Summary
- I realized that brand search volume is crucial for SEO success.
- Websites with more brand search volume tend to perform better in Google's updates.
- Tom Capper's hypothesis confirms my views: brand search volume compared to link volume matters.
- Winners of the helpful content update (HCU) had low ratios of domain authority (DA) to brand authority (BA); losers had high ratios.
- For example, websites with a DA of 64.02 and BA of 51.94 had a winning ratio of 1.4.
- The losers saw an average DA of 57 and a much lower BA of 37, with a ratio of 2.0.
- My own affected sites showed high ratios: one had a DA of 53 and BA of 19, resulting in a ratio of 2.79.
- Increasing brand search volume is essential; people searching for your brand correlates with better rankings.
- Strategies to boost brand volume include general content marketing, guest appearances, and influencer mentions.
- Paid ads help as well; they create curiosity and lead to brand searches.
- For advanced tactics, consider putting up job listings and using click bots, but these carry higher risks.
- Always aim to increase genuine user engagement alongside these techniques.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest starting by boosting your brand search volume, as it's crucial for improving your site's ranking. Here are some low-cost and high-value techniques you can easily implement:
Content Marketing: Create engaging content that addresses common questions in your industry. Post regularly on your blog and share it on social media. This will encourage people to search for your brand.
Guest Appearances: Write guest posts for popular websites in your niche or appear on relevant podcasts. This increases your exposure and makes people curious about your brand, leading them to search for it.
Influencer Mentions: Partner with influencers who can mention your brand to their followers. Even if you have a small budget, micro-influencers can be very effective and affordable.
- Paid Ads: Use paid ads to generate curiosity about your brand. You don't need a big budget; even small campaigns can lead people to search for your brand, increasing your brand search volume.
For more advanced strategies, albeit with higher risks:
Job Listings: Post job listings that require applicants to search for your brand name. This is a clever way to boost searches and is relatively inexpensive.
Click Bots: Use bots to simulate searches for your brand. Be cautious, though, as this can risk penalties if not done properly.
Always focus on genuine user engagement alongside these techniques to maintain a balanced approach that aligns with Google's guidelines. Using a mix of these methods can significantly increase your brand search volume and improve your site's rankings.
Quotes by Author
"I've had a hypothesis that the hcu updates are about something completely separate from Google's messaging"
"Brand search volume is another user signal that got massively cranked up in a recent helpful content update"
"The hypothesis is that the helpful content system has something to do with the suspect ratio of search volume for a site's navigational terms to its link signals"
"The internet smelled misdirection"
"Google said this update is all about rewarding sites with original information insightful analysis and people first content"
Full Transcript
the mossboss recently posted an article that upon first glance I thought was completely ignorable it's titled The Helpful content update was not what you think but I got to say after I started reading I was like damn now before we get into it let me take you back to the beginning of the story to say the September 2023 helpful content update was the worst day ever for small website owners would be an understatement even three of my websites got no cup kicked in the nuts and although Google said this update is all about rewarding sites with original information insightful analysis and people first content the internet smelled misdirection namely because there are tons of websites that nailed this so-called helpful content checklist with amazing expert accounts of their respective topics yet were still crushed themselves by that goofy ass update however at the same time you have read it with legit the worst content ever known to mankind getting the biggest traffic boner ever to rise now let's get back to the article but real quick I wanted to let you know that my SEO agency the search initiative has a $1,000 off discount going on till the end of the month to sign up go to search initiative.com put your Deets into the form and we'll get back to you as soon as possible now back to the video first off the author Tom Capper says right off the bat quote I've had a hypothesis that the hcu updates are about something completely separate from Google's messaging okay I like this guy here's his theory the hypothesis is that the helpful content system has something to do with the suspect ratio of search volume for a site's navigational terms to its link signals the search volume he's talking about here is brand search volume and if there's too little of it compared to how many links a site has then that website had a high chance of losing traffic in the hcu update if there was plenty of brand search volume compared to the amount of links then the website was likely a winner in hcu in this video we're going to go over how my data and experience matches up to this Theory Tom's test data itself and its validity and what you should do going forward when I first read this I got so excited because I told you so I told you so I've been saying this for ages here's one time brand search volume is another user signal that got massively cranked up in a recent helpful content update here's another there were four high likelihood ranking factors that separated the winners from losers a decent amount of brand search volume and here's a tweet of mine saying the same damn thing here's the ranking factors that stand out between the winners and the losers brand search volume thank you very much and when the helpful content update hit like Tom my