ntic’s SEO Factor: The Most Underrated One

SEO is a career with many intangibles, so it’s difficult to prove its impact. Van der Garde’s work revealed that there was a strong correlation in terms of brand interest and the performance of SEO on highly competitive queries.

In this article, we explore how John Mueller, a Google employee, has a different perspective than ours.

Branding and SEO: The relationship between the two

Branding is one of the many intangibles that SEO encompasses. Both have many similarities. They:

• Many people find it difficult to understand and hard to grasp.
• A long-term perspective is required.
• Take a successful path.
• Your strongest assets.

They can also reinforce each other.

• Brand visibility is increased by increasing SEO visibility across the entire customer journey.
• SEO can be improved by a stronger brand.

There are many SEO factors that have some similarities with branding.

1. E-E-A-T
   1. Authority (Authority is the A in E-E.A.T.
   1. Trust (Trust is the T in E-E.A.T.)
2. Search Intents

The Quality Rater Guidelines

We can learn about Google’s vision by analyzing their updates and documentation.

Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines (SQRG ) , a book with more than 176 page offers a guide to Search Quality Raters. As can be seen in the SQRG, the SQR gives feedback on the Google algorithms to improve the user experience.

Google has access to over 16,000 SQR. There are 16,000 people in the world who manually check search results and websites based upon publicly available guidelines. This feedback is fed into the Google algorithm.

These guidelines are not known by every SEO expert, but monitoring their changes and knowing about them will help you develop a long-term SEO strategy.

E-E-A-T

The E-E-A concept (Experience Expertise Authority and Trust) is one of the key concepts in the guidelines. The SQRG uses the E-E – A- T abbreviation over 126 times.

We will discuss how trust and authority, in particular have much in common with brand building.

Trust

The guidelines state that Trust is the main factor, as untrustworthy sites have low E.E.A.T, regardless of whether they appear to be Experts, Experienced or Authoritative. In the guidelines, a financial fraud is used as an example. Even if it is a reputable source or the scammer has a lot of experience in scamming, the example is still untrustworthy.

Trust can be assessed by carefully examining the information that is available on the website, as well as everything else on the Internet about the company and its authors. You can use your About Us page, the media sentiment or public reviews and complaints.

The SQR appears to be a mixture of qualitative and numerical data. The search volume is a quantitative measure of brand interest. Brand awareness is not guaranteed by a website that has been labelled “Trustworthy”. A well-known, strong brand will be more likely to be viewed as Trustworthy than one that has just entered the market and is perceived the same way.

Theoretically, a large number of searches for a particular brand could indicate a high level of trust for Google’s algorithm.

Authority

Google strives to provide the most relevant (search results), to every query. Google (and most people) will give you a relevant response if you have authority in your field.

Google will measure your authority based on a variety of factors, including content quality, links, mentions, and other data.

If Brand interest is linked to Trust then Brand interest in a niche can be a quantitative expression for Authority in that niche.

Search Intents

Search intent changes

Four chapters make up the guidelines, and one of them is Understanding Users and their Intentions Behind Their Search Terms. Google explains on page 87 that search intentions can change over time.

Search intents and results can adapt quickly. The search intent of cities and countries during COVID is a perfect example. Search terms like “Holiday Barcelona”, “Holiday Spain”, and other very specific ones could be changed instantly whenever COVID was in turmoil. Search results for a destination that was in the news because of rising infections or a country that received bad travel advice changed almost instantly from travel websites back to government pages.

Seasonal Trends

The search market for health insurance is a good example of how search behavior has changed. In the Netherlands health insurance is compulsory, and you are only allowed to switch providers between November and December.

In January to September, “health insurance” searches are more focused on general health insurance information. In Q4, people will have to decide whether to switch to health insurance. You can see the change in search intent to “Compare Health Insurance” in Q4.

The search results are affected by this. You can see in the example below the fluctuation of the Dutch health insurer CZ and the healthcare comparator “Zorgkiezer” on the generic term, “Health insurance”.

