Why downplaying branded keywords is costing you big

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO Podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We produce some groovy to insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is always on brand, our head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello everyone. Hi. How's everyone doing? I think that we are all being true to our core identities and making sure that we are being consistent in our tone of voice and the way that we present ourselves to the world, and I think that that's really important.

Mordy Oberstein:

I really like your messaging and the way you're positioning the podcast.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you so much. It's something that we have crafted and worked really hard to make sure that we're recognizable and that we have a clear USP.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, it sounds like a whole framework. We just keep going.

This is SERP's Up Podcast, is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you could also track rank for not just Google, but also for Bing, but also for YouTube and Amazon with RankiX, a new app in the Wix App Market from the people who brought you Pro Rank Tracker. Look forward in the Wix App Market because it can help you track your discovery keywords as well as your branded keywords as today we're talking about the power of branded search and why it matters way more than you think.

For example, what happens when you forget about branded searches and it costs you millions and millions and millions of dollars. Literally, we'll get to it. Why being branded first is going to come into SEO focus and how to measure brand on the SERP. SEO and brand marketing OG Ronell Smith joins us to share some common aspects of brand building and brand visibility that folks often miss the mark on. And Crystal and I share a deep thought about how to turn brand success into actual revenue. And of course we have your snap piece of SEO news who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So like the sports field court and/or uniform that you once held to be sacred, let us help you on this 91st episode of the SERP's Up Podcast. Tattoo your brand here, there, and everywhere that is the Google SERP.

Did you notice that? When I was a kid, you maybe had a brand logo, I don't know, like on the scoreboard at a stadium. Now, hockey rinks, the ads you see in the hockey rink live at NHL game, for example, are not what you see on TV. They're rotating through on TV because the boards are all white and the ice is white. They can just swap... It's an overlay of ads. It's not the actual ad.

Crystal Carter:

Dude, why are you assuming that I'm watching hockey?

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I assume you're not. No one watches hockey. I'm just assuming that's an example. As an example. I'm assuming you're not because explaining it assuming that no one watches hockey.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right, right. I've never watched a hockey match in my life. The most hockey I've ever watched is... Oh, a game? Hockey game? Okay. And when they hit the hockey ball, I don't know why they do that, but okay, the most hockey I've ever seen is on the Mighty Ducks and Mighty Ducks 2.

Mordy Oberstein:

My kids don't appreciate that movie. They're like, "This is boring."

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I'm going to say my kids said the same thing. I was like, "Oh wow, this didn't do it."

Mordy Oberstein:

You know my grandfather got a color TV back in the day because they wanted to see the blood from hockey fights in color.

Crystal Carter:

Your grandfather had a very dark sense of humor. Okey-dokey. Cool. On that bombshell.

Okay, so basically we are talking about branded search. The reason why I wanted to talk about this is because sometimes people overlook the importance of branded search. People will say to you as an SEO person, they'll say, "Oh, you got... Yeah, there search coming through, but it's all brand or a lot of it is brand. So what about this?" And don't get me wrong, there's definitely... There are definitely different values to branded search, non-branded search. So for instance, there's a great article that was just published on the Moz blog that talks about branded search and non-branded search. And they were saying that according to Statistia?

Mordy Oberstein:

I always get that wrong. I'm not the only one who gets that name. That's not good branding right there.

Crystal Carter:

It's hard to pronounce. You know the one I'm talking about. If you don't know, Google will correct you on the internet. Anyway.

Mordy Oberstein:

Statistica?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, Statista, I think Statista.

Mordy Oberstein:

There's no C in there, sorry.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Statista says that 58% of searches for global brands are non-branded with, and that means that the other amount is branded, 42% are branded for global brands. And that's good, that's interesting. But what I think people worry about is they say, "Oh, but they're all branded search" and they take it as if it's for granted, as if branded search is something that just comes out of nowhere. But I'll tell you right now, having worked with money brands that branded search is not something that you should take for granted. Branded search is not something that just happens by magic. And if you have somebody who's working for you, who's doing your SEO for you, and they've got you some branded search, then you're welcome. Okay. That's something that is valuable and it's useful for you and it tells you a lot of things. If your branded search is increasing, that means more people know about your brand and more people are searching directly for your brand.

This is something that the team at Rise at Seven have seen happen really, really well. They've been able to drive branded search so that branded searches increase. You can also see in Google Trends whether or not for your brand are increasing over time, which is useful as well. And this can be really, really important indicator for whether or not campaigns are working. So for instance, if you have a big billboard campaign or big television campaigns or things like that, you should see your branded search increase. If you're using radio for instance in a certain local area, you should also see branded searches increase there. And that means that your offsite marketing is working in tandem with your onsite marketing.

The other thing that's really important about branded search is that the people who are searching for you have a place to land. And that is really, really important and also is something that should not be taken for granted. I've seen it a number of times where I've gone and searched very often for smaller brands, but sometimes for larger brands as well. And I've gone to find out what their new thing that is that they're doing, a new product or their main brand, themselves, and I'm not able to find it on Google by searching for their particular brand. And if I cannot find you, and if I search once and I think, "Oh, maybe it's me, maybe I misentered it," I check the thing again and I search and I still can't find it, then I'm going to give up. Okay.

And I think that it's important that people realize not only that you need to make sure that your brand is clear on the website, because I've had it before where smaller brands have said to me, "Oh, I'm not ranking on Google, and I do the site search, the search modifier on Google, and I can say, yes, you are ranking on Google. I can see your pages are indexed on Google based on the search." And then they say, "Oh, but when I search my name, I can't find me." And I go, "Because you don't have your name on your website." And so for those people, branded search is incredibly important to them, and yet they haven't made the investment on them. And that's something that an SEO person can help you with, can help make sure that you've got all of those branded searches there.

