Brand Reputation as a Search Engine Influencer

Digital marketing has changed every year since it began in 2004. 2019 will mark a time where your brand and its reputation will become an influencer of your ranking as well as the quality of your business. In 2019 your brand becomes a ranking signal.

Google never gives out the exact recipe for their secret sauce of search engine optimization and how your rank for a certain search term on a given page is directly influenced. Search Engine Journalin 2019 has indicated that your brand can become an influencing factor. How can you be ready for this change?

Create a strategy to get your name out there. Brand mentions with or without linking is a positive. Google’s super computers formulate a picture of your brand based on general text mentions. Google also uses the general information about your brand and where these brand mentions came from. These mentions include context of the text itself. Google’s Rank Brain computers are very smart. This information is used to create an overall picture about your company and your brand. This establishes your authority within a certain field. An example would be: there is talk about Joe the Plumber and everyone raves about how good of a plumber he is, then it is established he is an authority on plumbing. It is important to remember this is with or without linking.

How can we use this information? Text mentions as part of a brand strategy may in the past have included a strong linking campaign. How does this strategy change in 2019? Rapid linkage over a short period of time has always raised the awareness of Google and over time the search engine may conclude that too many links too fast was done in an artificial way. Google could lose faith in your brand. Using brand mentions though does not raise red flags. The source content must be from a trust worthy source for it to have significant impact. The more of these mentions the better. The higher quality of site mentioning your brand, even better. This is like a linkage strategy without the links.

Does this mean that linkage as an influencer for ranking and authority is dead? No, links are still a strong influence but must be handled with care. Links can both hurt and help a brand. As mentioned earlier, too many links too fast can have negative effects. Once a brand is on the naughty list it is hard to get off it. Considering that a brand is part of an overall digital marketing effort is not new. Considering your brand as an influencer for how search engines treat your company is. Digital marketing has become more complex than ever, but these changes are to ensure trustworthy companies are rewarded for their work.