If I’d have to point one specific SEO story that I told the C-Level this year, it would be Google’s patent to calculate Site Quality.
This story, that was brought to us by Bill Slawski, and then mentioned by Rand Fishkin in one of his recent WBF’s, helped me strengthen even further–the C-Level’s understanding of the connection between today’s SEO with branding, and the product itself.
The idea of the patent, really is very simple. Google obviously knows what searches are more popular, and when they see these terms together with brand names, they easily find the connection between the two. A connection that could make the case and change rankings significantly.
This post isn’t about the patent, as it was explained very well by both Bill and Rand. This post is about you as an SEO, making sure that your CEO knows what your users are searching for, in the context of your company.
You see, if you’re Booking.com, and people are searching for “Booking.com Row NYC”, you want to know about it. You want to know if people are searching a lot more for your brand name with hotels in New York VS. Los Angeles, or hotels in the U.S. VS. hotels in Europe or Australia.
So how powerful is it rankings wise? Well, let’s just say that the correlation between the terms that include “Investing.com” is unbelievable with the search queries that we rank really well for. And vice versa!
Want to give it a try? Send your list to your C-Level folks!
1. Open your site’s Search Console 2. Search Traffic>Search Analytics 3. Queries>Filter Queries (yes, use that little dropdown) 4. Filter your brand name (I did that for both “investing”, and “investing.com”) 5. Download the list by impressions.
This list is pure gold! Make sure that everyone in your organization know what people are searching for–when they have your brand in mind.
Changing the search queries that people will search for in the future together with your brand name, isn’t a task for next week. It’s a long term plan, and we’re currently working on ours. But this shows how strong the connection is between what people actually think of you, or how they see your brand, and Google’s SERPs.
The plan to change this should be applied across all levels of the organization. From Product to Content, From Content to PR, from PR to the entire marketing department. Want to rank for a strong topic? Start by making sure your users know it’s there, and that it’s absolutely great.
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