Unsung SEO Hero: Why Branded Links Matter More Than You Think

[00:00:02] Intro & Outro: It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

[00:00:23] Michael: Hello and welcome to the SEO Show. I am Michael Costin. I'm joined by Arthur Fabic. This week we're talking brand links, link building.

[00:00:33] Arthur: Again, your favorite topic, which is. We can't escape it.

[00:00:36] Michael: You can't escape. Look, in the SEO world you can talk technical content, you can talk links. Pretty much it. Really? Yeah, you love it.

[00:00:44] Arthur: You love it.

[00:00:45] Michael: But you know, people don't really talk brand links much, do they?

[00:00:50] Arthur: Well, we do, we do all the time, but people don't. Yeah, well, the average person doesn't talk about it.

[00:00:55] Michael: If you went up to someone in the street and said tell me about brand links, they'd probably tried to get away from you as quickly as they could for sure. Fair enough too. But in our world, I don't think like SEOs can fall in the trap of wanting to build really good for SEO links, which normally means, you know, a link to a money page, maybe with an anchor text that's related to a keyword you want to rank for. Would you say?

[00:01:18] Arthur: I would, yeah.

[00:01:20] Michael: But they don't necessarily always consider where brand link building fits within their approach. Would that be fair? I think it's fair maybe a little bit. If you want to diversify your back. You know your anchor text.

[00:01:33] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:01:34] Michael: Your ratios, as people used to talk about the ratios. Yeah. Remember anchor text ratio, anchor text distribution. Yeah. Massive. Back in the day, it's not as.

[00:01:43] Arthur: Big these days, but yeah, but I think. Why do you think that is? Is it because people don't want to spend money on brand anchors that just if they have a budget for link building, they just want to.

[00:01:53] Michael: I would say that's exactly what it is. And then usually brand will be left to the easy to get cheap, cheap links, free directories, whatever your pillow links, padding out, the profile text, profile. But we're going to put forward the argument that don't ignore brand links like branded links to your homepage from strong sites, the type that you might pay for as a link to a money page are important.

[00:02:19] Arthur: But why is that?

[00:02:20] Michael: Well, we're going to tell you, aren't we? Let's jump into it. Why is that? Well, first and foremost, Google, since a helpful content update seems to be weighing brand signals much higher. So if you think of all the publisher based websites, affiliate sites, where people churned out, you know, like best woodchipper guide.com and the whole site was about wood chippers.

[00:02:44] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:02:44] Michael: But no one was linking to it with brand signals. They didn't have social profiles and directories and all these reviews and like people, LinkedIn profiles. Google could easily see that the types of site that it considered low content or unhelpful content.

[00:03:02] Arthur: Yeah, it was one of those.

[00:03:03] Michael: Was one of them.

[00:03:04] Arthur: Talked about that in the past, right?

[00:03:06] Michael: Yeah.

[00:03:06] Arthur: How you have to treat your website as a business and if you don't then it's going to get you penalized pretty much. So this is kind of where it applies.

[00:03:12] Michael: It's absolutely decimated the affiliate marketing world. And it's not just Google search results, helpful content update stuff that's going on with that. But anecdotally now we're not AI LLM optimization experts, I don't think.

[00:03:29] Arthur: I don't know about you, but I am.

[00:03:31] Michael: I was just about to say anyone that says they are is spinning a bit of shit, in my opinion.

[00:03:35] Arthur: I don't think so.

[00:03:36] Michael: Or what. Experts in ranking in ChatGPT always. Even when it's changing so quickly.

[00:03:42] Arthur: What do you mean by ranking in ChatGPT though? Because you don't really rank in ChatGPT.

[00:03:46] Michael: Well, you try to. Like if you. If someone was to type in Best SEO agency in Sydney for roofers and we wanted to show for that, for whatever reason, you're going to try ranking it, so to speak, in inverted commas.

[00:03:58] Arthur: Okay. No, I get what you mean. Yeah.

[00:03:59] Michael: And like, yes, we have good ideas of what can work to influence it, but I don't. It's nowhere near as mature.

[00:04:05] Arthur: I was joking, by the way. I don't think I'm an expert in that.

