What Google considers to be a branded keyword?
-
We can set our own keywords as branded in SeoMoz campaign, but Google would not necessarily see them like branded. After reading the Blog post at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update
I had a question: Are there known rules (or at least guesses) what Google considers a branded keyword/anchor text?
I guess the first one would be your website domain. So bluewidget.com for example would be a branded keyword for bluewidget.com website. How about Blue Widget or Blue Widget Company?
-
We're really talking about 2 separate definitions of "brand"
1. Within SEOmoz or Google Analytics, a branded keyword is simply one that relates to your company name or website, This makes it easier to segment who is searching specifically for you, and who is finding you through more broad, generic terms.
SEOs see different value in branded and non-branded search. For example, the type of visitor on this site who searched for "SEOmoz" is likely very different than the type of visitor who arrived her after searching for "SEO tools"
Also, you tend to rank very well for your own brand, so branded keyword volume can be an indication of your overall marketing efforts.
2. But to Google, brand means something slightly different. A "brand" in Google's eye means a thing. If enough people search for your website, or product, you become an entity.
Bill Slawski explains it better than I ever could:
http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/01/named-entity-detection-in-queries/
and if patent talk isn't your thing, Rand makes it a little more accessible in this Whiteboard Friday:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/search-engines-and-brand-entities-whiteboard-friday
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
In most cases branded keywords consist brand name, so in your case both Blue Widget and Blue Widget Company are branded keywords/phrases, unless these are patented names of some other company.
-
Hello,
I may be able to help you with this. If you think this down as simple advertizing, what do you think of as a brand? Wal-Mart?, Coca-Cola? GE?, those are all branded keywords. Now this doesn't always work for just the company name, think of the iPhone, the iPhone is a branded keyword that apple has. xBox with Microsoft, and PlayStation with Sony are another two branded keywords outside of the company name.
When you think of it in that perspective, Blue Widget and Blue Widget Company are both branded keywords, but if BlueWidget.com sold a patented widget (royal blue sprocket?)
As far as anchor text goes, don't go overboard with keywords within them, make them natural. For example, if you listed your patented widget, don't make the anchor text "Royal Blue Sprocket by bluewidget.com" this could be flagged as keyword stuffed anchor tag, and you could be penalized for it. If your pushing the brand, just put the name of the widget "royal blue sprocket"
I hope this helps
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How does Google handle product detail page links hiden in a <noscript>tag?</noscript>
Hello, During my research of our website I uncovered that our visible links to our product detail pages (PDP) from grid/list view category-nav/search pages are <nofollowed>and being sent through a click tracking redirect with the (PDP) appended as a URL query string. But included with each PDP link is a <noscript>tag containing the actual PDP link. When I confronted our 3rd party e-commerce category-nav/search provider about this approach here is the response I recieved:</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;">The purpose of these links is to firstly allow us to reliably log the click and then secondly redirect the visitor to the target PDP.<br /> In addition to the visible links there is also an "invisible link" inside the no script tag. The noscript tag prevents showing of the a tag by normal browsers but is found and executed by bots during crawling of the page.<br /> Here a link to a blog post where an SEO proved this year that the noscript tag is not ignored by bots: <a href="http://www.theseotailor.com.au/blog/hiding-keywords-noscript-seo-experiment/" target="_blank">http://www.theseotailor.com.au/blog/hiding-keywords-noscript-seo-experiment/<br /> </a> <br /> So the visible links are not obfuscating the PDP URL they have it encoded as it otherwise cannot be passed along as a URL query string. The plain PDP URL is part of the noscript tag ensuring discover-ability of PDPs by bots.</p> <p>Does anyone have anything in addition to this one blog post, to substantiate the claim that hiding our links in a <noscript> tag are in fact within the SEO Best Practice standards set by Google, Bing, etc...? </p> <p>Do you think that this method skirts the fine line of grey hat tactics? Will google/bing eventually penalize us for this?</p> <p>Does anyone have a better suggestion on how our 3rd party provider could track those clicks without using a URL redirect & hiding the actual PDP link?</p> <p>All insights are welcome...Thanks!</p> <p>Jordan K.</p></noscript></nofollowed>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eImprovement-SEO0 -
Advice needed! How to clear a website of a Wordpress Spam Link Injection Google penalty?
