34 SEO-Experts’ Opinions About Using Brand Marketing on White Hat SEO

I asked myself several questions: how do brand citations, brand mentions, natural links from forums, q/a sites and comments influence a site’s position in search-engine rankings? In other words, do they improve a site’s ranking on Google? How well does it work for brand popularity? Do SEO experts use this method?

As for me, I’m sure that it works and my experiments told me the same. However, I didn’t find exhaustive answers to these questions, so I decided to do some little brand marketing research.

I asked the SEO-experts 3 questions:

• Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?
• Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?
• Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

I want to say thank you very much to each expert who found time to write the answers. I hope this information will be useful for you.

1. Neil Patel

I think they are extremely useful. I use them, but sparingly.

I focus primarily on contextual links.

I do not generate traffic from forums — I tend to stay away.

2. Pratik Dholakiya

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

Yes, they are very useful for SEO as this strategy eventually helps in acquiring some natural/high authority links as well as mentions for your website.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

Yes, we do this through various ways. For example, we create Linkable Assets for our clients, and we then pitch those links to bloggers/editors/journalists to take a look and if useful we ask them to mention our client’s brand and link to it from their posts.

This helps tremendously as we’ve acquired some very potential links through this strategy.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

No, we aren’t doing this as we haven’t seen good success ratio from either of them.

3. Carla Dawson

I do believe brand citations and brand mentions with and without links are helpful for SEO.

I do use this technique as part of my link building strategies

I do no attract traffic via comments or forums.

4. Robert O’Haver

Brand citations should always be a part of your link building strategy. Not from just an anchor text point of view, but also co-citations.

Commenting should also be part of it if done correctly going for quality not quantity if you leave a comment, mixture pertains to the story and brings value. But your link profile should be very diversified. Forums are good as well, but only in moderation. Both situations must only be used in this where you bring value by adding your comment, not just by adding some random comment that doesn’t pertain to the discussion.

Always go for quality instead of quantity. One good link is worth 100 bad links. If you know what I’m saying. Also create links that benefit your website don’t create links just to create links to try and manipulate search engines. I hope this answers your questions any more let me know.

5. Rod Gardner

The concept of brand citations being a ranking factor is worthy to a degree. I can’t say that citations directly influence ranking, but I can say that positive citations can be beneficial overall. Brands have the luxury of Google’s attention right by isolating shopping queries and giving them more weight. Where a brand is directly mentioned could be a positive signal or a negative signal.

No I don’t at the moment but I am sure that it will factor at some point in the future.

Yes, I actively solicit traffic through conversation and story telling. Often I hijack relevant conversations if it’s right for a brand placement or product plug. Forums and mass commenting is frowned upon because it’s a method favored by spammers in the past and built in to the link building tools such as SEO Nuke (no longer around I don’t think)

It’s well worth testing because the latest ranking factors put huge emphasis on visitor signals (sharing indicates value but can also indicate a warning, so it’s early days on this).

6. Marko Saric

Sure, Igor. Here are my answers. Let me know if this is what you had in mind.

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

I look at all the marketing activities from the perspective of “is this good for my brand?” rather than “is this useful for SEO?”. From that perspective, anyone in your target audience talking about your brand in any shape or form (be it direct links, implied links, social media mentions or anything else) is a great thing. It will help get the word out about your brand and increase the brand awareness.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

I normally focus on creating the best possible content that I can and then getting it in front of certain influencers that I feel will benefit from seeing this content. If these influencers choose only to share my link or link to it from their articles or whatever way they choose or choose not to do that I do not have much control over.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

If you’re a beginner blogger, going into forums that are relevant to your field and going to other big websites in your field is one of the fastest and simplest way of generating traffic. It’s what I used to do when I started out. Early on you don’t have an audience, you don’t have a social media following or search engine rankings, so you need to proactively go where your potential audience is and share your expertise. Relevant forums and comment areas of big sites are some ways to do that and what I recommend you do on the way to your first visitors as seen here.

7. Ronald Ck Ong

Of course implied links help with brand searches and when turned into express links is really powerful stuff!