[00:04:07] Michael: Yeah, it's nowhere near as mature as the SEO world. There hasn't been like. SEO has been built on a lot of people figuring out stuff over years, sharing.

[00:04:14] Arthur: Decades.

[00:04:15] Michael: Yeah.

[00:04:15] Arthur: 20 years. Over 20 years, I think.

[00:04:18] Michael: Yep. About that.

[00:04:19] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:04:19] Michael: Maybe more. Definitely more.

[00:04:21] Arthur: Chat GPT is what, two years since it's been, I guess, widely accepted.

[00:04:26] Michael: Yeah. Three maybe now.

[00:04:27] Arthur: Yeah. Well, I mean like wildly. Wildly, yeah, Widely. Widely.

[00:04:32] Michael: But look, what we have noticed is that brand does play a role in being found in LLMs as well. When people search for best Plumber for Block drain in Bankstown for argument's sake. So brand is important. We are going to contest that. You should be pumping a bit of effort, whether that's time, effort, budget, whatever, into building branded links to your homepage.

[00:05:00] Arthur: Nice.

[00:05:01] Michael: You like that?

[00:05:02] Arthur: I love it.

[00:05:03] Michael: You don't get more excited.

[00:05:04] Arthur: I Am excited. I'm brand links.

[00:05:06] Michael: We're talking brand links.

[00:05:07] Arthur: I'm very excited.

[00:05:09] Michael: Hey, people that don't know what a brand link is, the anchor text uses your brand. Either your domain name or more often just your name brand.

[00:05:19] Arthur: Yeah, I was going to ask, do you think URL?

[00:05:21] Michael: I think so.

[00:05:22] Arthur: It's still considered like a. Technically it is a brand link. But do you reckon LLMs will kind of pick up on the URL or would it be more beneficial to use the actual brand name as anchor text? Maybe I'm going too deep down the.

[00:05:35] Michael: Well, you know what I did? I went to Gemini, not ChatGPT. I'm doing a bit of Google Gemini today.

[00:05:41] Arthur: What happened to Claude?

[00:05:42] Michael: Yeah, I use Claude too. I'm. What is it? Agnostic. I've sort of swing all different ways with my.

[00:05:50] Arthur: You're literally turning into AI every time I walk by. You're going to lose all function to think by yourself.

[00:05:57] Michael: Anyway, look, that's the end game of this, isn't it?

[00:06:00] Arthur: For yourself or for everyone.

[00:06:02] Michael: We'll all just be plugged in sacks of flesh walking around that don't think for ourselves and have to. Have you ever been on Twitter lately?

[00:06:12] Arthur: Occasionally, but not. Probably not for the same stuff as you are.

[00:06:15] Michael: Well, they. No. You would have seen everyone just tagging in Grok or ask perplexity about anything like is this true?

[00:06:22] Arthur: I haven't noticed that. I haven't. Honestly, I don't go on Twitter that much.

[00:06:25] Michael: Well, if someone tweets something, you can tag Grok or Perplexity.

[00:06:30] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:06:31] Michael: And say is this true? And the AI responds in there saying whether it's true or not, it's true or not or what it knows of things.

[00:06:38] Arthur: So it's like live fact checking.

[00:06:39] Michael: Live fact. It's actually pretty cool a lot of the time, but pretty much for anything. People could write something like humans have opposable thumbs or something and people would be tagging at grok. Is this true? So that's just already become such a spam crutch. Not even spam, but crutch. People don't look for things or think for themselves on there. They're just tagging in Grok and us perplexity for simple questions.

[00:07:03] Arthur: Well, that's what we talked about off Mike, how people are just so reliant on ChatGPT, they don't check what the output is, they'll just blindly accept it. But I think that's a different episode. Right? Slightly off topic.

[00:07:17] Michael: Well, it's kind of on topic because what I've done is plugged something into Gemini and just blindly accepted what it told me, and I'm now about to talk about it on the podcast.

[00:07:25] Arthur: All right, let's do it.

[00:07:26] Michael: I haven't. That's unfair because we have been playing around with this stuff and digging into it, trying to get our business to show up in LLMs for all different types of terms. So a lot of what Gemini told me LLMs are looking at corresponds with what we've seen in the real world.