The other thing that's super important for branded search is when you have, my favorite SERP, which is when somebody googles your brand and it's all your brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's all yours.

Crystal Carter:

And all your brand, all of the channels. And I've had it where it's been my name or whatever, and I'm like, "Oh, it's all me. It's all me." And basically when you have that, that's your brand. You have your website at the top very often. Sometimes it might be your social depending on what's going on. So it'll be your website, your social media, your LinkedIn, maybe an article about you, maybe a listing on a niche directory, something like that. And that's great because that means that nobody else is sneaking in. What you don't want when somebody googles your brand is somebody else showing up there, somebody else showing up there with an article about you or with some other information about you. That is not what you want. That's not great at all. And that's something, again, that should not be taken for granted. That's something that has to be crafted with SEO support.

Mordy Oberstein:

And that goes... It can literally cost you millions of dollars. And I'm not joking. So I was talking about this with Eli Schwartz who a friend of the podcast, friend of SEO Hub, contributor. People paid millions, brands, companies paid millions upon millions upon million dollars on Super Bowl ads. And there were a few of them this year where I never heard of the company before. They're new, they're trying to bust into the market, by doing a big splash thing. I never heard of them before. I'm not going to say who it is, I don't want to disparage anybody. You google them and they don't rank for their branded keywords, so you just spend millions of dollars. Everyone's like, "I don't know who you are. That's an interesting commercial. Let's go to Google and figure who you are." And you don't rank for your branded keywords, you just flushed millions of dollars down the digital toilet.

Crystal Carter:

Yo. And that is just... It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart. Whenever I see that somebody's not ranking for their brand name, it breaks my heart. And I think that I say people just take it for granted. They just assume that it just happens.

Mordy Oberstein:

Or SEOs will assume. Businesses will assume SEOs will downplay it. Business' like, "Oh yeah, of course I will rank for my branded name."

Crystal Carter:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, particularly, especially because sometimes you might think your brand name is very unique, but it might not be as unique as you think it is.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Secondly, SEOs will be like, "Oh, I will rank," no, millions of dollars. You can cost your clients millions of dollars if you don't handle. The SEO, who's supposed to handle that... If they have an SEO, maybe they don't have an SEO, but assuming they do have an SEO, drop the ball and cost them millions of dollars.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right, right. And I think that sometimes you have the case where your SERP is tricky or maybe they didn't think about the name or maybe they didn't think about the website or something like that to make it particularly unique. And that can be a challenge, but that's what your SEO is supposed to make it happen for you. Your SEO is supposed to bring that together for you. And I think that that's really important because, like I say, it doesn't happen by magic.

Mordy Oberstein:

Let's say that I'm making it up, I'm just going to search this as we're doing it. Say your name of your company is Connect Marketing. Google might understand, "Do you want to learn about connecting marketing to something or is actually your brand, and actually a name of a company?" In this case Google knows the name of the company, but it's quite possible not.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that it can change for different things. So for instance, for branded products, that's also something to consider as well, because there's different channels that are going to be better for different products and different things as well. So for instance, for non-branded products, people tend to go to Amazon. So if I just want some leggings for instance, I will go to Amazon. If I want Fabletic leggings, if I want, I don't know, Savage Fenty leggings or something, I will go to Google for instance to find the right website to make sure it's authentic, to make sure it's this, that, or the other.

And I think that that's really important to think about as well about that customer journey because Google will have additional points to help people to verify that the brand that they're looking at online is really important. So if you think about knowledge panels, if you think about reviews, if you think about the schema markup, if you think about the way that your business is displaying as a local business, for instance, markup so that people know that this is the actual real site, because I think that people forget that there's a lot of fakes out there.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, there's a big deal on the finance industry, for example like Capital One. There's I think fake websites out there because if you... There's a different character that looks like an actual A that's not an actual A.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

And it makes it look like that's the actual website, but it's not.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And that's something that people have to consider as well. So you need to make sure that your legit website looks legit, and this is why Google is leaning into the EEAT stuff. On social, there are so many people... I've had it a couple of times where people are like, "Hey, I'm going to follow you." And I was like, "Oh, that's so-and-so," and then I get these weird DMs and then I look at it again and I'm like, "Oh, that's not so-and-so, that's some random person who is duplicating that social media site." And there was a really interesting study where somebody was on... It's a YouTube video actually, and they were talking about TikTok ads and there was this TikTok campaign with these particular summer dress. All the ads had the same images, all the ads had the same videos and all the ads had the same dresses, but she ordered from all these different places, from all these different websites that were selling this dress, and she got seven different dresses from all of these different folks.

So I think you have to remember that consumers are in a space where there's lots of people trying to trick them online. And so you need to make sure that your brand is really clear, your brand is really articulate, your brand is very robust in terms of trust signals so that people understand that. And guiding that branded search and curating your branded search is a very, very important part of that.

Mordy Oberstein:

I think establishing that brand by the way is going to become much more part of the algorithmic picture than people give it credit for. First of in an area, I think on the podcast before or we did it in a blog post, I can't... We do so much stuff, I can't remember what we did anymore. We've definitely talked about this before where Google's going to have to look at brands differentiating themselves because that's what the consumer wants. The consumer wants a brand that's a little bit differentiated because an influx of content out there already. A lot of it is garbage. And I say content, I mean both products and actually informational content. And with the whole AI extravaganza is going out at the same time, the brands that differentiate themselves are going to align with what consumers want and Google knows that. So brands that differentiate themselves are going to be rewarded on the SERP and it's going to factor into the algorithm.

It's similar to what we spoke about with the whole Reddit thing. I’m sorry not with the Reddit thing, with the news publisher ecosystem thing. Again, we're talking about so many things. Google's going to, I think... One of the ways they're going to handle some of the problems on the SERP, including this problem, is by focusing on brand identity. What's your website identity? Who are you as a website? What are you focused on? What are you doing? Is that aligned with the queries that you're ranking for? So having that strong branding and owning those branded SERPs will help you rank for the other things and it's going to come into focus. Having that strong branding and that...