Hi Guys, I am currently working on website that has been penalised by Google for a spam link injection. The website was hacked and 17,000 hidden links were injected. All the links have been removed and the site has subsequently been redesigned and re-built. That was the easy part 🙂 The problems comes when I look on Webmaster. Google is showing 1000's of internal spam links to the homepage and other pages within the site. These pages do not actually exist as they were cleared along with all the other spam links. I do believe though this is causing problems with the websites rankings. Certain pages are not ranking on Google and the homepage keyword rankings are fluctuating massively. I have reviewed the website's external links and these are all fine. Does anyone have any experience of this and can provide any recommendations / advice for clearing the site from Google penalty? Thanks, Duncan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Does Trade Mark in URL matter to Google
Hello community! We are planning to clean up TM and R in the URLs on the website. Google has indexed these pages but some TM pages are have " " " instead displaying in URL from SERP. What's your thoughts on a "spring cleaning" effort to remove all TM and R and other unsafe characters in URLs? Will this impact indexed pages and ranking etc? Thank you! b.dig
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | b.digi0 -
Google authorship and multiple sites with multiple authors
Hi guys :). I am asking your help - basically I would like to know what would be the best way to set all of this up. Basically I have two main (e-commerce) sites, and a few other big web properties. What I would like to know is if it is ok to link the main sites to my real G+ account, and use alias G+ accounts for other web properties, or is that a kind of spamming? The thing is that I use a G+ account for those e-commerce sites, and would not necessarily want the other web properties to be linked to the same G+ account, as they are not really related. I do hope I was clear. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sumare0 -
Can anyone recommend a Google-friendly way of utilising a large number of individual yet similar domains related to one main site?
I have a client who has one main service website, on which they have local landing pages for some of the areas in which they operate. They have since purchased 20 or so domains (although in the process of acquiring more) for which the domain names are all localised versions of the service they offer. Rather than redirecting these to the main site, they wish to operate them all separately with the goal of ranking for the specific localised terms related to each of the domains. One option would be to create microsites (hosted on individual C class IPs etc) with unique, location specific content on each of the domains. Another suggestion would be to park the domains and have them pointing at the individual local landing pages on the main site, so the domains would just be a window through which to view the pages which have already been created. The client is aware of the recent EMD update which could affect the above. Of course, we would wish to go with the most Google-friendly option, so I was wondering if anyone could offer some advice about how would be best to handle this? Many thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AndrewAkesson0 -
Penalized In Google ?
Hello Guy´s. Im terrible sad because we make an amazing SEO job for this client: www.medabcn.com And the website was hacked.. Message from the hosting platform: "It would appear that malicious individuals have found a way to upload spam
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maty
pages as well as backdoors to your site(s). We
have disabled the page(s) in question (via removing their permissions, e.g..
chmod) until you are able to address this matter." Result: we loose all our SERP Somebody of yours was in a similar situation ? Notes: I was on Google Webmaster an anything seem to be normal. The domain was relative new, maybe a late sandbox efect ? Thanks a lot for your help. Matias0 -
My Google PR is Decreasing HELP!
We have just started in on an SEO campaign after a year or so break from engaging in active SEO efforts. Our rankings and organic traffic seems to be increasing but we just dropped from a PR 5 to a PR 4 after being a PR 5 for probably a couple years. We are not doing anything black hat or sketchy and try hard to make sure all of our links are relevant and quality links. Does anyone know why this might have happened or if it is an indication of anything?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MyNet0 -
What does Youtube Consider Duplicate content and will it effect my ranking/traffic?
What does youtube consider duplicated content? If I have a power point type video that I already have on youtube and I want to change the beginning and end call to action, would that be considered duplicate content? If yes then how would this effect my ranking/youtube page. Will it make a difference if I have it embedded on my blog?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | christinarule0