Reason Your SEO Strategy Should Aim At Brand Building
One thing that you need to remember about Google is that it serves brands in an exceptional manner. Only a few links are required for a brand to get better ranks. And when a brand gets penalized, it resurfaces again after a few days of hiding.
However, same is not the case with smaller brands. They need to earn more links of better quality in order to show up in the SERPs. And when they get penalized, they do not resurface ever again.
This behavior by Google is being highlighted more these day. But it is worth mentioning that Google has been treating brands this way from a long time.
Having that said, the only thing that you should focus on while working on your SEO strategy to build a brand. The reason is that brand is everything you need in order to get your products and services highlighted in the SERPs. And if you are unable to show your brand as a big one in Google, you might not be able to succeed.
Dramatic changes in SERPs
One thing that we can say about Google with certainty is that it goes through a lot of changes even on daily basis. But these changes do not necessarily include the ones related to Google Algorithm. There are a several layout changes which can have their impact on how the listings are being shown in SERPs. One of them is the featured snippet. The use of featured snippets has been on the rise. In 2 years, the use of this feature has risen to 16 percent from 5.5. However, the introduction of full knowledge panel in SERPs has reduced this level by 10 percent.
A full knowledge panel tends to provide information from several sources through thumbnails of sorts. Clicking on a thumbnail loads separate SERP which contains a featured snippet explaining that thumbnail. Hence, the users are now able to get required information without even visiting the page. The matter of fact is the number of people who actually visit a link has reduced by 40%. And there is a smart speculation that this number is going to rise up to 50% in the coming days.
So, what can the brands do in this regard?
You may ask this question. Well, the best solution is to work on brand recognition. People would like to visit your brand only if it is recognized well. For this purpose, you will first need to work on the keywords. Long-tail keywords have extra potential to give you brand the exposure it needs. Good thing about brand recognition is that you would not have to worry about Google’s ranking any more. You will just have to get a spot in the first page.
Another factor which you need to take into consideration is content. Your content needs to be based on truth. Furthermore, the quality of content is a key element which the search engines give attention to when it comes to ranking a website.
Since people are not much interested now about the ranks, it really makes sense to transform your SEO strategy into a process which could give you brand the advantage it needs in order to thrive. And, it is just a matter of time when Google will finally turn this trend into a ranking criterion.
