Google’s Ranking Factors: Brand Signals

1. Brand Name Anchor Text: Branded anchor text is a simple — but strong — brand signal.

2. Branded Searches: It’s simple: people search for brands. If people search for your site in Google (ie. “Backlinko twitter”, Backlinko + “ranking factors”), Google likely takes this into consideration when determining a brand.

3. Site Has Facebook Page and Likes: Brands tend to have Facebook pages with lots of likes.

4. Site has Twitter Profile with Followers: Twitter profiles with a lot of followers signals a popular brand.

5. Official Linkedin Company Page: Most real businesses have company Linkedin pages.

6. Employees Listed at Linkedin: Rand Fishkin thinks that having Linkedin profiles that say they work for your company is a brand signal.

7. Legitimacy of Social Media Accounts: A social media account with 10,000 followers and 2 posts is probably interpreted a lot differently than another 10,000-follower strong account with lots of interaction.

8. Brand Mentions on News Sites: Really big brands get mentioned on Google News sites all the time. In fact, some brands even have their own Google News feed on the first page:

9. Co-Citations: Brands get mentioned without getting linked to. Google likely looks at non-hyperlinked brand mentions as a brand signal.

10. Number of RSS Subscribers: Considering that Google owns the popular Feedburner RSS service, it makes sense that they would look at RSS Subscriber data as a popularity/brand signal.

11. Brick and Mortar Location With Google+ Local Listing: Real businesses have offices. It’s possible that Google fishes for location-data to determine whether or not a site is a big brand.

12. Website is Tax Paying Business: Moz reports that Google may look at whether or not a site is associated with a tax-paying business.