Brand Mentions in SEO: How to Earn Quality References and Boost Your Rankings

Introduction

Similar to backlinks, brand mentions work as votes of trust and give you greater authority along with broader outreach. Respectively, they can hold a huge value for search engine optimization and rankings.

In this article, we’ll delve into this topic and give you some tips on how to use them to the maximum benefit.

What Are Brand Mentions?

In general terms, these are any mentions of your brand within digital content, such as blog posts, news articles, social media publications, and others. These references can be divided into two types:

• Direct—Explicit references to your company that involve your company’s name
• Indirect—More vague references that may not include your company’s name but share the names of your products and services or other, closely related content.

The Importance of Brand Mentions for SEO

When someone references your company, be it directly or indirectly, every mention contributes to your online visibility and recognition. Respectively, it can also affect your position in SERP results in the following ways:

• Broader outreach and recognition. In the longer perspective, this can bring you more traffic and a higher click-through rate (CTR).
• A more trustworthy reputation. This affects not only your prospects’ attitude but also the way search engines rank your site—if they find it trustworthy, it will appear higher in results because it can provide more valuable and valid information to users.
• Some mentions may include links to your site and content, turning into backlinks.
• Even if some references remain unlinked, they still can be used by search engines to assess the relevance of your site and your authority as a business. This also affects how high you rank.
• Direct references that include your company’s name also contribute to the establishment and popularization of your own branded keywords. These are crucial for your visibility and traffic because slightly over 44% of Google searches use branded queries.

Where Do You Want to Get Your Mentions From?

Media mentions can come from a variety of sources, including:

• Social media platforms
• Blogs
• News sites
• Discussion boards and forums
• Business directories and platforms with online reviews

Each of these channels can give you certain benefits. So, where exactly do you want to be featured? Leveraging a combination of various touchpoints might be the best idea. The only catch is that not all sources are quality enough to bring you tangible reputational and SEO benefits.

In order to ensure the maximum output, it’s important to track brand mentions and manage them accordingly. For linked references, you can find the best backlink checker tools and assess the toxicity and diversity of your profile. For unlinked direct references, you can leverage Social Sentiment tools.

Unlinked and indirect references are the hardest to track and analyze. However, you can keep an eye on them with the help of social listening tools and manual monitoring of different online channels for any discussions (direct or indirect) of your company.

Key Strategies to Improve Your Brand Mentions SEO Organically

Now that you know what they can give you, let’s focus on what you can do to generate citations that take your positions in SERPs higher. Below, we’ve gathered the main tactical and practical strategies that should help:

Focus on Delivering Share-Worthy Content

Content is a powerful way to fuel your digital PR campaigns and get referenced organically. When you share valuable and unique information, many content creators will be happy to use you as a source in their articles. Some of the most common content types creators are looking for include case studies, independent research findings, expert opinions, and so on. If you create such a copy and get it noticed by creators, they can potentially use it and mention where the data comes from. Often, they will even include a link to the original piece.

To use this tactic, focus on quality and added value in your content strategy. Show your expert knowledge and unique insights to create information that others will share.

Harness the Power of Digital PR

A strong digital PR strategy can also help you gain more citations. In order to get the media to talk about your company and products/services, you can try the following tactics:

• Craft newsworthy content, such as press releases, brand stories, customer success stories, case studies, and others, and pitch them to different sources.
• Leverage PR stunts like user-generated content and interactive contests to make your campaigns go viral.
• Use the help a reporter out (HARO) tactic to become an expert source for journalists and thus, gain references.

Team Up With Content Creators

Collaborations with content creators are another part of a strong digital PR strategy that deserves a separate mention. This tactic remains one of the most effective ones for all kinds of brands, whether be it B2C eCommerce or B2B SaaS. Why? Because content creators like social media influencers and bloggers are much more casual and relatable to people than large, faceless companies. They show their real lives and speak their audience’s language. Thanks to this, followers trust them and the opinions (or recommendations) they share.

For your SEO, partnering with content creators can mean a massive mention that reaches a large audience and a huge vote of trust for your potential customers. All you need is to find bloggers and influencers who have respect in your niche and cover the right audience, and work on fostering lasting relationships with them.

Participate Actively in Relevant Niche Communities

Community engagement can take place within your company’s channels, for example, on your social media pages using surveys, polls, and questionnaires through Crowd Signal or alternatives. It can also go beyond your channels and manifest in active engagement in discussions on relevant forums and discussion boards.

Both methods can bring you important benefits, such as:

• Broader recognition and establishment of you as an expert in the field.
• Stronger relationship building with your audience that shows that you care.
• Greater audience engagement and trust.

Most importantly, engaging with relevant communities can help you get more references that will reinforce your SEO.

Consider Guest Appearances and Contributions

Lastly, one more effective way to gain references that will help you grow and thrive is to become an expert contributor. This can mean a few things. First of all, you can be a guest contributor for journalists (the HARO tactic) in their investigations and articles. Additionally, you can make guest appearances on relevant industry events, podcasts, videos, etc.

Avoiding Common Mistakes and Turning References Into SEO Wins

Now that you know how to gain mentions for your company, let’s briefly review the main mistakes that should be avoided in your strategy:

• Focusing only on partnering with influencers and gaining mentions on social media. For maximum impact, it’s recommended not to overlook other channels, including blogs, forums, and others.
• Neglecting reputation management. Not all references may be positive; however, responding to all of them is crucial for creating a good reputation and increasing trust.
• Not measuring the results. When you are engaging in building more references or any other strategy, it’s important to check SEO ranking, traffic, CTR, and other metrics regularly to gain insights that can inform your strategy and help gain better results in the future.
• Relying on mentions too much. No matter how effective they can be for your rankings, they don’t make up for a lack of on-page optimization, technical SEO, UI/UX design improvement, and other marketing efforts. It’s crucial to use a holistic approach.

Okay, and how do you turn your references into tangible SEO wins? The best tip we can give you is to track your mentions and convert them into backlinks. Although unlinked references can also bring you some benefits, they can bring you even more tangible results when converted into backlinks. To use this to your benefit, you need to regularly monitor the references you get, reach out to their sources, and offer to also feature your link.

Conclusion

As you now see, there are many ways to earn quality media mentions across multiple touchpoints. Use the tips we shared with you here to enhance your recognition and turn references into real SEO wins. And get ready to dominate SERPs!