What do search engines consider brand signals?

[BenRWoodard]

As far as I can tell, social is a big part of the authentication process and filter of Google for Brand signals.  If you establish solid (not spam) social accounts with your brand identity then, yes, I am saying that will help with branding.

A good way to test is by searching your "brand" in google and see what shows up.

[RogerElliott]

Thanks for clarifying that Ben. Tell me, how would Google know which Facebook page to associate with your site - I am guessing simply the one that you link to from the site?

[BenRWoodard]

That would be my assumption.  I'm sure there is some value placed on the links you place from your Facebook page timeline as well but not as much.  I would consider this type of stuff to be "signals" not direct brand ranking factors that Google would see.  Signals are the first step though and seem to be having a big impact on my client's brand recognition.

[RogerElliott]

Got it, thanks for taking the time to explain that Ben.

[Adam.Whittles]

'Would you say then that a link with 'Keywords' as the anchor pointing at http://www.keywords.com would be considered a brand signal?'

Not unless the brand/company name is 'Keywords' also. Even then I would be tempted to use any identifying business extension such as Inc, Ltd etc. So as an example,

Business is called 'Electric Fan Services' website is 'http://www.electricfanservices.com' and main keyword phrase is 'electric fan services' I would make sure the majority of anchors are either 'Electric Fan Services' or 'http://www.electricfanservices.com'. If the business was actually 'Electric Fan Services Ltd.' I would probably adjust the anchor text term accordingly.

Adam.

[RogerElliott]

Great example in the Electric Fan Services thanks Adam, it applies directly to our situation. We have Keyword Ltd in the footer (as that is actually our registered company name). The trick now will be to see how we can get Keyword Ltd in anchor text. I smell some guest posts approaching.

[riplash]

Another key brand signal in my mind (and if it's not, it should be) is people searching for your brand name, or brand name + anchor, in Google to find you, for example SEOmoz must get a lot of traffic every day for people searching "SEOmoz", "SEOmoz rank tracker", etc.

This is obviously more difficult for Google to determine if your brand is also an exact match anchor phrase.

One way to strengthen the signal is to use a search phrase instead of a URL in your real world/print marketing. This could sometimes take a little SEO groundwork to do, but for example, if you are Electric Fan Services Ltd and you have a promo for Honeywell fans, instead of using the URL on your print marketing, add a footer saying something like, "Google 'electric fan services honeywell promo' to discover the deals".

[RogerElliott]

That's an interesting idea riplash, I had thought before that a search for our domain with or without the .com might be considered a brand signal - that is, rather than the search being 'keyword1 keyword2' the search is performed as 'keyword1keyword2'. It seems that if that is the case, encouraging search in offline could feed into that.

[riplash]

I was about to edit my original post to include it, but check out this Feb 2011 article from Rand - he writes specifically about brand signals in some detail.

Lately, I've noticed some big multinationals using search phrases in TV campaigns instead of URLs. I assumed it was largely an SEO play to strengthen brand signals, although some of it could be to do with cutting costs (of creating satellite sites for a promo, maintaining hundreds of random promo-specific domains, etc).

[RogerElliott]

I'd forgotten about that post, nice one, and it usefully widens the scope of brand signals.