We can see that “Zorgkiezer” starts at number nine in Q4’s beginning and then climbs up to two during the last few days when people are allowed to switch. Then it drops back.

Summary

We know this:

1. Google measures and makes available the search volume from Google Ads.
2. Google’s search engine results are generated by machine learning algorithms. RankBrain, for example, has been in use since 2015. (more than 8 years ago) It is designed to understand the search intent of users.
3. Search results are directly affected by a change in the search intent.
4. Over 16,000 people are specifically trained to verify whether a website is reliable and has sufficient Authority.

Google’s algorithms can consider a website more relevant in that niche if a brand is becoming increasingly popular.

Measure the impact of brand searches on SEO

Branding has a significant impact on SEO. During the work we did at Van der Garde, it was unmistakably evident that highly competitive queries were sensitive to this. The short-tail decreased towards the peak season while the mid-long tail remained the same.

Impact of short-tail terms

Impact of mid-long tail terms

Search Success is a great tool for everyday use.

Search intents can be changed

This market is probably more affected than other industries by the extreme demand between low and high season.

We benchmarked the brand interest in Van der Garde with 15 competitors, and the nonbranded search market to map the changes in search behavior. The benchmark is the change in the average monthly query between October-January (off-season), and February-May (high-season).

Outdoor furniture specialists are those who specialize in outdoor furniture only. Other companies may not be primarily involved with outdoor furniture.

1. Outdoor furniture specialists (core business)
   • 
     Van der Garde
     
   • 
     Tuinmeubelshop
     
   • 
     Tuinmeubelland
     
   • 
     AVH Outdoor
     
   • 
     Buitenhof Tuinmeubelen
     
   • Kees Smit

2. Home furnishings store chains
   • Kwantum
   • Jysk
   • Leen Bakker
   • VidaXL

3. Hardware stores
   • Karwei
   • Gamma
   • Praxis

4. Garden store chains
   • Intratuin
   • Fonteyn

We only used keyword combinations for the search terms of outdoor furniture and brand names in the case of furniture chains, DIY stores and garden chains (Karwei outdoor furnishings, Karwei 300 cm parasol, etc.). ).

The entire brand is searching for outdoor furniture.

By definition, specialists are expected to have greater Expertise and Authority in their field than the many national chains that focus on a wider range of products.

They also have lower budgets. They see a greater increase in the search for outdoor furniture compared to “real” outdoor specialists or the non-branded market.

According to our theory, the search intention is moving more towards these companies during this period.

Example A

Van der Garde, a specialist in outdoor furniture, drops the price of “tuinsets” (Outdoor Furniture Sets) during the high season. The price rises during the off-season. Praxis, a hardware store, does the opposite. The search demand of their store increases by over 665% during the high season. Van der Garde, on the other hand, only grows “only” by 200%. It is not impossible that:

1. Google has concluded that those who search “tuinset”, more than likely, intend to visit Praxis rather than Van der Garde.
2. Van der Garde falls from the top 3 to the 12th position while praxis climbs from position 7 to the top 3.
3. When the difference between brand interest and sales decreases, this returns to “normal”.

Example B

When comparing the brand demand of outdoor furniture specialist Tuinmeubelshop with home furnishings chain Jysk’s, Jysk’s increased by 717%. Jysk has never ranked in the top 10 for the search term “loungeset” during the off-season over the last two years. They even reach the top three during peak seasons, when demand for brands peaks.

The conclusion of the article is:

Branded searches can influence SEO results. Absolutely. Our data proves it. Does this mean that companies should switch their SEO budgets to branding? No, absolutely not. Branding has an impact on SEO, but it is still smaller than a website optimized for SEO.

But the more competitive your industry is, the more you will have to work at your SEO. But with Van der Garde we proved even then David could beat Goliath.

Want to join our SEO team? Contact [email protected]. Want to join our SEO team? See our SEO Consultant vacancies.

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