SEO Curb Appeal - Inbound 2018

SEO CURB APPEAL:
OPTIMIZING THE BRANDED SERP
J O Y B R A N D O N

SEO Curb Appeal:
Optimizing the Branded SERP
Joy Brandon
Lead SEO Strategist
Nebo
@joycbrandon
#Inbound18

Branded trafﬁc can be overlooked or taken
for granted
@joycbrandon | #Inbound18

But it’s important to ensure your brand appears
established & authoritative in the SERPs

The SERP landscape
has changed.

34%
of desktop searches do not
result in a click
- sparktoro

61%
of mobile searches
do not result in a click
- sparktoro

The search engines are investing in providing solutions.

The SERP landscape
has changed & your new
homepage is off-page.

You need to make the on-SERP
experience work for your audience.

How? |

Optimize your local brand listing in
Google Search and in Google Maps

Google My Business

N A P
Description
Website
Category
Hours

Then add other data that makes sense.
Are you a restaurant? Add your menu.
Can a customer make an appointment? Add a link.

Log in frequently.
Users (and snake-in-the-grass competitors) can
make updates, if you don’t give approval or
reject those updates they can go live.

Load up your proﬁle with high quality photos that show
your space, product, service in a positive light.
(Google is dropping lots of hints for you to do this)

You likely have invested in some visual assets that
are going to far outshine the majority of user
generated content.
Keep an eye out for user generated content
cropping up here that you don’t want showing.

We all know reviews can
be the worst.

Good reviews add authority to your business and can
increase trafﬁc and sales
Google permits business owners to encourage
reviews (when it makes sense)

Try to encourage
good reviews!

Respond to reviews both good and bad.
Be genuine in your responses, don’t use the same
response for every review.

Posts appear on the brand panel
They last 7 days (then they move to the recent
posts tab on the panel)
They can be used to highlight events, blog posts,
products, offers or announcements

The ﬁrst 100 characters display on the
panel (make them count!) but you get a max
of 1,500 characters
Minimum photo size is 720px by 540px
(JPG or PNG)
Option to add a CTA and link back to your
site (do that).

This is potentially the least
understood feature of the local
knowledge panel

Answer questions that your customers post.
Flag answers that other users post if they are wrong.

Add your own Q & A
Use questions & answers from
highly trafﬁcked FAQ pages.
Are there commonly asked
questions in your site search?
Better yet, ask your customer
service department!

Get veriﬁed and ﬁll out your NAP, add category tags
and (up to 10) photos
You can import your listing from GMB

Fewer features
to consider on an
ongoing basis

Still, you should keep an eye on it for suggested changes
and to ensure photos and info are up-to-date

Brand knowledge panels on Bing &
Google largely rely on Wikipedia
for the content they display

This is not a marketing platform. Do not
treat it as such or your edits will be removed.

Wikidata Items

This can be a ﬁrst step if you don’t have a
Wikipedia article and want to establish your brand
in the Wikimedia

Google+ has long been an important part of
establishing your presence in Google and
earning brand panels

Google allows users to
claim their brand panels

“Make sure your audience sees the most accurate,
authoritative, and engaging information about you. You can
suggest changes to info that shows up on Search,
including images, stats, or other facts.” — Google

Bing cites sources for all info in
their brand panels
Consistently pulls from Wikipedia,
Crunchbase, Amazon

Structured data markup annotates elements on-page
making them easier for search engines to understand

schema.org

Organization schema markup is the most important
markup for optimizing the knowledge panels

It should call out:
social proﬁles
company logo
contact info
founding date
CEO
website

BreadcrumbList /
SiteNavigationElement

Use SiteNavigationElement and BreadcrumbList
schemas to highlight important links on the site and
increase their potential to be included in the site links

Video schema can be implemented to highlight
videos and have them pulled into the SERPs
Blog article schema can enhance the visibility
of your latest posts
Product schema can enhance the visibility of
your products with star-ratings, pricing
information, photos and more

Claimed accounts can
show up as traditional
search results

Recent tweets are often
pulled into the SERPs in
a carousel format

Claimed accounts can show up
as traditional search results

Messenger app can integrate
directly with the brand panel
on Bing

Accounts can display as
traditional search results

Instagram posts can
display directly in Bing

Claimed accounts can show up as
traditional search results
Individual videos can rank in a
small carousel

Claimed accounts for LinkedIn, SlideShare, Pinterest,
Tumblr & more can show up as top search results.

Paid results come in the SERPsﬁrst

If your brand name is being searched,
someone else is bidding on it.

Utilize the Google My Business
Insights dashboard for a
snapshot of activity

Use the GMB API to pull data
and report in your preferred
platform

You can use UTM tracking on Google
Post links to track in Analytics
GMB dashboard also has a simple
analytics from the post tab that
tracks views and clicks

Use Search Console to report on
clicks, impressions and CTR for
branded queries

Track the appearance of your SERP by
periodically taking screen shots of it

Thank You!

SEO Curb Appeal - Inbound 2018

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