[00:07:44] Arthur: Right.

[00:07:44] Michael: And it's coming back to your question about whether using just the naked URL or brand in the anchor text matters. So Gemini thinks that LLMs look at the frequency of your name being mentioned across the web.

[00:07:58] Arthur: Right.

[00:07:59] Michael: So in that case, I would say anchor text being the actual name of the brand.

[00:08:02] Arthur: Pardon me, do you think it's. Again, sorry, but do you think it will. Does it matter if it's an anchor text or is it just your name brand mention?

[00:08:09] Michael: Well, unbranded mentions, that's a big.

[00:08:11] Arthur: What do you mean unbranded?

[00:08:12] Michael: Unlinked mentions.

[00:08:13] Arthur: Yes. Unlinked. Yeah.

[00:08:14] Michael: Yeah. So in the digital PR world, they'll always report on unlinked mentions. Yeah, I think fine. Because it'll read that and understand that unless you're super generic, like, our business name is pretty generic, but if you have a more marketable name, it'll understand for sure whether it's linked or not.

[00:08:33] Arthur: So maybe having your brand just mentioned isn't like a factor, but having it linked is a stronger factor.

[00:08:39] Michael: Yeah, yeah. And often with some of the. We're going to talk tactics for building brand links in a second. Some of those tactics can often leave to unlinked mentions lead to unlinked mentions, which from an SEO point of view, traditionally you'd be like, ah, damn, you know, I wanted a link. Maybe from an LLM point of view, not such a big deal. But yeah, Gemini is saying LLMs are looking at those brand mentions and then consistent NAP. Name, address, phone number, huge in the local SEO world. So just having the same phone number, name, address on every business directory and stuff that you're on. A lot of this stuff is stuff that SEO looks at and influences over the years.

[00:09:21] Arthur: Well, it kind of just seems like an extension to regular SEO in a way, because if you think about it, trying to show up in an LLM is very similar to trying to rank first.

[00:09:29] Michael: It's extremely similar. So I think having, from our testing, having your brand on big directories or review sites in your space, building out those profiles, making sure every Last facet of it is filled out. Making sure you have reviews, niche specific, industry specific, and then broader ones is massive. And then reviews and ratings, wherever you can get them is massive social media presence. Being active with your posting is massive. Awards winning awards. And like having testimonials and case studies of your results and stuff both on your site and on those external sites.

[00:10:10] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:10:11] Michael: This is all the stuff that the LLMs are looking at.

[00:10:13] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:10:14] Michael: But we're talking brand links, which is just one aspect of this that's going to influence not just that, but also Google. And it's just. It can't be argued that since helpful content update brands get more love in Google.

[00:10:31] Arthur: Agree, agreed.

[00:10:33] Michael: So we won't go into like how Google's looking at that because it's quite similar to how the LLMs are. So we are both in agreement that brand links matter. Let's talk actually building them. I'm gonna throw to you. What's your favorite, absolute favorite way to get a brand link?

[00:10:54] Arthur: My favorite way? Well, I kind of like the way we got one or you got one. I say we a couple of years ago when we. I think you wrote something for Kinstar. So like a. One of the hosting providers, we shill regularly on the podcast.

[00:11:11] Arthur: But.

[00:11:11] Arthur: But that was a very good way to get a branded link because did they reach out to you or did you reach out to them? I think they reached out to you.

[00:11:17] Michael: I think so, yeah.

[00:11:18] Arthur: Yeah. To give like a case study because we were using them a lot, they picked up on it. And then you managed to get a branded link back to our website through that by posting on their blog.

[00:11:27] Michael: Yep.

[00:11:28] Arthur: I like that.

[00:11:29] Michael: I like that too. Because someone like Kinstar is a big, strong domain that you're never going to buy a link on.

[00:11:36] Arthur: No.

[00:11:36] Michael: They're Dr. 90. Oh, that's what a good link.

[00:11:40] Arthur: Does it follow though?

[00:11:42] Michael: I don't know. But it's pretty simple to do. Like if you just look at services or vendors that you work with as a customer most of the time for where you've had great results, you can reach out to them and say, hey, like you helped us do X. Yeah.