8. Marcus Miller

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

Absolutely. If we go back to the humble beginnings of the Google search algorithm, the idea was to build upon the research done around academic citations and apply this thinking to the hyperlinking of the web. Of course, this led to page rank and two decades of link abuse and widespread gaming of the system, so this has to be refined and brand citations and mentions are a key part of this.

You don’t have to dig too deep to find mentions of implied links and brand mentions. The Google patent analysis done by Bill Slawski is a great place to start. Ultimately, though, this is common sense. Mentions of your brand with a co-occurrence of the services you provide on highly credible sources can only be a good thing. This is good for people and highly likely to help your SEO efforts.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

We are a digital marketing company so we will do anything that has a tangible benefit. Hopefully, we can apply some SEO thinking to this process as well. What we tend to see is that citations, mentions all help here. Ultimately, getting a business mentioned in the right places is what this is all about. If that comes with a followed link, nofollowed link or simply an implied link it all adds positive equity.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

Absolutely. As a simple example for our own site. I commented recently on the Mike Blumenthal blog, and a reader picked up on the post and my comment and wrote an article referencing both myself and Mike. So, not only do we generate click through and exposure, we generated a link on a third party site. All through some simple commentary on a key issue in local search. Likewise, sites like MOZ Q&A rank well and good answers here will drive awareness, visibility, and click-throughs. It is also topical and relevant and connects your business to a topic.

As another example, we have clients that inbound links from blogs and forums represent the best converting traffic they have despite good organic visibility. Often, the link implies trust as it comes from a topically relevant site where people are asking ‘where is the best place to buy x’ and as such, that user arrives warm and ready to buy.

9. Nathan Plaunt

1. Brand and URL citations and mentions are not only useful for SEO, they are necessary pieces that need to be in place if you want to be found online. Specifically, for local SEO, brand citation building should be a part of your daily workflow.
2. Citation acquisition is definitely a big piece of my link building strategy. Think about it from a basic marketing 101 standpoint, without being in the evoked set of your target market, your brand simply cannot be up for consideration when it comes to that time. Again, specific to local SEO, I have seen great visibility happen as a result of brand citations, mentions, and implied links.
3. Forums are a great channel to utilize when targeting a specific audience. Activity in forums and comments can help cement your brand as an industry leader and trusted partner.

10. Eric P

Actually I prefer using brand as anchor text of my link building campaign, since I scared by google if I’m using too many keyword targets as my anchor text, it will be marked as spam. You have to read this article, I found it very useful for me. Comment and forum I used for diversity, I choose guest post and social media for targeted traffic. Don’t forget to sharing a result from all expert with me, I will be happy if you did that.

11. Shailendra Sial

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO? 

Yes, and I have seen a positive effect. For me, it worked and helped me get some good conversions from the search engines. 

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies? 

Yes. 

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums? 

Yes, but we make sure that it is done only on the relevant venues. We ensure that we don’t end up giving vague comments just for the sake of doing it.

12. Matt Antonino

Brand citations and brand mentions are definitely useful to SEO. While I think brand citations are and have always been a significant factor in rankings, unlinked mentions are increasingly important and must be addressed as well. Citations and local link building is a big part of our strategy and one we’ll continue using for quite some time. As far as traffic, we don’t get much targeted traffic from forums, but comments are a must. The networking, conversations, traffic, and all other benefits far outweigh the time & writing required to create those comments.

13. Siraj Mahmood

You’re all queries answer is ‘Yes’.

14. Maxime Rauer

We’ve never had a “brand citation” strategy as of today, but I think it would be the right time to start.

Brand citations have to be useful for SEO, just as links are, and the Google patent put some more evidence that they are using such technology on their side. As mentioned before, this is currently not part of our strategy, unless if you count “content marketing” as being a sort of similar tool to increase our authority on the web.

I know we are getting links from forums, but always organically. The traffic is generally very targeted, but we never took the initiative of influencing what was out there. Link building is still a risky game, while brand citations seems to be a little more gray hat.

15. Nick Garner

1. Are brand citations/implied links useful for SEO?

I’ve done a lot of research into this. I love my data and I have been working with SEMrush as one of their brand ambassadors/research partners on these kind of questions

In short, I don’t think they have an influence on rankings. Google care about signals that give the greatest definition with the least computational cost, and what I’m seeing is Google being influenced by page rank and engagement. For those unfamiliar with SEO they will say page rank is dead, of course that’s not true it’s just hidden from us now.