Spidey Sense went haywire so my team and I went through thousands of websites looking for correlation between the winners and correlation between the losers and of everything I found brand search volume stood out as the most being something that the winners had in plenty and the losers sadly didn't that being said Tom thei And my theory aren't exactly the same my first past study just looked at Brand search volume Tom is comparing brand search volume to link volume we'll look at his testing methodology and data soon to see if it makes sense but I totally get where he's coming from by adding in links if you look at the helpful content documentation there's a section here telling you it's a big no no to create search engine first content now while this document says you shouldn't over SEO your content if you've been doing SEO for longer than a week you'd already know that Google's ability to judge good versus bad versus over SEO content is completely questionable judging content algorithmically and at scale is hard so the algorithm does what it's always done it relies on links for its decisions that's probably why Tom said if you have lots of links over SEO and not much navigational interest in your site you probably don't deserve to rank as well by the way here's a quick word from the sponsor of this video search intelligence this campaign got as big links in websites such as Life Hacker Wells Online daily record and about 20 other news websites let me show you how we've done it we knew that people will be flying a lot this summer and we knew that journalists will be writing about this topic a lot so on behalf of our client we put together a nice guide about how to fall asleep on the plane then we use mrack to find journalists who write about travel then we put our advice in an ice email and send the tips to the journalists within just a few days the links started Landing securing our client natural placements in really big websites just like this this and this this is a great example about how you can leverage seasonal Trends to earn links to a website anticipate what journalists want to write about at all times and give them the stories that they need they will reward you with some great juicy links I hope this is helpful now back to the video all right let's get into the data is this correlation study legit first off homie works for Moos so they're using Moos metrics for brand search and and Link Authority namely brand Authority which is mostly comprised of navigational brand search volume and domain Authority which is a measure of the quantity and quality of all the links to a site they looked at 1.9 million us websites for nationally tracked keywords for the control periods he tracked keyword rankings from August 30th to September 13th 2023 the day before the Big Mama hcu update then again January 18th to March 4th right before the merged core and hcu tag team update here's what he found winners had an average domain authority of 64.0 2 and near equivalent brand authority of 51.9 4 giving them a ratio of 1.4 but the ratios at a DA 57 and a much smaller average ba of 37 giving the losers a ratio of 2.0 bigger isn't good here if you want to view this graphically the scatter plot shows that winning and neutral sites had about the same ratios but the losers are the clear outliers for any given da an hcu loser has a lower ba I have three sites that got hit by hcu here's how their numbers matched up site one da of 53 ba of 19 ratio of 2.79 my life site 2 da38 ba1 what the f ratio of 38 site 3 da40 ba1 ratio of 40 so at least anecdotally my personal sites align with correlation data now I know what the comment trolls might be thinking Google doesn't use brand Authority or domain Authority in its algorithm literally no one is saying that so you can relax if you can but according to these numbers ba or let's just call it brand search volume compared to Links does correlate of course with every correlation study there arises questions of causation correlation issues it's quite possible that sites with higher brand search volume also have better user engagement signals and it's really just about user engagement I'm not in the haterade camp on this one though I already had a hunch that brand search volume was involved so my hungry overinflated ego is satisfied and won't let me believe anything else otherwise are you serious just kidding no I really think this study was done the right way and is worth taking action on what's the worst that could happen you end up with more people searching for your brand oh me not that all right so so here's a list of stuff we've been working on to increase brand search volume for sites and I'm going to list these off in increasing levels of black hat naughtiness the snow white hat stuff works but it's the slowest and least effective that said it's the safest General content marketing will get people searching for your brand if you're out guest busting on trafficed websites or appearing on podcasts people are going to search for you influencer marketing Works a bit better if you can get people to mention your brand to followers and it's a quick shortcut to search volume and my favorite is paid ads people see my ads for the affiliate lab for example and maybe they're like nah I'm not clicking on this and getting my ass retargeted for the next year but they're curious so they instead go Google affiliate lab reviews and voila brand search volume by the way if you need help with paid ads check out my agency digity media we're good real good now for the gray black hat stuff put up job listings for your website on various job boards tell them to apply search for your brand name and then they click on the jobs Link in the nav bar also there's click Bots Bots that will search for whatever you want and click on whatever you want but not all or create a equal some will traffic boner you out the top of your monitor others will get you penalized I'm putting together a full Deep dive video on how to implement all these tactics so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it