[00:11:59] Arthur: I want to give you a case study.

[00:12:00] Michael: Yeah.

[00:12:01] Arthur: In return.

[00:12:01] Michael: Yeah. And only if you link back there. Yeah. That's the tricky part.

[00:12:05] Arthur: Well, for LLMs, it doesn't matter as long as they mention your brand.

[00:12:08] Michael: If we agree that, yeah, unlinked mentions are good, then so be it. Likewise, testimonials and reviews is another version of that. Like if you use software or tools in your space Maybe niche specific ones. Reach out to them and say, hey, love your tool, been using it for ages, would love to give you a testimonial sometimes, not always. Those tools will link to you from your, your testimonial.

[00:12:35] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:12:36] Michael: Most of the time they mention your brand 100%. Another unlinked mention.

[00:12:39] Arthur: You know how hard it is to get a review.

[00:12:42] Michael: Yeah.

[00:12:43] Arthur: So I think if someone approached you with a review, like a legitimate review, you'd want to publish it if you have some sort of section on your website that has reviews. So yeah, that's a no brainer.

[00:12:54] Michael: Social, like all that sort of social proof result stuff businesses love. So you can leverage that for your own benefit whilst supporting a tool or service that you probably like or have got some value from.

[00:13:05] Arthur: What about our industry contributions? So someone like us posting on like an industry specific website or blog. So for us like search engine land or journal, just writing content, having our like our name and then also our, our brand there, they often link back. They will have like a little bio section with a URL back to wherever you want to link back to.

[00:13:27] Michael: Yep. And we actually have a episode in the bank coming out soon with Greg from Jolly SEO where he talks about Jolly SEO. He talks about particularly that sort of link building where you. How to go out and find opportunities to put yourself forward for.

[00:13:46] Arthur: So that's. That can be a bit hard though because. Yeah, you need to find places that will want to publish your stuff.

[00:13:51] Michael: Time consuming.

[00:13:52] Arthur: Time consuming. But also if you don't have a profile, then a lot of people probably not want to feature you.

[00:13:57] Michael: Yeah.

[00:13:57] Arthur: So you have to work on building your own personal brand.

[00:14:01] Michael: Correct.

[00:14:01] Arthur: Before you can actually actively go out and start publishing on like authoritative journals.

[00:14:06] Michael: Yeah. So if you're a local plumber, it might be hard to.

[00:14:11] Arthur: You love the local plumber example, don't you? Have you been dealing with plumbers lately?

[00:14:15] Michael: If you're a local landscaper, if you're a local SEO. Yeah, whatever. But the chat that I had with Greg Arthur doesn't join me on the chats with guests.

[00:14:23] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:14:24] Michael: He refuses.

[00:14:25] Arthur: I've got other important things to do. Yeah.

[00:14:27] Michael: So it was a good chat. I'm sure you'll listen to the episode, right?

[00:14:31] Arthur: Of course.

[00:14:31] Michael: Tell me what you think. But yeah, that goes into depth about this. But that is a good topic. Another one that we think is pretty good in our neck of the woods is podcast appearances. Well, we constantly have people hitting us up to feature on this podcast. You probably don't know that. And we say yes to a Handful of them if they look like a good fit. But the reason most people are reaching out is, like, what you just said, building their profiles. And they might get a link back from our SEO show, the Seoshow Co domain. I think we're like Dr. 30 something.

[00:15:11] Arthur: It's not bad.

[00:15:12] Michael: Not amazing. Not.

[00:15:14] Arthur: It's not bad.

[00:15:15] Michael: Dr. 38.

[00:15:16] Arthur: It's quite strong.

[00:15:17] Michael: It's all right. Yeah. So you go out there, reach out to podcasts in your space, share your knowledge.

[00:15:24] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:15:24] Michael: Build your profile.

[00:15:25] Arthur: But you can. I wanted to say something here, because you can also damage your profile if you're not very good at speaking or confident or don't have a good topic.

[00:15:33] Michael: So, hey, we've made it this far doing that, so.

[00:15:37] Arthur: Oh, yeah, good point. But I mean, it's a bit different.

