The power and importance of backlinks for a business’s website are well documented, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of brand mentions either.
Google’s approach to backlinks and brand mentions has evolved significantly over the years, and now more than ever, the search engine considers brand mentions as a component of a business’s trustworthiness and authority.
Before diving into why brand mentions are just as important as backlinks for your business, let’s review a brief history of Google’s algorithm updates to understand how things have changed.
A brief history of Google’s algorithm updates:
1998 – Page rank: Backlinks were considered a key ranking factor and a ‘vote of confidence’ in the eyes of Google. The more backlinks pointing towards your site, the better.
2000s—Link manipulation increases: As people start to recognise the importance of backlinks, we see the emergence of link farms, spammy directories, and paid link tactics, all designed to get as many links as possible to a site, regardless of quality. Google responds with algorithm updates like Penguin (2012), penalising low-quality backlinks with unnatural link profiles.
2013—Hummingbird: Semantic search and user intent start to gain significance. Google is starting to understand context, and unlinked brand mentions have started to gain importance.
2014-Brand mentions in patent: Google files a patent stating that “implied links” (i.e., brand mentions) could be recognised by search engines as a signal of authority and trust.
2018- E-A-T guidelines: Expertise, authority, and trustworthiness become crucial ranking factors. Unlinked brand mentions, which could be perceived as more ‘natural’ to Google, contribute to a site’s perceived authority, as Google considers online reputation and brand prominence in its quality assessments. In 2022, Google added the parameter ‘Experience’ to its search quality guidelines, making the acronym E-E-A-T. Here’s how digital PR improve E-E-A-T signals.
2024- Reputation abuse policy update: Google clarifies its policy language to define abusive linking tactics and reinforce the importance of relevant content across websites. The search engine is again tightening up on ‘black hat’ tactics of buying links, building low-quality links or adding links to unreputable directories and ranking websites.
Why do brand mentions matter for your business today?
Google understands context
After reading a brief history of Google’s algorithm updates, it’s clear that it can now better understand context. The search engine is smart enough to know that, like a backlink, a brand mention in an authoritative publication that covers content relevant to your brand can signal trustworthiness.
Google is clever, and it understands that if you have gained a brand mention in a specific article, this must mean that you’re an expert in that topic and have experience within that field. This will signal to the search engine that you can give users the answers they’re looking for, which will influence your site to be shown higher in the SERPs. Ultimately, Google will likely see brand mentions as less manipulable, meaning they’ve been earned and are perceived as more natural.
It will take time and require investment in consistent PR activity, but once a steady stream of brand mentions and backlinks are secured, you’ll start to notice the SEO benefits and, subsequently, a positive impact on your business’s traffic and conversions.
Brand building comes first
In the past, businesses have been wrapped up in getting as many links as possible back to their site, and if the mention doesn’t have a link, then it’s useless. But this isn’t the case anymore. Brands should always be focused on brand building first and links second.
As a reader and consumer, my trust in a brand doesn’t come from whether its name in an article includes a link to its website—it comes from the quality of its content. If a brand helps me make a decision, solve a problem, or simply resonates with me through an insightful or interesting article, it gains my trust and recognition. This is what truly matters, and they have gained a brand advocate.
Touchpoints like these—whether or not they include a backlink—are key to building a brand. Yes, a backlink might lead me directly to their website and support SEO efforts. However, if the content truly displays E-E-A-T best practices and resonates with me as a consumer, I’ll likely make the effort to visit the brand’s website myself or explore their social platforms. Either way, if I’m thinking about ‘the topic they wrote about in that article that time’,the brand is now top of mind for me as a consumer.
How to utilise PR tactics to gain brand mentions?
Practice E-E-A-T and backlinks will follow
If your brand can focus on creating PR content relevant to its audience, practising E-E-A-T, and aligning with its brand’s values, the backlinks will naturally follow. And even if they don’t, it’s not the end of the world. Both brand mentions and backlinks play essential roles in supporting SEO and client objectives, but trust and relevancy should always come first, and if you follow this ethos, too, you’ll likely get a good percentage of both brand mentions and backlinks.
Quick tips for a balance of brand mentions and backlinks include:
- Brand first: Ensure that PR campaigns are relevant and make sense for your brand.
- Always practice quality of quantity: If you’ve created a relevant and interesting PR campaign, ensure you’re trying to gain coverage in the most relevant publications, too. Don’t spray and pray!
- Create engaging landing pages and blogs: Backlinks are great, and there’s no denying that, so if you want to encourage journalists to include one in an article, make sure you’ve created an engaging landing page for them to link back to. You need to give them a reason to link back to your website.
- Request a link back: If you get a brand mention and want to try turning it into a backlink, don’t hesitate to politely contact the journalist. Some publication-linking policies will prevent them from including backlinks, but it’s worth mentioning how including one would add value to the reader.
PR is about building trust first, and as we’ve discussed, the links will naturally follow, and if they don’t, a brand mention is a win, too.
If you’re a business unsure of how to boost your brand awareness and SEO, get in touch with our team to learn more about how PR activity can support these goals.