Brand Is The Biggest Ranking Factor
StewArt Media CEO, Jim Stewart, was invited to make another guest appearance on the Sky News Switzer report recently. Jim has been making waves regarding his theory on placing building your brand before bowing to Google. His perspective has upset many established SEOs that still attest that traditional methods of SEO and backlinking are the key to pleasing Google and improving your website rankings. While Jim agrees that a strong technical SEO foundation is imperative for improving User Experience and site speed, it should be followed by building your brand via social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
Direct traffic has been proven to be a major influence when ranking sites, and that means searchers are heading directly to your site. How are they doing this? Through your brand name becoming synonymous with a product, service, or keyword. Jim believes that Google needs to understand what products or services you provide, what message your site conveys and what you wish to rank for. Once Google understands that you are the most trusted brand for a product, it will monitor traffic flow through all channels and reward you with higher rankings, negating the need to please Google first.
Jim also explained how this method can be done on a budget, where brand should fit into your search strategy, and showcased examples where bloggers have built legions of followers and dominated rankings.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
