Brand SERPs Foundations Course: Improving Other Results You Partially Control
Script from the lesson The Brand SERPs Foundations Course
Jason Barnard speaking:Â Improving other results you partially control. What’s the situation? We’ve looked at social media sites and that’s a pretty obvious set of sites where you have some control. This lesson covers the others, which might be less obvious. I’ll start with some general techniques that work on any site you can partially control and then give you some specifics for different types – informational, commercial media sites, review platforms – including specifics for some of the more common examples.Â
Jason Barnard speaking: Before starting, here’s something very important not to do.
Jason Barnard speaking: Don’t wake up negative results.
Jason Barnard speaking: If any of these partially-controlled results are negative and reflect badly on your brand, don’t change them. Claim them if you can, but don’t edit anything. That might wake them up, meaning they become more fresh content and that triggers Google’s interest in them, and they might rise up the SERP and ruin page one.
Jason Barnard speaking: Now, what to do.
Jason Barnard speaking: If a site allows you to edit the title and description that appears in Google SERPs, take that easy opportunity. And take it for pages one and two. If it’s already on page one of your brand SERP, then you’ll be directly improving what people see when they Google your brand name. If it doesn’t appear on page one today, it may well do tomorrow. And even if it doesn’t appear today or in the near future, consistent titles and descriptions on sites that represent your brand are vital for building Google’s confidence in its understanding of who you are and what you do, and that’s vital for your overall SEO strategy.
Jason Barnard speaking: The trick is to go to the page that’s ranking and find the texts in that page that appear in the SERP. Then you change those. It’s usually the title you see on the page, plus the name of the host site as the title. The description on the SERP is often the text just below that. But these aren’t hard and fast rules, so double-check every single time.
Jason Barnard speaking: Also, in every case, optimize any other information on the page that you can. People click on these results, so make sure that they see the best representation of your brand as possible.
Jason Barnard speaking: What kind of sites are we talking about?
Jason Barnard speaking: Informational sites.
Jason Barnard speaking: By informational I mean, factual sites such as Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Crunchbase.
Jason Barnard speaking: These are great candidates for your brand SERP, and they’re results that you can partially control.
Jason Barnard speaking: Crunchbase can rank, but usually page two or three. When it ranks page one, it’s well worth updating yourself to ensure that the blue link and description that appears are representative of your brand. Importantly, the page that ranks isn’t always the brand page itself. It can be the hub pages or C level employee pages. Just create an account on Crunchbase and update everything you can. The title will just be company name plus the type of page and Crunchbase. The description will be the description you give. It often ranks well, and there’s very little chance of anybody correcting it or deleting the information you provide.
Jason Barnard speaking: Wikidata is quite similar.
Jason Barnard speaking: It doesn’t often rank page one. It’s usually on page two or three, so it’s probably not a priority for you. The blue title link in Google will be the brand name plus the word Wikidata. Not much you can do there. But Wikidata doesn’t provide a metadescription. So Google takes text from the page, and that usually means the description, so make sure that that is accurate and informative. Also, update other information you see on the Wikidata page. Google could use that, so it’s better to make sure that it’s accurate and positive too. Importantly, updating Wikidata tends to be quite trouble-free. It’s a database of information, and your edits are not likely to attract attention if you support them with references like this.
Jason Barnard speaking: Wikipedia is a completely different beast. When a Wikipedia page exists, it almost always ranks page one. It looks great, but it’s not an option for most brands. Importantly, don’t create a Wikipedia page if you don’t deserve one. Deserving one means being truly important or innovative in your industry. If you do create one and you’re not notable, and here’s the definition of notable, it will be deleted, usually within two weeks, so it’s a waste of time. If you do have a Wikipedia page, you can edit a little, as long as you keep things factual and non-sales-oriented. Don’t edit it too much. You aren’t supposed to edit at all, so do it once and do it right the first time. What appears as the blue link in Google is the official title of the page and the word Wikipedia, so you can’t change that. But that’s entirely different for the description. Wikipedia doesn’t provide Google with a metadescription, so the description Google usually shows is the start of the first paragraph with any references and anything in brackets removed like this. So the trick is very simple. If you edit anything, edit the first sentence of your Wikipedia page to make sure that what shows in the SERP is good for your brand. Google shows more of that first paragraph in the knowledge panel. So if you have a knowledge panel, then you will want to edit the entire first paragraph to make sure that that looks great. And a very big warning: when I say great, I don’t mean lots of adjectives describing how wonderful you are. I mean factual. Don’t use adjectives such as “leading,” “world leader,” “innovative,” anything that might strike as being an opinion.