In essence Google is splitting all websites into two groups, trusted and on trusted. If you are a trusted domain, more links will get you more rankings. Equally if you’re trusted, links from your website will have an impact on other trusted websites.

If you’re not trusted, the links don’t work nor do links from your site work. There’s a lot of validation behind this point which I won’t go into now.

So citations and brand mentions do have an indirect impact because they create awareness for certain websites and people seek those sites out, therefore affecting click-through rates from search results, which in turn generates signals from Google saying ‘users want this site, therefore will rank it higher’. There is a lot more to it than that, but that’s roughly what’s going on.

Fry link acquisition, we don’t use brand citations since it’s a complete waste of money for our clients (as you may know I’m founder of 90 Digital, an iGaming SEO agency and now CEO of Oshi, a Bitcoin casino that I am heavily involved with)

With forums, unless you’re part of that community than any interaction is spam and since communities are very good at weeding out spammers, I don’t play that game either

Essentially doing well in SEO boils down to 2 things

• Build a site which satisfies users in relation to the implied answers they seek when searching for particular key phrases therefore you get engagement.
• Be very picky about which sites you reach out to for links. A great litmus test is whether the site ranks on Google or not and a secondary test is to see the ranking history of a domain, looking at whether it’s going up or down visibility.

If a site is going down in visibility, then avoid.

And that is roughly it I hope I’ve made a small contribution to the world by helping people avoid wasting their time chasing citations for rankings.

16. Andy Beal

Whether brand citations are directly beneficial depends on the originating site and the search engine indexing those links. Even if there is not a direct benefit, having the additional mentions and links can help get the content in front of bloggers and journalists, who then do pass on links when they cover the content or story.

17. Brian Lang

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

Some people think that it is a factor or might be in the future, but it doesn’t seem to be something that SEO’s focus on now.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

No.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

Not currently, but forums can be a good traffic source.

18. Jo Ellen Enns

Yes to all 3 questions.

19. Bill Slawski

I wrote about this close to a year ago: Entity Mentions are Good: Brand Mentions are not the New Link Building.

20. Gerald Murphy

Brand mentions are extremely positive for any brand as they increase brand awareness. The more we hear or read a word/phrase/brand shouted about, the more we search for this term. This is why social media is good for inventing a new keyword, push it out and with increased popularity you will not only have more searches, but you will create and dominant your own SERP !

Brand citations and implied links, coming to the fore after 2 Google employees submitted a patent (‘Ranking Search Results’) in 2012 which was granted in March 2014, have link weight. This is vital as we move into a mobile world: Mobiles will kill links in a few years because we cannot technically link out to other blogs on mobile devices. Sharing of information, through, for example, brand mentions in content, and spreading articles on communicative platforms, such as, Twitter and LinkedIn, for instance, will be the new link/popularity measure rather than rel=follow, nofollow and me HTML links on desktop.

PR teams are great to increase brand citations. Note that search engine bots can understand text which are non-hyperlinked URLs (e.g. example.com). However, PR teams need to be trained to ensure link building is correctly executed.

Gaining traffic from comments and forums is ‘old school’. The only older tactics that works today are, quality, directories, such as YELP, for local SEO. Links, however, need to be natural and cone from relevant sources.

21. Carson Ward

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

Yes, I absolutely believe that brand mentions can increase rankings. All the claims about nofollow links increasing rankings seems to be evidence for mentions mattering, especially with Google explicitly saying nofollow links are not counted as links.

I’ve also seen offline marketing efforts result in increased rankings even when the link profile doesn’t reflect the actual publicity generated. There’s no doubt in my mind that mentions matter, and will continue to be pulled into the algorithm as sites become increasingly stingy with links.

I’ve heard speculation among industry experts that Google could be pulling in offline information such as business registration info. My personal opinion is that Google is still using info that’s available on the web in a very algorithmic and general way – for now!