Because branding means a lot, which we are not going to get into right now. It's much more than just like, "Here's my brand name." Branding is everything. It's all of your communications, it's all of your ways that you're resonating with audiences. Your content is your brand, and being able to differentiate that content, and by having strong brand identity will I think give you that authority and give you that differentiation the algorithm's going to be rewarding in the future. That's like my SEO prediction for 2025, and we're not done in 2024 yet.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that in the era of LLMs and of generative search via being Copilot, via Gemini, via the SGE, via Perplexity, via all of those sorts of things, if these tools have a good understanding of what your brand is, then they're going to be able to make recommendations to people looking for something in that space. I talked about schema markup in an article, a schema markup primer, and one of the things I was pointing out is that your entity has articulated in your schema, as articulated as part of your brand identity, as part of your brand entity, your knowledge panel, et cetera, et cetera, is something that LLMs are aware of. So if I said like, what is Dairy queen? It is a fast food chain in the United States. If I go to Wikipedia, it will say, "Dairy Queen is a fast food chain in the United States."

And they understand that, and I think that it's really important for you to think about and to use tools like Wikipedia or whatever, like the schema properties that guide you of what things these tools need to know about you to make sure that you have a clear sense of what your brand is. And I think that if you don't know what your brand is, it's very difficult for other people to, and it's certainly going to be very difficult for search engines and generative search to do that. And if they don't understand, they can't send people to your site in that space. When people are looking for things in less of a guided way than a traditional search engine.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. As a concept, what's going to come into focus, whether it's Google, whether it's an LLM, is having a presence, you have to have a presence, and presence means having an identity. You can't have a digital presence or online presence, whatever you want to call it, without having strong identity. And identity comes from branding. So brand-first optimization or brand-first SEO is going to mean creating or establishing a web presence that's built on strong identity, which is done via branding.

I want to give it to something you were saying before about measuring branded search, which there are tools to do. For example, if you throw a domain into Semrush, one of the metrics that they give you is the percentage of branded versus non-branded search, and they'll give you trend as branded search going up. And you could use that, as you mentioned, as a way to see is your brand resonating? Because Google is the source of web traffic and it's not even close. If you see more people searching for your brand, over time, you can use that as... I wouldn't rely on this as the only metric by the way. I think it's very linear. But you can use it as part of painting the picture of how well is your brand doing.

I'll also say, and I've done this for many a clients, you can use the breakdown of branded versus non-branded keywords, but most importantly, the brand traffic trend, is brand traffic going up to assess a market? So if I was doing, let's say... I don't know, I'm an advertising agency and I have a sport, I have... The NBA is my client and I want to understand where is the NBA right now. I can look at their social media followers relative to the NFL. I can look at their social media followers relative to major league baseball. Whatever it is. I could also look at is there interest over time? Is brand search going up? Is it going down? Is it going up, is it going down versus other leagues?

For example, the NBA's branded search traffic has basically been stagnant for the better part of a year. Obviously it'll be seasonal because when it's in season it'll go up and down, but overall it's been static for a year. Major League baseball and the NFL have both seen an increase over the past year, so that might be a problem, obviously then again. Or you can look at the percentage of branded search terms. For example, 79% of the NFL's traffic comes through branded search. That's a very, very powerful brand.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think it's worth thinking about some of the other ways that people are talking about your brand. Because it might be that there's something that's very specific to you that might not show. For instance, Semrush will give you branded search and it might be associated with your particular brand name, but there's going to be products within your product set as well that are going to be in there. And there's also going to be things that are unique to you as well. So if you're thinking about like the MLB for instance, there's going to be stuff that's very specific to that like the World Series, so there's going to be Major League Baseball or something like that. The World Series is something that is Major League baseball. That's their property, that's their brand property, and that's important to think about as well.

When you're thinking about your brand, not only you're going to need to map the things that are literally your brand name, but also the things that are unique to that as well because that will also give you that shape of whether or not the things are moving and how they're moving through as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

To that point, you can also filter through. If you go to Semrush. If you go through the Organic Research tool and you filter by the branded terms, the MLB, so you could see all the terms, like do playoffs come up? For example, with MLB, like MLB news pops up a lot. MLB standings, MLB playoffs. Oh playoffs, that's a big deal. Power rankings, that's a big deal. So you can see what exactly is your audience actually interested in or not interested in by what they're adding onto your branded name. If you ran the same thing for like... If you saw, for example with NFL, they're searching for sucks next to it, that would be a problem.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Right. Right. That would be a problem. And I think also we've had Ross Simmonds on talking about Reddit. Reddit is a great tool for getting a guide on your brand in terms of how people are feeling about your brand because you can go into a tool like Semrush for instance. You can put in the Reddit domain and then you can filter by your brand name. And then you get all of the questions that people have about your brand name. That's super useful. Also, if you go to something called AlsoAsked, you can also get some of the people also asked questions about your brand and you should be answering those questions. Similarly, if you go into Google Search Console, you can see all the questions that people are asking about your brand products and all of those things as well, and you should be answering those questions.

If you're looking at your brand, when you think about... For instance, People Also Ask shows on the majority of searches on Google, and if people are going and they're seeing your brand, and the people also ask questions are all being answered by other folks, that's a challenge for you. You should be thinking about how can we do that? How can we partner with those people if we're not answering it directly? Because sometimes there are comparison things and that's okay, so we can see that. But you should have a relationship with every single thing that's on there and/or you should be creating something yourself.

