Brand mentions- why are they now such an important part of the SEO process?

Author: Ryan Walsh

Key things you should take away from reading this article:

• Both Google and the AI models are looking for brand mentions
• Brand mentions can help to improve your business authority
• The large language models also look for brand mentions
• Be a thought leader, not a sheep

Why links are important, but they are not everything

Personally, I (Ryan Walsh) remember when backlinks were something businesses focused on building.

Backlinks were therefore the primary focus for some businesses to improve their ranking.

Now, don’t get us wrong, backlinks are still important, still a strong ranking factor, but they are not everything.

You also need to think about brand mentions.

Both Google’s algorithm and large language models are actively reading brand mentions. Therefore, whether the brand mention is linked or unlinked, it can help boost your business’s visibility if it’s placed in the right places.

 

Rankings and authority

To improve businesses’ rankings and visibility in the LLM models, you need to think about how you can boost the businesses’ authority.

We know authority is important when determining how visible a business should be in Google organic results and in AI, given the Google EEAT guidance.

The Google EEAT guidance clearly states that authority is one of the key metrics in deciphering how important a business is.

What exactly is a brand mention?

If your business or the product has a distinctive name, it’s a brand mention. It can be written as plain text on the page; therefore, it doesn’t need to have an active link. Plus, the brand mentions could be anywhere, written in reviews, on a blog post, or in a Reddit thread.

Google and LLMs are very good at crawling and indexing the web; therefore, when your business is mentioned, especially on an important website, this signals that your brand is important.

 

High DA

When you log in to your say backlink-checking tool, websites are often measured by the DA score they offer. Some have a very high DA score, also known as domain authority.

Now, what this means is that the website is important, it’s influential.

Therefore, as you would imagine, if you run a business and your website is mentioned on an internationally recognised news website or by a

PLC brand, this will carry more weight than an unknown blogger mentioning your business.

Therefore, you want to get brand mentions on high-DA websites.

Strengthening your authority

If you run a business, you might be confused about how Google determines which businesses rank in first place and which rank in 100th place in organic rankings.

Now, it’s important to know that Google uses over 200 ranking factors.

However, you can split them into categories such as off-site and on-page signals.

However, you could also broadly split them into categories such as improving relevance and authority.

Now, to improve relevance, you can write a lot of helpful content marketing, such as what I am writing here.

However, arguably the hardest part of SEO, GEO, and AEO is improving authority.

Every business under the sun thinks they’re the best, that they are the bees’ knees.

However, it’s the LLMs’ job, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, as well as, of course, Google’s algorithm, to decipher who is actually the most authoritative out there.

And yes, you guessed it: brand mentions are one way LLMs and search engines use actually to decipher who is the most important.

 

How does Google use brand mentions to rank websites?

Google uses something called Googlebot, which crawls and indexes countless pages.

When you therefore spend, say, an entire day writing a blog post, you will want it to show up in Google’s organic results, right?

Well, to do that, you need to have it crawled and indexed.

Now, when we say crawling and indexing, we could simplify it to Google reading the text.

Therefore, when Google reads your brand being mentioned in the text, it does the following.

Associate your brand with a given topic

See which websites are mentioning your brand, and how influential they are

Then, also start to build a picture of your brand, using what’s called the Google Knowledge Graph

 

Knowledge panels, Knowledge Graphs, Knowledge Vaults

Google is very good at understanding brands and companies.

Google wants to give the shopper the most accurate answer to any question asked of the search engine.

To do that, Google needs to understand your brand. It needs to understand your products and services.

Google, therefore, likes it when you add author details to your written work. Therefore, Google can work out who the person is who’s writing the advice, and whether they’re an expert on that given work.

Then, when you write helpful and informative work, Google algorithms can build a picture of what your business does.

• What helpful advice is your business offering?
• What products are regularly mentioned?
• Who is writing the advice, and are they experts on that given subject?

Then your brand or products are mentioned on influential websites, which in turn feeds into the Google Knowledge Graph. Google then builds a solid understanding of how important the brand is, for example.

 

LLMs also like to cite authoritative work

How Google cites the best answer, the most authoritative answer, well, a lot of the LLM’s work the same way.

Therefore, content marketing is very important, as your business needs to offer helpful advice. The work must satisfy Google EEAT.

However, a business that keeps blogging and adding content marketing without considering how to build links and earn brand mentions is making a big mistake.

Because the businesses cited in Google AI Overviews and in Google organic results are often the most authoritative websites, they are often brands mentioned on national newspaper websites, which improves brand mentions and makes the brand more authoritative.

 

Use Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free tool from Google that helps you track brand mentions. That way, as soon as Googlebot crawls and indexes a brand mention, it will alert you straightaway.

Therefore, it is very useful to marketing managers for several reasons. The main one is that you can see if your brand is being mentioned on influential websites, which is important.

However, your marketing team will also want to know how your brand is being discussed. What is the feedback, for example, regarding a new product that you have brought to market? Also, it can help you detect any negative mentions, such as negative reviews, so your business can address this issue.

 

To set up Google Alerts, head on over to:

Go to google.com/alerts.

Hootsuite and Answer The Public

Some of the tools that marketing teams around the world use to track brand mentions include Hootsuite and AnswerThePublic.

 

Use Digital PR to create brand mentions.

Your directors jumping out of a plane for charity, or let’s say you’ve won some rather swanky business award, if this is mentioned in the right places, then it can create brand mentions.

Marketing companies often refer to it as PR work, but in the past, it was all about generating backlinks. Now, gaining a link from a high-DA website would be beneficial; however, if a backlink can’t be generated, a mere mention of your company on, say, a well-known business website such as Bloomberg News would help improve your business’s authority.

 

Be different, think differently

When you’re a thought leader and an authority on a given subject, your name or your company will often be mentioned more.
For example, when someone is writing a blog post, they may say, “This is what this person has stated: they retail this item or service, for example.”

When you start publishing really helpful content marketing that shows you are a thought leader, you can get more brand mentions and links.

 

Turning brand mentions into links.

Sometimes, someone will mention your brand or your products positively. However, this gives your marketing team a fantastic opportunity to request a link from the business. They have already mentioned your brand and products because they either approve the items or want to share your advice.

Either way, this also allows you to ask for a link. This can further improve your business’s search engine optimisation.

 

In conclusion, and how Walsh & Partners can help you.

Walsh & Partners are one of the best SEO companies in the UK. We understand GEO, SEO and AEO.

We understand the importance of link building, but also getting your brand mentioned on websites with high DA score. We are the experts at helping your business to get more customers, by simply making your company more visible.

We are the marketing experts to call when your business needs to make more sales.