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

We definitely seek out brand citations with highly-respected sources. If we get a mention of our brands or sites in a major publication we call it a win. We still prefer a link to go along with the mention, but that’s not always possible.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

We’ve received a fair amount of traffic from comments and questions answered, but this is not a high-ROI tactic. We do use it with new employees and interns because it’s a fantastic training tool. In the process of answering questions and leaving meaningful comments, one learns what questions people are asking and what content exists already on the site they’re working on. They also gain some valuable industry knowledge.

We generally feel that it isn’t worth an experienced team member’s time to run around on forums while they could be creating content and generating online publicity, but forums/comments can still be useful for understanding sentiment and brainstorming new ideas. For example, I recommend that every marketer keep their finger on the pulse of sub-reddits related to the industry they work in.

P.S. I would distinguish between comment mentions and editorial mentions. I am certain that Google can differentiate between the two, and that editorial mentions from trusted sources and authors are far more valuable.

22. Ryan Kempe

I target any marketing channel that derives an ROI. So I don’t specifically look at brand mentions, however they are an indication of hype or activity. Yes, I find good success marketing in Forums. 

Hope this helps.

23. Steven Macdonald

Unfortunately, we don’t really do much with brand citations or brand mentions except contact the publisher and request that they link to the site.

We don’t do anything in forums or with comments either.

24. Floyd Buenavente

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

Yes, according to MOZ see.

A lot of links are now being treated by Google by virtue of mentions as a measure of authority.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

Yes, as these links truly does create a lot of noise in the web and adds relevance to the website being promoted.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

I really don’t consider comments and forum posting as a major way in doing link building as of the moment, but yes, depending perhaps on the niche that I am optimizing sometimes you have to build links using those platforms.

25. René Hansen

1. Are brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

Google and other major search engines are constantly evolving and authority and quality are harder and harder to measure. I strongly believe that a brand being mentioned online, has a impact for SEO. Even though there is no link or nofollow is applied.

That is due to the fact that users demand quality and use a multichannel approach to look for trustworthy companies and people, and not always link back to the source. This approach is recognized by the search engines.

2. Do you use brand citations as part of your link building strategies?

It is definitely a part of the social media scheme, and our link earning strategies. The overall performance increase, depends on a lot of things, which also consists of a natural link profile. In short, yes.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

This is not a tactic that we have used so much, but it really depends on the situation. Most often no.

26. Dan Lawrence

1. Yes I think they are, and if I’m wrong about that for now, I think they will certainly be in the future if not already.
2. I’m not coding so specifically at the moment, but I should be 🙂
3. Same as 2, no, but I should be doing more here

27. Andrew Halliday

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

So the short answer is yes, but it’s not easily measureable. Do I believe Google use none-links in their ranking algorithm? I’m unconvinced, however what I am convinced about is that if a number of people are searching for your brand and desired keyword your rankings will increase.

Here’s an example, if Google sees more people searching for “Ebuyer laptops”, subsequently these consumers have a great ‘user experience’ on the site (good links, topical information, easy path to purchase etc.). When it comes to other users searching for the generic term of ‘laptops’ in Google, it’s likely the algorithm will naturally boost rankings of ‘Ebuyer’, as previous users tended to have a good experience searching Ebuyer + Laptops.

So using this theory, getting more searches affiliated to your brand means you should benefit in future searches.

If I had the choice of a link from a site or a mention that encouraged the users to go to Google and to type in my domain and generic term, I’d likely take the latter approach as it should drive more sustainable results (correctly executed of course). You can see this tactic from a number of larger search-savvy companies now using their TV commercials to get people to actually search for their brand name and chosen generic keyword.

However, be warned, this technique is much harder to measure any ROI from the marketing, but the longer term benefits outweigh the short term lack of measurement.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

Our link building strategy is all about producing great content users want to search, share and mention, therefore building ‘the brand’.

In years gone by if someone had mentioned us and not linked, the outreach team would have likely been in touch with the journalist/blogger and asked (begged) them to change it to a link, but these days I’m happy to leave brand citations there.

Why? Well, first of all positive mentions and brand citations are great no matter what when it comes to building your reputation, then secondly it’s simply down to the fact that it wouldn’t look very natural if all the brand mentions we had were links. Having a good share of citations without links just looks natural to Google.

We’re more than happy to respond to journalists with key research and useful insights knowing full well that we are not going to get any links, but the brand is likely to get mentioned. In fact, over the last few years, we’ve found a number of, rather high ranking, sites simply have a rule of not linking out.

