects local SEO and help you increase branded and non-branded search volume.

How To Build Brand Awareness

Depending on your current needs, several search strategies can work well for your brand. For example, startups can use some of the strategies mentioned below to create interest, while established brands can use them to increase brand loyalty.

1. Paid Ads

Online advertising can be used to boost brand awareness and retarget customers. Brand awareness campaigns are used for people who haven’t interacted with your brand, while retargeting campaigns are for leads who have already interacted with your website.

2. Interest and Demographic Targeting

Marketing campaigns are used to target various audiences by demographics and interests. Use this strategy after identifying your specific market segment.

3. Contextual Targeting

This strategy doesn’t rely on consumer behavior or personal information. Instead, you can place online ads on mobile apps and web portals relevant to your brand.

4. Digital Press Release (PR)

This strategy focuses on delivering your brand to designated audiences using published stories in high-quality and relevant publications. Link acquisition only becomes a secondary goal; the primary focus is on reach and brand visibility.

Companies needing expert brand reputation and review monitoring can trust specialists from Rize Reviews. Our team has helped hundreds of companies boost their SEO using brand reputation strategies. Fill out this contact form today, and we’ll be in touch ASAP.