The other thing about branded search, particularly when people are looking for your actual products and they want to know answers for your actual products, is that the chances of you ranking for a piece that somebody is asking a question about your product, like if somebody is saying, I don't know, "Can I get box seats for the World Series?" For instance, and like, "At Yankee Stadium." Yankee Stadium should be ranking for that and it should be really easy for them to rank for that. Because they are the authority on box seats at Yankee Stadium because they have the box seats at Yankee Stadium. So that makes sense.

And also the chances of you having competition for some of those terms are going to be really, really low. There's going to be a lot less competition for some of those things. And also if you're... I'm going to shout out to my resource in the resource center about looking at the questions that you can get from your customers. If you're getting those questions directly from your customers, they're not even in search tools, so other people aren't seeing those. Only you are seeing those. But you know that there's a need for it. So again, you're going to be out there ranking for stuff that nobody else is competing for your brand and that is great for the search and that's great for users as well. Google loves when you're able to answer something that nobody else is able to answer and users love it too.

Mordy Oberstein:

Also, the last point I'll say about this before we move on to Ronell is if you're seeing all this data and all this information, you should use this to leverage your position in the company and your organization to help the brand. I'll give you a clear case. So the NFL cut down on preseason games because they wanted to increase a number of regular season games and that was a trade-off they made. They said to the players, "We'll take away a preseason game and we'll add on a regular season game." And the preseason like meh, really weak. It was already weak. By the way, it also makes a regular season the beginning a little bit weak because this game's just not as good. They haven't had much practice. And you might think if I'm the NFL, no one cares about the preseason, no one cares that we took away a game. No one wants to... What do they care, is just a preseason game?

If you run the branded searches through this a tool like Semrush, you'll see that some of the top performing keywords with the most search volumes for the term NFL have to do with the preseason. There's a tremendous, and I can't explain it because it makes no sense, there's a tremendous amount of interest in preseason football. So now you as an SEO to go to the branding and say, "Look, we understand what you're doing, but you need to understand that your audience is actually interested in this and they're probably a little bit ticked off that you killed the preseason to whatever extent you killed the preseason."

Crystal Carter:

Right. So we need to do something.

Mordy Oberstein:

We as a company need to do something and now you as the SEO are the hero that save the company.

Crystal Carter:

Right. This is something that's really, really worth looking at because yeah, absolutely, those brand new searches are worth money.

Mordy Oberstein:

With that, we need to talk about some of the common aspects of brand building that people miss and who better than Ronell Smith to share some of the common aspects of brand building that people miss. Here's Ronell.

Ronell Smith:

In my experience of working with hundreds of brands over the last 15 plus years, there are three things businesses get wrong when it comes to brand building. And these are businesses of all sizes, not simply small businesses. The number one thing businesses get wrong is in not clearly understanding the value of having a brand. They think having a strong brand is important only for the Apples or the Teslas or the Nikes of the world, which is wrong. First, you must understand that a brand is simply a set of associations or beliefs that consumers have about your products or services. It serves as a shorthand or rubric to help them identify and select offerings based on their needs.

Most importantly, you need a strong resonant brand because consumers before, during, and after the sale, are attracted to what are called aspirational brands. That is brands that make them feel or look better by association. For example, people buy Nikes not because they're the best shoe, they buy them in large part because of the signal they send. Athleticism, quality, style. That's why it's important for businesses to think of the positive associations they want to create for consumers when building a brand.

The second issue I see is businesses thinking of branding as something they do, like sharing images or video on social media, as opposed to being about who they are in the minds of consumers and potential consumers. Sure, sharing information on the web, especially via social media is important. That's not branding. Branding, as NYU Professor Scott Galloway says, refers to the perception of value, specifically the creation of the perception of value. It's the feeling people have when they see, interact with, or own your products or services. For example, a local designer who creates themselves a unique client of products that are beloved by her audience, can use an online platform such as Facebook or Twitter to market her products, but branding is the story or vision created in the audience's mind in advance of them owning those products or services.

The third area too often neglected by businesses regarding branding is in not understanding the value of branding search, branded search. In the digital world, many times when folks go looking for items online, they search using the name of a product or company based on the feedback from others or an association they've had in the past with the brand. So if you've invested in building a brand, you often aren't having to compete for the click with other companies in the search engine results pages, you are the query being typed into the search bar. Also, and this is very important, even if you aren't part of the query, if yours is the brand consumers know and trust, they're more likely to click the link to your site in the SERPs even if you aren't to one of the top results. That's the real power of branding. You don't simply get found. You get chosen.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much, Ronell. Follow Ronell out there on LinkedIn at Ronell Smith. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. I loved listening to that. We were both sitting here like that was a gospel. That was-

Crystal Carter:

Honestly.

Mordy Oberstein:

So good, and I think that I know where to start. There's so many points. I have notes. I have so many notes I wrote down while it was happening, the power of that association. Fundamentally what's happening when you're building a brand is you are creating an association between the consumer and you or you and the consumer. So if everyone has a brand, you either don't exist or you have a brand. The question is who's controlling that narrative? Is it you or is it just like whatever people happen to think about you, which may be good or may not be good?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

And what companies do, or what brands do when they make a mistake is they don't realize the power of associations. There's a whole psychology, the whole school of psychology built on it. It's called Fortean psychology, is built on the power of associations. The power of associations is so strong and people want to see themselves and whoever they're associating with or the opposite of themselves, we're not getting into that psychology.

Crystal Carter:

Like Mike. I want to be like Mike. You mentioned Nike.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, but so like when you marry somebody, you see yourself in them. One of the psychological reasons why, and it's going to sound horrible when I put it this way, that you loved your kids so is that you see yourself in your kids. They're a continuation of you. But that's not a bad thing. That's actually a good thing. But that's how the human psyche functions fundamentally. And what brands do is building associations takes a very long time to do. It's repetitive over and over and over and over and over and over again, consistency throughout time and throughout all channels. And what brands tend to do is skip that step and go right to performance marketing, but you can't actually perform the way you really want to unless you do all of that association and/or brand building beforehand. I'm done. Drop the mic.