[00:15:39] Michael: Right.

[00:15:40] Arthur: Like, we're doing our own podcast. We're not. I'm not going on other people's podcasts. And what.

[00:15:45] Michael: How do you reckon, would you wig out if you had to go on another podcast or.

[00:15:48] Arthur: I honestly think I would prefer to be interviewed than interview.

[00:15:53] Michael: Right.

[00:15:53] Arthur: I find it easier to talk to someone than try and keep a chat going. Yeah. It's. So, again, like, off mike, we're talking about how I much prefer having conversational style like podcasts, because that's how I like to talk. But I feel sometimes when you start going down, like, a more structured route, it just becomes a bit, like, more robotic, and then it's quite hard to kind of make it float because you might be talking about a topic and then get sidetracked. And then you kind of have a flow that's completely, like, deviated from the original flow. Then you have to try to, on the. Like, on a whim, try to make it make sense.

[00:16:28] Michael: Yeah.

[00:16:29] Arthur: Which is what you do very well.

[00:16:30] Michael: No, I often forget what we're talking about. No, it's a struggle.

[00:16:34] Arthur: Well, I don't think you do. No, I think you do. Good. I just. I would much prefer to be interviewed than be the interviewer when it comes to podcasts.

[00:16:41] Michael: Well, if you're like Arthur, that's a great opportunity to go build some brand links or unlinked mentions. Speaking at events, sponsoring events, exhibiting at events.

[00:16:54] Arthur: Well, that's true. Yeah.

[00:16:55] Michael: We're exhibiting at an event. Our first event, actually. Probably a good opportunity to call it out. What's the date? It's the 30th of April, as we're recording this. And in a month's time, we will have exhibited as the SEO show at Retail Fest on the Gold Coast. Which is a big sort of E commerce digital focused conference. We got a link from somewhere I can't even remember. I think it's from their main domain. Just by spending thousands and thousands of dollars to exhibit at the conference. So not only do we get to exhibit at the conference, but we get a brand link as a result from a doctor minus 55 domain.

[00:17:34] Arthur: Makes it all worth it, doesn't it?

[00:17:35] Michael: All worth it. Google's probably going to penalize us for paying for links. But you can also, I guess outside of conferences like speaking, anywhere where you speak or get involved as a sponsor, even sponsoring local community events, teams, charitable donations. Remember we used to do university link building. Like what were they called? Scholarships.

[00:18:00] Arthur: Scholarships. All that stuff still exists. It's just a little bit trickier.

[00:18:04] Michael: Yeah. Then the last one is to just go do normal link building. Pay people.

[00:18:08] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:18:09] Michael: But link to your homepage with an anchor text.

[00:18:12] Arthur: Yeah. And it's safer to go for maybe less desirable links than you normally would. If you're trying to be aggressive with money anchors, you can probably get away with some cheaper links with a branded anchor.

[00:18:23] Michael: Yeah.

[00:18:25] Arthur: What do you feel about. Yeah, I was gonna ask, how do you feel about using like I said, like a premium site that's got a really high doctor really great site and using it as a branded anchor. Would you prefer to use.

[00:18:36] Michael: I feel good about it.

[00:18:38] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:18:38] Michael: It's got to be part of a strategy.

[00:18:39] Arthur: That's what I was. Yeah. Because a lot of people including myself would often reserve the lower quality sites for brand. But then does it make sense to maybe have high quality sites?

[00:18:51] Michael: I think it makes sense to have high quality sites linking to you with a branded link. Now does it make sense to always pay for them? No. Because it's a lot easier to get a free branded link without paying for it from super high strength domains like kinstadoctor90. By investing some of your time to answer questions or follow up with them until they do it. That sort of stuff.

[00:19:15] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:19:16] Michael: With your paid link building, if you have that brand link building pipeline going, then with your paid link building you can be more aggressive with focusing on, you know, your exact match anchor text to money pages. But then also do some paid links for brand as well. And amongst that if you need to, it's just having a strategy, a plan, not just doing it willy nilly. Willy nilly. I guess.

[00:19:39] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:19:40] Michael: I just thought of another type of branded link building.