However, we know a “brand mention” on their site is valuable to us because where our potential customers are hanging out.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

Yes we do look to attract traffic from comments and forums, however we don’t specifically go after links or mentions. We have specialists writing on niche forums and blogs (usually tech related for us) answering questions and helping users.

The rule here for us is always to answer the user’s questions and not to push Ebuyer, it should come (relatively) naturally. If our outreachers can mention our blog articles or guides to help with their answer, that’s great. If the person who asks the questions needs to purchase a product to fulfil their questions we will obviously nudge them towards our site “You need to do x, y and z to resolve your issue” and “by the way this product will help”.

28. Gabriella Sannino

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

Yes, of course, anything you do online/offline will affect your brand. Actually I’m not the only one that preaches this, I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: “A brand is no longer what we tell our consumers it is- rather it’s what consumers are telling each other it is.” I’ve written a few posts on how you can connect your SEO with your brand, or how you can launch a seamless SEO campaign while strengthening your brand equity.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

Absolutely. The thing about citation is you have to make sure you use the same NAP for all places. That’s what a lot of small business even large companies forget to do. I have seen companies with several addresses because they forgot to update their number or physical address. It’s a mess and does nothing to give you that extra edge you could use.  

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

I’m not sure if we do, since we don’t use comments or forums as part of our outreach strategy.

Therefore, I don’t have any measuring tools, or tags in place for that aspect of conversions. I would.

Think if you had a certain campaign and wanted to use forums and or comments, you could be successful. As long as you can find a way to measure this aspect to see if it’s successful. Like anything, metrics help evaluate and adapt in order to ensure your efforts aren’t wasted.

29. Patrick Langridge

1) I think that they are, yes, very useful. Google’s ever-growing brand bias means that they are considering a ton of newer brand signals within their scoring; brand search volume, unliked citations and mentions, editorial mentions within press etc. I know there have been small tests in the industry on if Google actually scores unlinked mentions as or similar as hyperlinks, and while I’ve not seen any definite evidence, I can only see this becoming a growing factor in the future.

2) Not exclusively – as an SEO who works for an SEO agency, our focus is on links and that will continue to be the case, but we do acquire plenty of coverage for clients that contains unlinked citations. We always follow up to request hyperlinks but acquiring them isn’t always possible, unfortunately, so the next best prize is an unlinked citation.

3) Not really specifically no, as we generally target higher value editorial opportunities for clients, but we do encourage clients to engage with their audience and potential customers on forums and other places that they hang out. Even though a lot of forums now nofollow links, if they are relevant and authentic, they can still be extremely valuable from a referral traffic and brand awareness perspective.

30. Kevin Indig

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

A: When you google “brand citations” you find a whole list of articles that name them “future of link building”. There is even a patent Google saved that basically deals with how implied links could be used in a ranking algorithm.

Now, a patent doesn’t proof / promise Google is using this technology for sure. Also, I wasn’t able to prove the power of brand mentions and implied links with data so far.

However, I believe there are some logical benefits that are connected to a direct positive impact:

– Brand Awareness – We all know that being viewed as a brand by Google is very powerful. Multiple studies have proven the brand ranking factor and its efficiency. The more users interact with brands, the more they are aware of them, not taking into account whether that awareness is positive or negative. So by just spreading the brand on the internet, whether as a link or a citation, it’s forged. If I could choose between having my brand in the headline of an article of the New York Times or as a backlink, I’d choose the former!

– Traffic – Mentioning a brand or just citing a URL without linking to it very often makes people look for that – and that’s very powerful as well! Some anecdotal evidence: I’ve found a directly positive correlation between brand searches and authority. It might not be the strongest, but surely the more attention a brand receives, the more backlinks and traffic it receives.

Conclusion: Even though I’m not aware of a proven benefit of brand citations and mentions, I think there are clear indirect benefits.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

A: Do we pay attention to it? Of course! Do we actively control and enforce it? Nope! Brand citations are more part of our brand awareness strategy, than of link building. I believe that a great user experience is followed by traffic, links and eventually rankings.

