The search engine remains one of the most powerful platforms you can rank in. Organic and paid rankings hold much potential when it comes to both searches related to your niche and the name of your brand. When you reach a certain level of familiarity with your target audience, they will start searching for your name or the name of your company. The next question is if a user takes their time searching for your brand, will you be ranked on the first page of search engines?
This is one reason why digital professional Jesse Willms emphasizes the importance of brand Search Engine Results Page (SERP) strategies. Having several vehicle history listing websites, Willms recognizes that optimizing the descriptions and titles for these domains led to his ranking success.
Although being recognized organically is a fulfilling feat, you also want to make sure that your brand is the first result when people type in the name of your products and services. In this post, Jesse Willms presents a simple yet thorough guide on how to improve your brand SERP strategy for the long haul.
Focus On Your Homepage Details
The search engine crawlers recognize each website’s homepage. Thus, Jesse Willms explains that if there is one thing you need to focus initially on, it is the homepage search engine details. If you haven’t done so, he suggests working on the following:
Placing a meta description for your homepage:
Go to your SEO or HTML editor and add a meta description for the main index.html or other similar pages. Meta descriptions should have your brand’s name, be descriptive about your company, and should only be 50-160 characters. If you don’t do this, search engines will get information from your homepage footer.
Descriptions and titles for menu links:
It is also beneficial to add meta descriptions and good titles for the menu links on your website. This will further strengthen the search engine’s capability to rank you better for user search terms related to your brand.
Adding these details will increase your visibility, yielding a search result that shows the homepage and each menu section with the meta descriptions you placed.
Adding Details to Your Social Media Accounts
Social media accounts naturally rank high for brand SERPs because of their prominent site authority. This is why you would see results that yield social media pages for personalities or brands who don’t have their website yet.
So, the next best step aside from your website homepage is to add details to your social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. It can help to do the following:
Fixing titles and descriptions:
To complement your complete homepage titles and descriptions, adding the same details on your social media accounts will also allow the best result for brand SERP.
Interlinking to websites:
Fill in the links to your website and other social media accounts when necessary, as this also helps in better search engine crawling.
Adding content and positive reviews:
Like many other brands, you have a social media platform of prominence. Keep on updating your chosen social media platform and add positive reviews from real clients whenever possible.
Like your website, social media is one controllable feature that gives you a great brand SERP when done correctly.
Reputation and Damage control On Listing Websites
Some companies have no choice but to be featured in listing websites automatically made as a part of an open knowledge platform. Such examples are job search and company information websites such as Glassdoor and Indeed.
The best thing you can do with these details, which you have partial control, is to be responsive to potential complaints. You can offer incentives, explain your side, or reply kindly to negative feedback to show potential viewers that you are concerned about your brand’s reputation.
Additionally, you would want to fill in the same details as you would for your homepage and social media. These include a profile photo, brand description, link to website, categories, and job offers.
You can access some of these listing pages of your company and update the information as needed.
Encouraging feedback From Third-Party websites
Brand SERP works both ways–some users will look for you deliberately. Still, your company will also be more searchable when you do your part in strengthening your search engine optimization strategies.
One technique that helps both in SEO and brand SERP is encouraging positive feedback from third-party websites. These include positive press releases, reviews in blogs, and other partnerships where your brand’s name is mentioned.
To get these types of content for your brand, you can reach out to blogs and online magazines and provide valuable guest posts. You can also offer influencers who have websites of their own to create reviews in exchange for your products and services. There are also digital marketing companies that are willing to submit press releases related to your brand for increased searchability.
Brand SERP: Building Pillars for Your Company’s Name
As you consider the strategies that Jesse Willms suggested in this post, you will realize that you are gradually building pillars to strengthen your brand’s recognition. Brand SERP is a proven strategy that edifies and upholds your company’s name.
