Why You Should Address Your Brand SERP – Four Steps to Begin Tracking

A direct search for your brand name is perhaps the ultimate confirmation that you’ve firmly staked your place within the hearts and minds of your target market. That spot is evidence that your potential clients are thinking of you when they have needs for products or services within your niche. It also means users are searching for your business location near their current location. As such, the search engine results pages, or SERPs, provided as the result of such a search should be the user’s ultimate destination for information and insight about your brand. In short, this page – known as your brand SERP – is a key factor in your brand identity.

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Why Are Brand SERPs So Important?

People who already have a working knowledge of your brand expect to see information on your brand SERP that accurately reflects your brand’s identity and message, which they’ve already experienced via your marketing efforts. Those who may be relatively unfamiliar want to see that you’re a business with expertise and authority in your niche. Both groups need to see accurate and up-to-date information that instills a sense of trust while enabling them to access your products and services without delay.

It’s also crucial to remember that people are not the only ones accessing your brand SERP. On a frequent basis, Google’s crawlers vie to understand your brand and optimize the search results for human users who may need information about your business – a process directly influenced by your SEO efforts. Your brand SERP indicates just how well the information you’ve chosen to place on the web represents your brand – and how well the crawlers and bots understand it and relay it to users.

Tracking Your SERPs

While it’s easy to assume that the information people and bots see when they access your brand SERP is accurate (because that’s what you’ve provided), it’s important to keep in mind that you may only have direct control over a few of the aspects that control whether you land on the first page of the SERP. Therefore, it’s crucial to track what appears on your SERP so any negatives or inaccuracies can be addressed. Follow these essential steps:

Visit your SERP

Visit the SERP for your brand, as well as “[your brand] reviews”. What do you see in the top results? Ideally, you should notice the sites you control – including your website(s), local Google My Business block, and any others – at the top of the SERP since Google’s algorithm prefers direct, authoritative information to be listed first, followed by third party listing or review sites.

For example, if you were to search for the name of a concierge doctor, or local concierge medicine service provider, you should see an informative homepage and local business listing results first, followed by Yelp, Healthgrades, and other rating sites explicitly for concierge physicians.

Assess Your SERP

Take a moment to view your SERP as a potential client would – do you see what you’d expect? Is the information provided by the experts (your website) complete and enticing? How negative or positive are the third-party results? Is information like opening hours, prices, business address, and website address accurate?

Make Improvements

SERPs are made up of information you can directly control, those you can indirectly control, and those you cannot control. Here are some ways to take charge:

• First, address the information you can control – ensure your business page’s meta title and information are informative and well-written, and provide quality, comprehensive knowledge to the user. Similarly, ensure your Google My Business provides accurate opening hours, address, and other information.
• Second, claim your listing on third-party review sites and job listing services, over which you have some level of indirect control. Ensure your information is accurate and up to date, then address any negative reviews with positivity and the appropriate concern. Finish by garnering positive reviews from happy ex-employees and current customers – positive reviews on major pages may help push any negative reviews on these or more minor pages further down the SERPs.
• Third, enhance your presence on Wikipedia and any distributor sites. You can correct or dispute faulty information and add positive, relevant information to replace it.
• Finally, review the information you have no control over, such as third-party articles and blogs. While you can contact the host of any third-party review page and request inaccurate reviews be removed, with a blog author you’re left to communicate directly with the owner to plead your case. Providing positive inbound links, third party blogs, and guest posts can help you add positive, recent content to negate any negatives.

Continue Tracking

Once you’ve made improvements, your work is not over. Continue to monitor your brand SERP for potential negatives and false information. In addition, visit your search console and view the number of impressions garnered for your brand as well as for brand review for a more accurate picture of just how many humans are viewing your information.

Moving Forward

Your work to maintain your brand identity via all the various marketing techniques you’ve chosen should result in an influx of brand name searches for your business – capitalize on these searches by ensuring you’re providing the best, most complete and most accurate information possible on your brand SERP so your users can find you and boost your traffic. Similarly, your brand SERP can provide an overview of just how much your SEO efforts are paying off and just how well Google’s crawlers are understanding the information you’ve provided. Optimizing your SERP and tracking your efforts will take some work, but the results you’ll see will be well worth it.

Need more information about your brand SERP or techniques to manage it? Let our experts help you get started.

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