Crystal Carter:

And I think one of the points that really stuck out for me, and this goes to what you're saying as well, but one of the things that he mentioned was that everybody thinks that there's for giant brands like Apple or Nike or all of these sort of stuff, but I think I've mentioned on this podcast before I recently got a shed, I got a new shed and-

Mordy Oberstein:

Something was against the wall and it was bad.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. So the team that built my shed, they don't have a big complicated brand, like online presence, but they definitely have a brand. I know if I talk to them, I will get a certain level of service. I know that they will give me a certain level of professionalism. I know they will do a good job. I know that they will show up on time. I know that... And all of those things, when I think of them, that is what I think of them. That is the first thing that comes to mind is that, "I will go to them because this will be reliable, will be like this will be, that will be like etc." And they don't have to have a big complicated thing, but they have demonstrated that through their actions, through the way that they behave.

And that is something that you can do with your content with the way your website is... If your website is janky, people will think you are janky. If your content is inaccurate, people will think you're inaccurate. If your web SERP, if people search you and they can't find you when they search your name, they will think, "Why haven't these people sorted this out?" It will make them question your brand. It doesn't have to be this giant expensive thing. It's like it's show, don't tell. That's how you build brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, it's all those latent associations that you don't realize are being created. I'll tell you a great example. Recently, when we were recording this, there was a  sports today, sorry. There was a Dodgers-Diamondbacks baseball game that got delayed because there was a giant swarm of bees stuck under the fence and they had to call a beekeeper in to come spray the bees before they could play the game because if someone hit that part of the fence, let's say with the ball, the bees would start stinging everybody. The guy who showed up the exterminator, just a random guy they happened to get, was a superstar. He's waving to the crowd. He ended up throwing up the first pitch to the game. He got interviewed. And this guy, he was just super suave and super confident.

I will put all my money that brand, and you see the brand right on the shirt, and the announcers are mentioning the name of the brand over and over and over again, have so much more business the day after because of the way that guy handled that, because of the association. They now associate that company with that super awesome exterminator guy who was waving at all the fans, throwing out the first pitch.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Who has a great demeanor, is able to get the job done, is able to show up and be professional, but also relatable, all of that sort of stuff. And those are the things that you learned from that, just from that one interaction.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now imagine that someone else came, did the same thing, spray the bees, the bees are gone, but he showed up all upset like, "I got to come out in the middle of the night and spray this bee thing at this baseball game." Now imagine how much extra revenue would've been created for that extermination company. Zero.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Exactly, exactly. I think that's another prime example of when to shoot your shot. You don't need to know that this is an opportunity and sometimes it might seem like it's only a little thing, but this is an opportunity. Take the opportunity for your brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

But that's what brand building does. It creates new opportunities that you never know which is the one that's going to pay off, but because you don't know, people are like, "I don't know which one it's going to be so I won't pay attention to it." Big mistake. Big mistake.

Crystal Carter:

Could be one little... And if you're thinking about a brand, it could be a little podcast, could be a big podcast, could be an event, could be this and that. I know somebody, he did an event that a speaking event and it was a smaller event, but the photography was fantastic afterwards. So the photography for this small event got him incredible brand value out of it. So always show up. My mom always said, she's like, "Always show up 100%. Whether you're washing cars or whether you're talking to the CEO, always show up 100%. Always give your best for yourself, for your brand, for all of that stuff."

Mordy Oberstein:

Truth. Mom's smart.

Crystal Carter:

She is.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. By the way, perfect pivot. So being that we're already talking about brand driving revenue, brand should help drive revenue. I know in marketing we often separate brand marketing versus performance marketing, but they're really not separate. One should lead right into the other in my opinion, and to help us see what that actually would look like from the SERP, Crystal and I will explore a deep thought about brand leading to revenue.

So okay, I think it's one of those weird things. I think it's not just an SEO, I think it's one of those performance marketing versus brand marketing things where the brand marketers will separate themselves out from the performance marketers and the performance marketers will separate themselves out from the brand marketers. What I mean by that, if you're not familiar with all this jargon is performance market would be like trying to get clicks and impressions and conversion and brand marketers are trying to get messaging and perception and sentiment and associations created and they're very different ways of thinking. I will definitely grant you that.

I think there are a few people who can do both, but generally speaking one mindset works in one way. Almost like in a way like content versus technical SEO, remember we did like a comparison, just different ways of thinking about things, left versus right side of the brain I guess. But in reality, while you might need two people to do each one of these things, they should flow back and forth between the other ones. So the way I look at brand is that it should create the opportunity for you to perform.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that there's a great opportunity for brands there because essentially when people are seeing an increase in brand, that means that you've got a little bit of customer loyalty, you've got a little bit of a warm lead because people know something about you in order to search for your brand. And that means that you can either go more in depth with how you're talking about your product because they already know you a little bit or you can take a little bit of a risk, you can do something that's a little bit more complex maybe because people already know you, so you don't have to explain the basics of what you do to them to begin with. And that means that you have different opportunities to connect with people, which is great.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, it also means for example, because with ranking, "Oh, I rank number five and someone else ranks number three. Oh, they're going to get the click because they rank number three." That's necessarily true. If you can establish yourself... Let's just focus solely on Sal for a minute. If you can establish yourself on the other SERPs where the same person was doing research or is doing queries the week before in order to get to this point where they're ready to convert, and they saw you or they saw a piece of content from you, or maybe they saw you on social media even, and now they come to this point where they're going to buy, they're not searching, "For how do I buy a new microwave? What is the best microwave?" They're searching for, "I want to you buy a new microwave right freaking now." That's the query. I wonder what would happen if you did that, if you added the word like right freaking now into a query.