[00:19:43] Arthur: Oh wow.

[00:19:44] Michael: We've been having some good success with on the fly.

[00:19:46] Arthur: Like that.

[00:19:47] Michael: Just like that.

[00:19:47] Arthur: Unrehearsed.

[00:19:48] Michael: Didn't even look up AI. You ready? We on our website have been publishing stat posts, statistics on all different things related to business because we want links from business type websites, tech type websites. We publish them, format it in a way that we're likely to get the featured snippet. And then when journos or people writing articles want to go look up a fact or a point for their article, we're being found in the featured snippet and they are sourcing us in the US So just always a branded link. But over the space of a couple of months we've got like 30 links.

[00:20:27] Arthur: Do you have an example of one of the facts or stats you've posted?

[00:20:31] Michael: Well, yeah, let me just pull up my spreadsheet when I'm tracking it all. So an example is we got a link from the domain name remote people. Did you wait, doctor minus 52.

[00:20:43] Arthur: Did you really just think of it now and have the spreadsheet ready or.

[00:20:46] Michael: Yeah, it's easy to find a spreadsheet. Okay. All right, that's pretty quick. So I did a post on remote work statistics in Australia.

[00:20:54] Arthur: Okay.

[00:20:55] Michael: Because I knew that people love that stuff. Articles about WFH versus wfo, all that stuff. So we did a article on that with a whole bunch of stats and then that's had a bunch of links. But I won't tell you all of the ones we've got, but we've got a whole bunch of.comaus which is really good because they're hard to come by.

[00:21:16] Arthur: Yeah.

[00:21:18] Michael: 1-2-34566.Com aus In a month, all this. So yeah, stat posts. I call that passive link building where you just, you create the content. It sits on your site. It's like a spider in the web waiting for the link to come along.

[00:21:34] Arthur: That's pretty cool.

[00:21:35] Michael: Pretty cool.

[00:21:36] Arthur: I mean it's cool. I mean again, it's not super related to what we do, but it's just.

[00:21:42] Michael: The types of sites that are linking to us in the end. Like.

[00:21:46] Arthur: Yeah, no, there's types of sites linking to us for sure.

[00:21:48] Michael: But I guess I did one on SEO and content marketing stats. I did one on AI stats. I've got to do one on AI.

[00:21:56] Arthur: Yeah, that's more related.

[00:21:57] Michael: Yeah. So the idea is you do a bunch and they all sit there and gather. It's like the image link building tactic that we've spoken about in the past.

[00:22:06] Arthur: Yep.

[00:22:07] Michael: Anyway, that's a little nugget of gold there at the end of the episode.

[00:22:10] Arthur: You shouldn't have told everyone. Well, you might want to cut this out.

[00:22:14] Michael: No, it's fine because ultimately you stole it from you can share knowledge. Comes down to execution and doing the work. Some people will do that, which is great. Others don't want to use services like us to do that. And that's all good. That's how the world works. But I reckon that's a nice little way to wrap up this episode. Talking Branded Links Think about branded links.

[00:22:37] Arthur: Think about them long and hard.

[00:22:39] Michael: Do not be scared of branded links.

[00:22:41] Arthur: Do not be scared.

[00:22:42] Michael: They're here to help. We will be back in the lead up to Retail Fest, we're going to do a bunch of episodes on E Commerce SEO, aren't we Arthur?

[00:22:52] Arthur: We are. We're going to do so many E Commerce episodes you're going to be sick of E Commerce.

[00:22:57] Michael: A mini series extraordinaire. E Commerce Mastery. I don't know what we'll call it, but a few episodes. Arthur looks so excited.

[00:23:06] Arthur: I'm very excited. I love E commerce. Well, you know how much I love buying stuff online.

[00:23:10] Michael: We will be back to talk about e commerce in not next week because we've got the chat with Greg from Jolie SEO next week.

[00:23:17] Arthur: Friend of the show.

[00:23:18] Michael: Friend of the show. But after that it's all E commerce baby. So until then, happy eCommerce, SEOing and branded link building.

[00:23:29] Intro & Outro: Thanks for listening to the SEO Show. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. It will really help the show. We'll see you in the next episode.

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