“User experience” is a very broad term and of course we’re not only working on that here, or else I had no job ;-). Let me be a little more precise: By understanding search intent and satisfying that with the right content, we strengthen our brand. What is the user expecting, when he is looking for “Rihanna music video” or “Syberia News”? Providing the right answer to that in terms of videos, text, graphics, images, tools, etc. – that’s what helps us in terms of brand citations.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

A: We don’t actively seed links in forums or blog comments, but I personally believe they have value. What is a good link? A link that provides a lot of traffic! A link that’s clicked often!

Google ranks forums quite high for some queries. It seems that data has proven that they provide the best answers for some questions. I think in many cases the answer to a question in a forum is or involves a backlink. That’s why forum and comment links are not always “bad” – the context matters!

As long as links in forums and comments are a) helpful and b) relevant, they provide value in my eyes.

31. Bill Sebald

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

Patents suggest Google may be using them.  It would be wise to use them.  Spiders are definitely crawling implied links (as witnessed through server logs), so I think at this point it’s safe to assume they are.  I consider that erring on the side of caution.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

In a way, yes.  If we’re link building with content at Greenlane, we are considering all of this in our copywriting.   

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

Interesting question.  Not generally anymore.  Comment marketing was something I did years ago, but as a tactic I seem to have dropped it.

32. Matthew Edgar

1. From what I’ve seen, yes, but indirectly. People often search out brands for reputation before making a purchase (especially among smaller companies). If somebody Googles’s your company looking for reviews, you want a lot of other websites to show up saying things about you (ideally, good things). This then leads people to trust your website/brand more and be more likely to purchase. Also, it can indirectly make Google see you as a “real” company – there are other websites related to this search for a brand name.
2. Yes, for sure! It is great to search out websites that have mentioned you without a link to see if they could link your brand name. Beyond that, though, it is also good to see what context they are speaking about the brand. Typically, the context is something different from what the client was thinking (a different take on the product, a different target audience, whatever). So, with that new context in mind, those citations can help you find other link building avenues.
3. Personally, yes, forums are a decent part of Elementive’s traffic (and a good source for leads). For clients, it varies. For a travel agency, a forum might be helpful, but for a local restaurant, Yelp might be more beneficial. Hope that helps.

33. Sean Si

Thanks for reaching out and telling me that the deadline is tomorrow. Here’s my take on it:

1. Yes. In fact, this is one of the signals that I think might just see an increase as a ranking factor. In my honest opinion, the strategies to ‘game’ the link system out there is a lot but gaining honest-to-goodness brand citations or implied links are quite difficult especially in popular websites.
2. All the time. I get tons of interview requests (that I fail to answer some at times already). And I make sure to leave my branding in there. Publishers obviously don’t mind me citing my brand because hey, it’s my brand. So it will always be friendly and useful to publishers – more than a direct link.
3. I don’t really go out and seed comments and forum posts, but people do so on their own when they find a good resource article in our SEO blog. So the short answer is yes. And yes, it helps the rankings a little bit.

34. Jimmy Rodriguez

1. Are brand citations, brand mentions and/or implied links useful for SEO?

Brand citations for SEO should be treated just like branding is in marketing. In the same way that branding is there to build the trust of your brand in order to increase revenue, brand citations are there to increase the trust of your brand to both drive authority through links, but also trigger brand searches, and engagement with your website.

2. Do you use brand citations as a part of your link building strategies?

We use it as a supplemental strategy to our contextual link building campaigns. When we see the opportunity, we engage in it. However, it isn’t something we are aggressively pursuing.

3. Do you attract targeted traffic from comments or forums?

We are at a stage of our company that this happens organically for us. This isn’t something we have to go out and do anymore as our customers and potential shoppers do it for us. We just make sure to monitor all of the online activity that entails our brand.

Conclusion

As you can see, in general the opinions of the experts are quite concurrent with one another. Brand mentions, brand citations and implied links are effective tools if they are used in the right way. They can have not only good influence on SEO, but also you can get some traffic and leads.

The primary objective of crowd marketing is to give a person some good advice, help him/her gain an understanding of the question of which is interesting for him/her.

If it is appropriate, feel free to leave a link to your project or educative article.

If your business or the business of your clients is valuable for you, it will be better for you to use only safe methods.