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Businesses use search engine optimization (SEO) because they want to improve their presence in online searches. However, the truth is that for larger brands, and especially national brands, SEO has little to do with why brands can appear on the first page of search results. SEO’s core value proposition can be misleading, or at least misunderstood.
Knowledge boards, social accounts, Wikipedia, and job review entries are critical parts of your digital presence. Along with your website, they’re the first things consumers, investors, and even journalists will see when they search for your brand.
However, despite having higher visibility online, they are not particularly affected by SEO, especially for direct brand searches. To understand why that would be, let’s look at the key components of your digital presence that SEO can help with, and then dive into everything else.
Related: SEO isn’t just about link building. Don’t overlook these expert strategies.
The Big 3 of SEO
SEO has three main components: onsite, offsite, and technical.
On-site SEO covers all of your website’s copy and metadata and is critical to improving your rankings for specific keywords. For example, if you sell handmade charcoal toothpaste, an on-site SEO strategy will involve creating content around search terms like “natural dental products,” “organic toothpaste,” and (I’m guessing) “teeth cleaners old ones”.
Off-site SEO involves all the external actions (taken outside of your website) to get Google and other engines to see your site as trustworthy and authoritative. The most common offsite tactic is to build backlinks. Content creation can be part of this strategy, as you want relevant sites, such as Center for Holistic Dentistry, to follow the example above, to link to your pages.
Technical SEO involves improving the nuts and bolts of your website in general, which can help with both search engine visibility and website functionality.
Both offsite and technical SEO have broad applicability to any type of search. On-site SEO is more contextual and keyword-focused. But for searches directly about your brand, these three strategies are less useful than you might think.
Avoid SEO blind spots
The information that immediately appears when people search for your brand is critical to your reputation, as very few users will click on the second page of results.
So let’s think about the types of search results you see when you search for your brand name. Your company website should be the top organic result; if it’s not, you have an SEO problem.
But what comes next? If you’re a local business, you should see a Google My Business profile to the right of the organic results that includes photos, your website URL, a Google Maps link, hours of operation, and more. An SEO agency should advise you on how to claim and optimize this profile.
However, if you’re a prominent national brand, searchers should see a Google Knowledge Panel instead of a My Business profile. Knowledge panels appear in search results for notable people, places, brands, and proper names. Google pulls data for knowledge panels from numerous public sources, including Wikipedia. Side note: If your brand is notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, your brand almost certainly has a knowledge panel.
With a My Business profile, the most impactful way to improve your knowledge dashboard is to first claim it (with a verified account) and suggest changes directly to Google. You can also search for updates to your Wikipedia article, as the descriptive language at the top of the knowledge panel is likely taken from the online encyclopedia.
Your social profiles will also appear on the first page of search, both in the knowledge panel and organic listings. An SEO agency may advise you to update these profiles to ensure that all relevant descriptive data is correct and consistent across profiles (eg using the same tagline, listing the correct website, etc. .). Using these channels effectively to promote your brand is entirely up to you. Too often, the first page of brand search results will include links to social accounts that haven’t been updated in months or don’t reflect a recent rebrand.
SEO also won’t help you address negative reviews or outdated information on Glassdoor and Indeed job sites. Both feature prominently in business search results and are frequently visited by job seekers as well as journalists and investors.
Searchers of your brand will also see countless corporate profiles from sites like Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Crunchbase, GitHub and others. Some of these profiles can be updated directly by verified employees, and doing so is a good idea if you want your Google results to be accurate.
Related: 5 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Your digital presence is more than your website (much more)
To reiterate, SEO is essential to online marketing. I just want to remind brands (and brand managers) that traditional SEO doesn’t cover it even though there are huge and very vital parts of your digital presence that are outside the realm of search engine optimization .
For this reason, it’s important to periodically conduct a full audit of your digital presence, starting with all of the page 1 search results for your brand. It can be useful to compare your results with those of the competition, as you can see effective steps that others are taking to improve their presence that you can duplicate.
One thing’s for sure: you can’t afford to leave your digital presence to chance.
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