If the competitor ranks number three or even number one, but they've seen you multiple times at this point, guess who really ranks number one in that instance? And that's turning brand into revenue and it's also equalizing the game. Because I will tell you a little secret. It's not always possible to rank number one for everything. You have to find ways to get around that. If you are competing with, I don't know, like the super authority. You're trying to compete for Nike and you're not Nike. In situations where you just can't rank number one or number two, if you can establish a brand presence in other areas of the SERP or on other channels altogether, you can level the playing field on a result page where it's a money keyword but you don't rank as high as you want to or maybe not as high as you want to right now.

Crystal Carter:

Right. I think that where people recognize the brand, they go, "Oh, I'll buy from them." At the end of the day it's like, oh yeah, they rank number three, but people know the brand so they'll go, "I'll just buy from them because I know them."

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. And that's super important in the world of mistrust of platforms, mistrust of AI, mistrust of content, just general consumer mistrust, super important.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that this translates lots of things. So one... And people sometimes say, "Oh, you can't measure brand value. Oh, you can't see the revenue correlation." But you can. So a prime example is Airbnb. So Airbnb very famously was like, "We're cutting all of our ad spend" at one point. They said, "We're cutting all of our ad spend because we're just going to do organic" and stuff like that and that sort of thing. What's interesting is that you can look at Airbnb's profit or their revenue between around 2001, 2022 and if you compare that with their Google trends for their brand, it's really interesting actually.

In 2022 the revenue increased by 77% compared to the year before. And if you look at the Google trends graph for them, you see that there's a big dip in 2022 or in 2020, we can guess why, get out your hand sanitizer and guess why. And so there's a big dip, it goes up and down. It's very volatile. In 2022, their increase was smaller than it was in 2021. So they increased by 40%, which is still good. Don't get me wrong, they still-

Mordy Oberstein:

I'll take 40%.

Crystal Carter:

I'll take 40%. So they increased from 5 billion to 8 billion and you can see that their volatility is less and their average brand rating is higher. And then as they go into 2023, branded search increases some but not as much as it did between the year before and they saw an 18% increase during that time. So the branded search is actually helping you to track their overall revenue increase. So there is something there if you pay attention to the right things. And I think that by nurturing your brand and making sure that your brand is solid, like you said, it can be the deciding factor on a search. It can be the deciding factor in a supermarket. If you're in a supermarket and you're going to go pick up some window cleaner or something like that and you're there between the brand you've never heard of, the brand for the supermarket, and Windex. If I don't know that supermarket, if I don't know those other ones and I want my windows clean, I'm getting the Windex. I'm getting the Windex. That's what I'm getting.

Mordy Oberstein:

And that's the whole thing you have... And you do this by doing just that. How do you do this? You have to be in the right place at the right time, meaning you have to be where your audience is at, whether it be social media on other SERPs they are researching. And you have to create that association, like Ronell was saying before, between who you are and what they want, that you are fundamentally a trustworthy place to get what they want. And it's very complicated to do that. I think a lot of that has to do with you understanding who you are, understanding who the audience is and understanding where who you are and who they are overlap.

Crystal Carter:

And I think that in terms of closing the deal, I think it's also important to make sure that that experience, it goes all the way through the buying process, all the way through the sales funnel, all the way through even after the sales funnel. So for instance, we talked about the fact that Amazon is a place where a lot of people go for non-branded search, but the brand there is Amazon. The brand there is Amazon. So they're competing with places like Temu or Wish or Shein or Shein, I don't know which way you pronounce it, but they're competing with those sort... Or Alibaba. They're competing with those sorts of places.

And the thing about Amazon as a brand is that I know if I order from Amazon that I will get it, that I will get whatever it is. It may or may not be the best product I've ever had, but I definitely know that if I give them my money they will give me something at the other end. And there's definitely the case with some of these non-branded products where you're taking a little bit of a risk and it's definitely been the case where I've purchased something and never got anything at the end. So the brand that Amazon has, you know how they will treat your details, the information that you give them, you know that they will give you the products and they won't throw them over the hedge like Hermes will, and you know that there's a return policy. And all of that sort of stuff, that's the brand for the Amazon experience. So that goes all the way through and that's nuts and bolts stuff. That's the selling process.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, that's a great example. Amazon's branding is very nuts and bolts. "We will get it to you, you can trust us, we are not going to mess you over. You have a problem, we got you."

Crystal Carter:

Right. They do a little bit of branding, they have Prime Day or something like that. Their packaging is really low-key and all of that sort of stuff, but they are very understanding of what their customer needs.

Mordy Oberstein:

Make a big deal out of like, "Oh, I have to do brand campaigns, big shiny campaigns." And it might get awareness, it might cause you to think about them, but what really gets you to associate and trust them and to be connected to a brand is that long-term relationship over time where you really trust them, you know that they're not going away, that they're going to be there and they're going to handle that. And if you are talking about from an SEO point of view, to me that means if the user is going... Before they buy the microwave right freaking now, they're reviewing and analyzing and researching all these things, that you are there offering lots of really helpful information and not trying to nudge them along the way, giving them the space to do that so that they know when they have to actually buy the microwave, you sell microwaves, is like, "Oh, they had a great piece about how I should choose it. It was really helpful. Let me go back and buy it from them because I trust them."

Crystal Carter:

And I think also thinking about the full funnel when somebody buys something from them, if you're requesting a review, the review request should be nice. The review request should be like, "Hey, heard you had that microwave for a week, would you be interested in reviewing that for us? That would be great." Something like that. I don't know, whichever. This is another reason why for high ticket electronics, people often have a really nice box so you'll have a really nice box for your iPhone or whatever, and that's part of the experience, that's part of the way that you extend your brand even though you're online.