Jason Barnard speaking: Wikipedia is facts. Stick to the facts. Keep it simple, keep it straight, no advertising, no bigging yourself up. And another note, this is the exception to the rule “improve the page as much as you can” that I gave at the start. Don’t change your Wikipedia page beyond that first sentence. You’re likely to get flagged by the editors, and that will lead to one of two things: A big colorful warning with an exclamation mark that makes the page look awful. Or deletion. If you aren’t sure of what you’re doing, don’t edit Wikipedia. Its influence goes way beyond the brand SERP and changing it could have repercussions elsewhere. I get into quite a lot of detail about Wikipedia, why it’s important, how to avoid messing it up, and how best to leverage it in the knowledge graph course.
Jason Barnard speaking: Industry-specific sites. Within different industries, specific sites will tend to rank due to that ontological relevancy, and that just means they’re in the same category as your brand. Have a look at what ranks for your brand SERP and optimize the title and description of those so that they show your brand in the best possible light. Industry-specific sites are very, very important here. There are three reasons: Number one, they often rank well since they’re very relevant to your audience. More so than generalist sites. Number two, they’re likely to rank better in the future as Google focuses more and more on ontologies and categorization. Number three, they’re a great corroboration for Google. Google’s confidence in its understanding of who you are and what you do is fundamental to how your brand SERP evolves, and also to your wider SEO strategy.
Jason Barnard speaking: In this example, I’ve used the dental association. There’s no particular reason, but every industry is different. You need to find industry-specific associations and organizations that are highly authoritative, credible, and trusted. They’re niche. And that’s perfect because they are very, very relevant to your audience. And that’s what Google is looking for. Relevancy. Some of these may be profiles someone in your company created years ago just to see what happens. Often that will mean they didn’t spend much time. And in that case, I really suggest that not only do you update the title and meta-description and everything else on the page, but you pay super attention to every opportunity it offers.
Jason Barnard speaking: Profile pages on sites you guest blog for. Optimize the title and description since they appear on the SERP. But while you’re doing that, you might as well update everything you can on the profile page: images, biography, outbound links, and so on.
Jason Barnard speaking: Next, commercial sites. If you’re an Amazon seller, you can control partially what appears when Amazon results come up.
Jason Barnard speaking: Interestingly, Google is much more likely to show your products than your store homepage. It tends to rank products with your brand name in the title and with a lot of reviews. So check which pages come up in your brand SERPs and have a good look at those. You need to find the right balance between Amazon SEO, where keyword stuffing works, and your brand SERP. Do optimize the shop homepage. It might not come up in Google in this context of your brand SERPs, but it will come up somewhere sometime, and making sure it’s accurate and positive helps with reassuring Google about who you are and what you do.
Jason Barnard speaking: Amazon is the big player, but there are all sorts of platforms where your brand could be selling products, services, or software. Even industry-specific ones. In the same manner as Amazon, update and optimize the product pages that contain your brand name, but also your profile page.
Jason Barnard speaking: Review platforms. More often than not, these aren’t simple to improve. You probably won’t be able to change the title. The titles on these platforms tend to have your brand name plus their name and some vague copy such as “read reviews about” or “see what clients think”. The description will often include the number of reviews collected and some more marketing copy around clients and their real opinions. Update anything that appears in the description on the SERP that you can, however limited. Every little helps, but most of all get great reviews and make sure that the score is well above four stars out of five. There’s a whole lesson about review sites in the course that covers pushing results off your SERP.
