Using Brand value for SEO: Can we use keyword with brand name?

[vtmoz]

Hi Moz community,

I am curious to know this. Let's say there is a brand value for a company. It has it's own popularity that it's been mentioned across the internet and social media directly with brand name without their service or industry keyword. Now if the company started promoting themselves like keyword along with their brand name, will it help them to rank for that keyword. For example, Moz is already famous, now they want to rank for "SEO" and related keywords, so they started calling themselves on internet "Moz SEO"; will this fetch them in ranking for keyword SEO? My ultimate question is, using primary keyword along with brand name will work out in ranking for that primary keyword or not?

Thanks

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi vtmoz

It's funny you should say "so they started calling themselves on the internet 'Moz SEO' " because Moz used to be called SEOMOZ and they changed to just MOZ so that they could concentrate on building the brand. There is evidence to suggest that if an article is written about a subject and your brand is linked from that article that Google will recognise the contextuality of the article and associate your brand name with that subject.

For example, one would expect that Nike and 'sports', 'sports clothing' etc would occupy the same space. In the same way - if your brand sold Tennis Rackets, for example, Google would begin to associate your brand name with that range of products.

In the same way, when we SEOs are optimising a page we will use Keyword Explorer. The tool would give us contextually relevant keywords to use alongside a brand name in order to strengthen the SEO of a page.

So if I were writing an article on Nike and I hadn't used the words 'sports', 'sports clothing', 'sports footwear' or even 'Phil Knight', then MOZ will suggest these as relevant keywords to use to strengthen the page's SEO.

I wouldn't include them in the brand name but I would use them on a page. In this way, they become kind of 'baby anchor text' in that they surround the brand.

In order to strengthen that further, you might write an article that is submitted to a blog with a specific anchor text backlink which is not your brand name but the most relevant keyword. So if Nike wanted (and it does of course) to be found for the term 'Sports Footwear' then it would link back to its own page with that anchor text.

Very often when I am constructing Meta titles and heading for a brand page then I would use the subject after the brand as that is often the way someone may search for it in Google.

Example: I would title a page 'Clarks Boots' as the opening two words of the title and as the H1 on the page if I wanted that page to rank for the brand and the category. I would then fill the page with boot products along with a good 300 word + description of the types of Clarks boots, the gender, heels, ankle, mid, high and any other contextually relevant keywords.

I hope that goes someway to answering your question,

Regards

Nigel

[RobCairns]

Hey vtmoz,

Short answer: It will probably help your rankings for that keyword/phrase.

Longer answer: It won't put you on the 1st page, but it will go some distance in helping your rankings along with other established factors.

Potential issue: If your brand features other products or services for which they wish to rank that are irrelevant to the keyword you wish to rank for, be careful that you do not gain rankings for your selected keyword at the expense of others on your site.

For example, say you want to rank for "keyword 1" so you target "Brand" "Keyword 1". If you also have "Keyword 2" and "Keyword 3" that are not relevant to "Keyword 1" you have just shot yourself in the foot for those keywords in order to gain ground with "Keyword 1".

This may not be a problem for you, but something to be aware of.

Personally, I'd be more inclined to make internal pages for keywords I am attempting to rank for, and introduce the brand and specific keyword to those pages to help Google with context. The last thing you want to do is switch up Google's understanding of your site by "traffic hunting" (i.e. putting keywords into your site content to increase traffic rather than to serve your visitors). In this way you might even lose traffic by making the change you have highlighted.

Let me know if you'd like clarification on the above - always happy to help!

Cheers,

Rob

[Nigel_Carr]

I agree with Robert. So of course with the Clarks examples pages may be:

Clarks Boots

Clarks Sandals

Clarks Slippers

And each of those pages would be different. Filled with contextually rich content surrounding those terms.

"It won't put you on the 1st page" - I don't agree with this. I have many clients who have been hoiked up to page one by adding contextually relevant content to a key phrase (Brand + Category) constructed the page. If you _are _the brand and you construct pages like this (With 300+ words contextual content) you will be No. 1 or 2 in Google, never mind just on the front page.

Just search 'Carousel Projects SEO'

Regards Nigel