So if you are thinking about making your brand profitable for you, it's important to think about all of those touch points all the way along the line because that's what makes people who notice your brand, recommend your brand, come back to your brand, and genuinely engage with your brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and it's all one song. If you send that product out and it's like, "Wow, this has really done really well," and that person goes online and they share a review or they recommend it to their neighbor, good branding builds growth opportunities. They're not separate, they build growth opportunities. Or now that person goes online and they might have a really big review website and they review your company and you get a follow link from there which improves your SEO. It just builds upon itself and it's micro moments. It's not the big flashy brand campaign that you're doing. It's all the micro moments that add up. Branding is aggregate. What's the word I'm looking for? It compounds on itself.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And it's why people like Eli Schwartz who works in enterprise thing, and indeed our own SEO team are like, "The product is part of your brand, product branding, it's part of your brand." You need to make sure that your product is good because I've watched a lot of hair videos on YouTube and people will be like, "This is my favorite shampoo. I'm not getting paid for this. This is just my favorite shampoo." And that, that, "I'm not getting paid for this, but this is my favorite thing," that's gold dust. That's when you know it's really working for you.

One of the best brand marketers that I've heard speak was a chap that I cannot remember his name right now, but he was from STATSports. And he was talking about like, "I watched..." Stat Sports, it's a GPS tracker that pro athletes wear. They track their brand very, very consistently. And he was saying like, "I can see my brand searches go up and that means that we are increasing our visibility in the market." They are a prime example of something that was completely new product. Nobody ever had a GPS tracker that people would wear on their backs and use it to track how they were doing on soccer or whatever. They were able to translate that into sales, into deals, into all of that sort of stuff. And because people like the product, he was having pro athletes who were just running around practicing in the product and other people are like, "What is that? What is that?" It's like it's a good product and the good product helps to enable the brand, helps to help the brand to thrive.

He also had a great talk, some great information, I'll send the links to you, about how they were able to not just take that visibility just from a brand point of view, but also to convert that into sales, to when those moments happen that they were ready with their digital marketing campaign. They were ready to be like, "Oh, hey, did you see so-and-so in this sports tracker? Here's what it is, here's the landing pages, here's how you can be just like your favorite pro athlete. Here's all of that stuff." And so you can take all of the great brand stuff, you can marry that to your digital marketing stuff and that's where you're really winning.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know who's got a great brand for himself? He does it just so naturally by being who he is.

Crystal Carter:

And consistently, he’s published like, over 900 articles.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's not new.

Crystal Carter:

On-

Mordy Oberstein:

900. Right.

Crystal Carter:

Over 900.

Mordy Oberstein:

I think you mean... Right. Closer to 9,000. And in case you haven't checked out our “It's New” series, check out It's New with myself, Crystal, Greg Finn, and Barry Schwartz.

Crystal Carter:

Barry Schwartz.

Mordy Oberstein:

Each and every day except for Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays. So Monday through Thursday.

Over on the Wix SEO Hub it's called It's New and it's all about the news and it's with Barry, which is also what this is. This is the Snappy News. It doesn't have to be with Barry, but by default it's with Barry. Here's this week's Snappy News.

Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. First up for you from Barry Schwartz over at seroundtable.com. Google AI Overview shows for only 15% of queries down from 84%. That's for some BrightEdge data that show that the AI Overview, the thing formerly known as SGE, went from showing on 84% of the queries in their dataset to just 15%. The actual numbers here I think are suspect. Semrush has different numbers. Mark Traphagen from SEO Clarity showed different numbers. He showed, for example, that the trend went from the AI Overview showing on 17% of his data set to 2.5%. The actual numbers are really hard to pinpoint. You have to be logged in to Google to access the AI Overviews and these tools are not really built for that in my honest opinion. Oh, they're not built for that. It's not an opinion. They're not built for that.

So I would take the actual numbers with a grain of salt as we covered on It's New, it's really the trend that's more important and you're seeing across the multiple datasets a trend where Google is showing less AI Overviews. Interestingly, in the BrightEdge dataset, they showed the most likely vertical to get the AI Overview, is the health vertical, which is where they're getting the most flak. So that's interesting, but again, I'm not overly extensively familiar with that dataset. Take it with a grain of salt, but the fact that the numbers are coming down makes sense to me. Google's gotten a lot of pushback about it. I don't think... And this is again my personal opinion, it is just my opinion, what do I know? I don't think they really wanted to release it as is right now. I felt for various reasons they had to release it right now and announce it at Google I/O When they did release it.

So I think that scaling it back, refining it, and I think what you're ultimately going to see is a completely different looking AI Overview that we currently have right now. I really do think the current one we have doesn't work for the web and that's a whole different conversation for a whole different time. Ask me on social media why I think that. I think we covered on It's New a few times. I'm going to keep plugging It's New, by the way, a great daily dose of SEO news each and every day on the Wix SEO Hub, and also on the RustyBrick YouTube channel. Anyway.

Also, from Barry Schwartz, also from Search Engine Roundtable, Google Search Shopping Filter Top Bar. I'm going to help you out here, Barry. Let's add Google tests search shopping filter top bar. Barry caught a test from Brodie Clark where basically above the bubble filters that you normally have on the SERP is another set of filters that help you refine what type product you're looking for. The case that Brodie shows was running shoes, and now you have a top bar of the show is walking shoes, hiking shoes, tennis shoes, track shoes, fitness trackers, and so forth. Again, covering It's New, we talked about this a little bit on It's New last week where Google was testing almost people also ask like feature on the E-commerce SERP, and I said, "I'm really surprised Google doesn't have a better way of showing you related products on the actual SERP itself." Lo and behold, here's a test that does exactly just that. Maybe they're listening to It's New. Anyway.

