The Power of Branded Keywords for Your Overall SEO Strategy: Summary of Episode #9
Emily Brady joins the podcast to share her thoughts on the role of branded keywords and the brand SERP:
Why SEOs are wrong for putting branded keywords down
Why the brand SERP is more powerful than you might think
Unleashing the power of your brand SERP with ease
Resources:
C'mon SEOs, Stop Crapping All Over Branded Keywords: A Conversation with Emily Brady
Emily thinks that despite the way the SERP has changed SEOs are still too focused on discovery keywords. This comes as your branded SERP is even more important than it used to be (and can even impact your discovery keywords).
There's a lot of stigma around the importance of branded keywords and the role they play with SEOs often minimizing ranking for them. But that branded SERP is so important. Even just having a robust Local Panel sends an important message to users. Imagine if you showed up and a business had a thin panel with hardly any information filled in, would you really want to interact with that business? Many users would pass.
There are so many simple things brands need to be doing on the SERP for their brand keywords. For example, the Twitter box. Literally, all you need to do is Tweet, that's it, Tweet... and the Twitter carousel will generally show up for your branded keywords.
What's worse... if you don't Tweet, Google can still show a carousel of Tweets related to your brand. When that happens you have no control over the Tweets that appear in the SERP feature. Emily has seen cases where these carousels were filled with Tweets of bad reviews. All the business had to do was literally Tweet themselves to avoid that.
The branded SERP is your new business card (as Jason Barnard is so fond of saying). People are going to either find you via Local Pack or specifically search for your brand as part of their research process. So let's say they find your brand via a discovery keyword, there's a good chance they will run a search for your brand to see who the heck you are as well! Both keywords types are extremely important. SEOs shouldn't dismiss branded keywords solely because they are easier to rank for.
Moreover, don't you want people to search for your brand, isn't that the entire point? Don't you want people using branded keywords... isn't that what every brand wants... to be a household name?
While working on a site's branded keywords may not be glamorous, it's no less important and maybe the industry should reflect on that... Just a thought.