Jason Barnard speaking: Next, job and employee review sites. These are all too often ignored because they are hard to control and they often show a low rating, and brands sometimes prefer to close their eyes to that. Employee review platforms are very, very unpredictable. They have few reviews, and those tend to have a very negative bias. Your employees are unlikely to look at these sites while they’re working at your company. These employee review platforms only come onto their horizon once they’ve left the company. If their employment at your company ended badly, they’ll happily leave a vitriolic review. If it ended well, they’re unlikely to give you a great review spontaneously, and asking for reviews is a very delicate question.
Jason Barnard speaking: Asking while the employee is at the company is a strange thing for an employer to do, and it could be understood by the employee as having all sorts of hidden messages. Asking afterwards is more reasonable, but still a little bit strange.
Jason Barnard speaking: In short, these platforms tend to be relatively negative, and ratings are very, very difficult to manage, but you can’t ignore them because they rank quite easily and they pop up all over the place around brand SERPs. So even if you cannot control what employees and ex-employees say about you, if one of these appears on your brand SERP, you need to make sure that the title and description in your brand SERP are as positive as possible. Make sure that the profile page is as good as possible. Specifically for brand SERPs, pay special attention to the meta title and the meta description.
Jason Barnard speaking: Now, a quick recap. The areas you can control on these sites depend on the sites themselves. Look at your brand SERP and find any result where you can control what appears as title and description in Google, on your brand SERP. Update your profile. Make sure that what appears in Google is accurate, positive, and relevant. And while you’re at it, make sure that when your audience does click through to that page, the entire page is accurate, positive, and relevant.
Jason Barnard speaking: Taking this further, you might want to spend some time finding and updating the relevant sites where your brand has or could have a profile page. And the key here is relevant. Make sure you pay special attention to sites within your industry that are authoritative, credible, and trusted in the industry. Claim or create your profile page, write the most accurate and positive title and description you can, and make the content in that profile page as accurate, positive, and rich as possible.
Jason Barnard speaking: You can look beyond page two of your brand SERP to find those you already have and look at your competitor’s brand SERPs to find those that you might want to create. But don’t just copy your competitors, use your good judgment to choose the most appropriate ones.
Jason Barnard speaking: Don’t bother with the irrelevant sites. They’re much less likely to rank and will almost certainly drop down the rankings over time, even if you do get them to rank. If you have one that is sitting on your brand SERP that you don’t want there, you’ll need to watch the lessons in the course about dealing with negative content.
Jason Barnard speaking: Rich elements. Google’s including more and more rich elements in its SERPs, particularly in brand SERPs. From Google’s perspective, they serve Google’s users better than traditional blue links. Rich elements like these are typically results you have partial control over. You don’t choose the content, but you can often edit it or influence it. If you have one or more rich elements, look out for information you can change, and if you can change it for the better, do so.
Jason Barnard speaking: An example would be the description in the knowledge panel, like I mentioned earlier. Other examples would be Google My Business. Claim it if you haven’t already, and update the information. Another example, the title and thumbnail of a video in video boxes. Swapping out an image in the image boxes is also an example. Go to the site that hosts the version of the image that appears and change it. This sometimes works, but often another image from another source will take its place, but it’s worth a try.
Jason Barnard speaking: Rich elements are a very important aspect of your brand SERP, and they’re something you can influence strongly and partially control. They’re fundamental to the future of brand SERPs and a vast topic. Each type of rich element requires a specific strategy both to trigger, i.e., get them to appear, and also to optimize. There’s a whole course about those with a lesson for each rich element type.
Jason Barnard speaking: Don’t worry about them right now, beyond correcting what is already there, as I described earlier. But definitely pencil them in as a central part of your brand SERP strategy.
Jason Barnard speaking: Thank you.