This from, not Barry Schwartz, but Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land. Perplexity Pages showing in Google AI Overviews, featured snippets. So Perplexity, which is a search engine based on AI, they started to create a feature where you basically can create a page. You type in a topic, I don't know, like how to run the 100-meter dash and it creates a whole page for you. And those pages built on AI content are indexable, so it's just spitting up tons of AI content, then indexing it. Now it seems like Google is indexing this stuff, showing it even in feature snippets and in AI Overviews. I usually don't get this emotional on this podcast. I get emotional on other podcasts, but not on this one. The web is broken. We lost our minds. Anyway. Moving on, because I don't want to get too crazy. If I stay in this topic, I will rant.

Onto another article from Danny Goodwin over on Search Engine Lens. Study, 96% of sites in Google's top 10 positions have 1000 plus links from unique domains. Oh, my. Links better, more than ever. So this is a study from Internet Marketing Ninjas showing that you need to have tons of links or you're not going to rank. I actually take issue with this study. Why, I'm really offering hot takes on this news section, which I generally don't do. I try just to cover the news, but I'm telling you my perso... This is my personal opinion. Other people will look at this differently.

I think that what they did with the study was take a look at 200 keywords and they'll take a look at the top 10 results and they're saying, "We have 1200 data points." Sort of kind of. You have 200 keywords, and the type of keyword that you are looking at is very limited when you're only looking at 200 keywords. In my opinion, in this kind of data study, you not only need to have multiple data points in the number of URLs, so they have like 1100 or so URLs, but you need to have a lot more actual keywords to make sure that you're getting an accurate look at the web. So I'm not saying the data here is bad. What I am saying is I think it's limited to short-tail heavy search volume keywords and it doesn't reflect the wider web overall.

And you see that, by the way, when you look at the actual study, which Danny links to in his article, which will to in the show notes, that they're looking at keywords even when they're... They quote their analysis of keyword phrases with fewest backlinks, which they say, "Oh, it's still a lot of backlinks," but the keywords are still very high search volume-ish and very short tail, top level kind of keywords, like surfboards for sale or golf clubs. If you were to take a look, I don't even have to look at data to do this. I'm telling you, if you looked at longer tail or even medium tail, that's not a real word, but you get what I'm saying, keywords, a more diversified look at the web, you would find that Google would be ranking a lot of URLs that have far less links.

So I would take this study with a grain of salt and I would really only apply it towards those very top level, high search volume kind of keywords, which is why they're saying Amazon shows up because that's the kind of keyword profile that you're looking at. Very important in these kind of studies to make sure you have very diverse keyword profile. That's my opinion. But I do have done a gazillion studies in my SEO life, so it's my educated opinion. Anyway, before I say things I'm not supposed to say, this is this version of the Snappy News.

Another fine brand performance by Barry-

Crystal Carter:

And by yourself.

Mordy Oberstein:

Who always covers that news so well.

Crystal Carter:

And you as well. You as well. You have your radio podcast voice brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, because I always dreamed of being the guy calling the game during a swarm of bees being stuck on the fence.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's my brand.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Okay. That's a long hive. No.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know who does a lot of brand marketing and SEO?

Crystal Carter:

And beekeeping.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know about the beekeeping. We should really ask her. Erika Varangouli. Erika, do you do beekeeping on the side?

Crystal Carter:

I'm sure she appreciates bees. Bees are lovely.

Mordy Oberstein:

I have a bush and it's got a lot of bees and it's really scary to walk by. I'll just say that.

Crystal Carter:

No, they're friendly. Bees are friendly.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, they're fine. At this point, we're used to it. We just walk right by there. They don't bother you, we don't bother them. We're fine.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know what's not fine? If you don't follow Erika Varangouli. That's not fine.

Crystal Carter:

Right. She's such a great marketer and she's got such great insight and she's worked with some incredible teams and has a lot of experience of connecting brand in international spaces and also with other enterprise teams as well. She's-

Mordy Oberstein:

Where did they get her, at Semrush? Very, very smart. I think she’s at Riverside, so she's working with some major brands. Again, one of these people who if you talk to her, and I have had many conversations with her, you'll really get a sense that she understands the holistic SEO picture, which does include things like your brand, but give her a follow over on LinkedIn for sure, and also on X @finderika. That's F-I-N-D-E-R-I-K-A over on X. And you'll be some brand new followers for her. I never understood that, by the way. Why is it called brand new? That wasn't to do with word brand?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Isn't that weird?

Crystal Carter:

I also wonder about bear with me. I know that it's like bear me in thought. I know bear it in mind. Or I know it's that kind of thing, but whenever I hear bear with me, I just think of like Yogi.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, but I don't think... It's not spelled the same way.

Crystal Carter:

No? But I still think of it when I hear it.

Mordy Oberstein:

It also makes no sense. B-A-R-E, like what is-

Crystal Carter:

Is that bear in mind? Is that bear in mind, B-A-R-E?

Mordy Oberstein:

Bear with me is. Bear in mind, I don't know. Hold on. Bear... Right. Bear in mind.

Crystal Carter:

That's literally what I think of. I literally have a bear in my mind who's just like, "Yes?"

Mordy Oberstein:

Is it a grizzly bear or a brown bear?

Crystal Carter:

It's like a Bear. I'm a big fan of Whinnie the Pooh. Yeah. He's like eating honey, it's chilling out. It's like it's all good. Eeyore is also like... We stand Eeyore. Eeyore is such a like grumpy king. I love it. Eeyore's just like the man. He's like, "I'm not interested in any of the things y'all are doing here in this forest."

Mordy Oberstein:

"Leave me alone."

Crystal Carter:

Right? He is like, "I got my little stick house and I'm chilling out."

Mordy Oberstein:

Right? Stick house.

Crystal Carter:

Then he was like, "What? Somebody move my stick house. Oh man."

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh boy.

Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcasts. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episode as we dive into why just writing good content sounds easy, but it's in reality incredibly hard. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content, webinars, and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.