How To Protect Your Brand Online
Large amounts of the organic traffic that comes to your website is someone searching specifically for you or your brand. What this means is in the Google search bar, someone is typing your company name. What happens next is Google will show a bunch of search results related to your brand name, these should include things like your website and social pages, but often competitors or bad press are also shown impacting click through rate, but more importantly your brand reputation.
So why does this matter?
Imagine hearing about a cool brand or company through a friend or family member and you become interested in buying their product or service. You then go online and Google their name and the third search result you see is a negative news article saying how they unfairly dismissed one of their employees or something similar. This either consciously or subconsciously will automatically change the perception you have with the brand, the first interaction you have with the brand is a negative one.
Alternatively you search the same result and see another brand’s website in the same view as the one you searched. This automatically puts another brand in the consideration choice of the user who originally only searched for one company.
Own the page
The ideal situation for any company, is if someone searches for you via a brand search, that you ‘own the page’. What we refer to by this is that everything on page 1 of the search result are websites that you have some control over. Doing this, then gives you some control over what a user sees when they search for you and therefore you can ensure that the first experience they have with you, is positive.
So how do you own the page?
When endeavouring to own your online brand reputation there are a few things you can do to help maintain control.
Multiple studies show that LinkedIn company pages rank strongly in Google when compared against Instagram and Facebook. Make sure you have a LinkedIn company page that is accurate, 100% complete and is getting regular attention. This is a platform to push brand related information and if done accurately should sit strong in Google Search and help protect your brand.
Google My business
Your GMB profile will show almost every time when someone searches for you. Having a profile that is up to date, professional looking and with multiple positive reviews will paint your brand in a positive light while also taking up a large amount of space on the first page of google, pushing your competitors down.
Positive PR
Much like negative PR, positive PR will often show up on the front page when people search for a brand term. Create relationships with publishers and news agents which you can feed positive news too when your company accomplishes new feats. This not only helps for general awareness but will aid in SEO and brand reputation as it rises to the top of search results.
Other local and review websites
Other local and review sites are great ways of helping you protect your brand. Having up to date crunchbase, yelp, and yellow profiles will help you give information to users and control the images and content on them which can be on brand.
Wikipedia
Creating a Wikipedia page on your company is a great way to tell your brand story and provide factual and informative information. Wikipedia ranks strongly in search so it is another way to have a high integrity site showing in the search results when someone is looking for you that you can have control over.
Summary
Doing all of the above while also maintaining a healthy SEO strategy will not guarantee you brand protection as no one specifically knows what Google’s algorithm will decide as it changes frequently. However, it will make your business look professional while also giving you the best chance to control the majority of page 1 when people are looking specifically for your company.
