Capturing Brand Search

[Vahe.Arabian]

Hi,

How do you capture as much brand results as possible in search results? I know Mike from Koozai recently did a video about brand reputation, but this is slightly different.

The current issue i'm having that the client's brand name is also a specific geographic destination, hence the confusion in SERP's. This means non-related industries are eating up the client's potential market share and traffic.

My objective would obviously be to capture as much traffic as possible for brand related keywords for the site, so that we can focus more on long tail product terms.

Any help would be appreciated. Obviously re-branding is out of the question.

Regards,

Vahe

[Dan-Petrovic]

If they have problems ranking for phrase with their own brand name, even knowing it's a destination tells me that the domain is probably not as authoritative as it could be. Knowing this I would work on content and link building. I am assuming the KW is in the domain? Your question is quite broad so it's hard to give more specific suggestions. Is destination actually related to their offer, are they product or service based?

[Vahe.Arabian]

Keyword is the domain and they are in the retail industry so they offer products. They do rank 1st for their keyword and have sitelinks showing for their listing, but I would think they should dominate the first page as much as possible, instead non-related industries. If there's anyway I can be more specific (without being too specific if you know what I mean) please let me know.

[Dan-Petrovic]

What process did you use in phrase research? (tools, steps, sorting, selection criteria...etc)

[Vahe.Arabian]

Selection Criteria :

(1) brand terms (including variations)

(2) broad category product tems

(3) product head terms (type of products)

(4) product specific long tail terms (specific product features + reviews)

(5) specific brand and product terms + location

[Dan-Petrovic]

Looks spot on, and how do you extract value figures for these terms (e.g. search volume, CTRs, conversion rates and values). Do you rely on Google keyword tool only or use any other tools?

[Vahe.Arabian]

Using combination of Google products - GA, GWT & GKT . Also checked auto suggest from Google search.

How does this related to my initial question above?

[Dan-Petrovic]

You're about to target a multitude of potential search terms. What needs to happen is series of prioritisation activities. Your work starts of course with on-site review and understanding whether site architecture and the way home page cascades down to other sub-units passes link equity to other pages and if that arrangement is optimal and in line with your priority research.

Tools like GWT can be used to easily extract the highest ranking page for any number of terms. Pages with multiple phrases in serps or in reverse terms and which pages that rank highest for should be the starting point in understanding how to model the site structure - naturally with common sense and user in mind.

Once on-site is sweet, based on whether the content is linkworthy enough you may choose to work on link building towards key pages. Again, you almost never have time and resources to do all at once so prioritisation is the key thing here.

I hope this makes sense.

[Vahe.Arabian]

Basically what you are saying is once you fix all onsite issues and do link building for priority pages, then this should make the site more authoritative in SERP? Would you then say to conduct specifc brand building exercises to cover brand terms which you wish to cover to remove that potential confusion between users looking for the brand name and the location term? I agree with you about prioritisation. Thanks

[Dan-Petrovic]

I would focus on local citations as much as possible and until all relevant places have been covered. While you're at it you will score links as well so probably the best way to start as it's easy and ROI is fairly good. Next step is identifying best branding channels - a very broad and difficult question - I guess your client's budget will be the helping factor and you'll have to decide what to attack first in line with budget size.

Prioritisation is not easy and you will no doubt hit the wall many times before you find the right solution.