Brand mention link building is a link building technique that is designed to capitalise on press mentions, increasing brand popularity, and existing unclaimed links.
According to 42% of SEO professionals that were interviewed, brand mention link building is one of the most underutilised ways to quickly (and effectively) build new links for a website with a strong brand presence.
Creating high-quality backlinks is one of the most (if not, the most) challenging aspects of SEO.
With off-site factors accounting for such a large percentage of Google’s organic ranking algorithm, it’s important to get every easy win that you can to give your website the best chances in the search engine results pages.
In case you’re not familiar, a backlink (or sometimes simply referred to as an ‘external link’) acts as an authority signal from one website to another. Each time your website receives a link, Google treats it as a vote of confidence.
Authoritative domains will naturally carry a much higher link strength than low-authority domains.
Think of it like this, if you have a reference from the CEO of the company that you used to work for, it’s going to be much more powerful than someone who worked with you or at a similar level.
Google treats these ‘votes of confidence’ from other websites as a major factor in determining search rankings.
Google’s Panda and Penguin updates have made it increasingly difficult to manipulate the system. Shady ‘black hat’ link building tactics are being penalised, and as a result, it is more difficult than ever to build high-quality links to your website.
A Google search will reveal that there are is no shortage of suggestions about how you can build backlinks. The fact is, the majority of them require a budget, lots of time, networking, and even more luck.
Happily, in 2020, there are still a number of simple link building strategies that can deliver a powerful boost to your organic marketing.
The one that we are going to cover today is Brand Mention Link Building.
What Is Brand Mention Link Building?
Let’s start with the basics. Brand mention link building involves finding websites where your brand (or website) has been mentioned – usually on a blog, PR article, or news piece, and turning those brand mentions into SEO enriching backlinks.
For established businesses, there’s a good chance that there are a handful (or more) Brand Mentions floating around the internet just waiting for you to claim them.
That means that a website must mention your brand name. In our case, we cannot simply search for unlinked mentions of ‘SEO Company Brisbane‘ because it is a service that we offer, we must look for mentions of ‘Safari Digital’.
Is Brand Mention Link Building Worth it?
Turning brand mentions into backlinks is a simple, highly effective way to build your link profile without having to create any new content.
The fact is, you could spend hours creating a blog article hoping to get it published, only to have it turned down.
Brand mention link building is a highly effective way to build links to your website without needing to create any new content. Not only is it less time consuming than writing new content and reaching out to webmasters, but it also has a much higher success rate. Most (reasonable) webmasters are willing to cite your website with a link where they have mentioned you or used your information to write an article.
What to Consider When Brand Mention Link Building
Before you start firing off emails, there are a few things worth considering when asking for a brand mention link. These include:
Are Brand Mentions without Links Worthless?
In a word – NO.
In 2017 Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes revealed:
“If you publish high-quality content that is highly cited on the internet — and I’m not talking about just links, but also mentions on social networks and people talking about your branding, crap like that. Then you are doing great.”
Bing product manager Duane Forrester also revealed in 2016 that the Microsoft engineered search engine places some values on unlinked brand mentions.
“Years ago, Bing figured out context and sentiment of tone, and how to associate mentions without a link. As the volume grows and trustworthiness of this mention is known, you’ll get a bump in rankings as a trial.
Conclusion
Converting unlinked brand mentions into backlinks is an ongoing process. New mentions and new opportunities are constantly popping up. Check for unlinked brand mentions on a regular basis and strike while the iron is hot. Remember, the worst that they can say is no. Happy hunting.
