How Do Brand-Name Inbound Links Affect Others?

Do inbound links from sites already mentioning your brand help?

[Fgump910]

I was curious to know if it is a worthwhile strategy to search for already existing instances of your brand term and ask webmasters to link to your site....even if you already rank #1 in SERPS for your brand.

My thinking is that you will be able to acquire these links much more easily, and that they might build up your websites ranking and trust, which could in turn help all other aspects of your site...perhaps even boost it's ranking for other keywords :)

While I would ideally like to get links with the competitive keywords I am after as an anchor text, I feel like this would be much easier to get a whole bunch of existing brand name ones. These links seem much more organic and easy to acquire.

Do you guys think it is worthwhile to acquire these links?

[buckworks]

This sounds like a good idea to me.

New links from quality sites would help your cause even if the anchor text isn't SEO-perfect.

Be religiously consistent about what URL you ask them to link to:

http://www.example.com/
vs
http://example.com/

NOT

http://www.example.com/index.html or whatever

The more you can get your link popularity focused on one form of the URL (rather than split between variants) the better.

[briguy182182]

I think it's always better to at least try to get a keyword in the anchor text. As long as your brand name isn't a super competitive keyword, you're always going to rank #1 for your brand name. Why get links on a term you're always going to rank #1 for. I think it's just as easy to include your brand name with a keyword, i.e. "Brand Name Blue Widgets" or "Blue Brand Name Widgets". That way you get a boost on your brand name, but you also get a boost on that keyword. Plus from a "random surfer" standpoint I think if people aren't familiar with your brand name it's important to include a keyword just to let users know what exactly you sell.

[rambatz]

My site is optimized so the home page includes Company Name + Keyword

In my experience, when I acquire Company Name links to my home page, I also see a jump in my ranking for the keyword that is also optimized for this page.

So yes, in my experience, they are worth it!

[martinibuster]

>>>Why get links on a term you're always going to rank #1 for.

I agree with rambatz. A link without anchor text can tend to prop up on-page optimization. The obsession with anchor text has been exaggerated for many years.

[Fgump910]

Thank you very much for the replies. It was good to get some other opinions....

I think moving forward I will try this tactic and see if my rankings for other keywords rise.

[Nuttakorn]

For the brand keyword, if your site is already authority or established, you will get strong point. Anyway, you can combine with other keywords in anchor text with your brand as well.

[jkovar]

It sounds like a spectacular idea to me.

[madmatt69]

Can anyone think of a good search query for this? something like mysite.com -link:mysite.com
?

[Seb7]

Personally, if its already ranking no1, I would start looking for more internal links and maybe more varied keywords.

[smallcompany]

brand

Do you find that (over the time) Google "learns" what to associate with the brand, and therefore make the "brand" showing onto other keywords more if the brand is more popular (popular = more links with brand in anchored text)?

For example, if the popular car maker has 1,000 incoming links onto brand itself, and the other one has 2,000, would you expect that the popularity of the second one helps in showing onto "car" or "car maker" term in positions that are higher than of the first one - assuming that they have around equal value of other incoming links?

[bleached]

A competitor of mine is using their brand name in there anchor along with a couple of keywords they are targeting.

eg. Widget brand - Best blue and green widgets

I see they are aggressively building links with only a few variants of this technique. They seem to be ranking very high for all keywords and related keywords/phrases.

[smallcompany]

I see they are aggressively building links with only a few variants of this technique. They seem to be ranking very high for all keywords and related keywords/phrases.

Yeah, that's what I thought. To make your brand become almost a kind of synonym for product related terms.

It's something like when you think "pop-drink" and what comes onto your mind first. That shows the strength of the brand.

This obviously cannot be done just with certain linking strategy, but it should help.

[JS_Harris]

More is better, can't hurt.

Well, wait a minute, it sure can.

If an article returns #1 for a specific search term but you write a new article that competes with the old article, both can't rank #1 and it's possible the lower ranking article is chosen by the search engine.

As with anything moderation is key.