According to the latest figures, as of the beginning of 2024, there were 5.5 million private businesses in the UK. Almost all these businesses are SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), even though massive organisations dominate markets.
Competition for people’s attention and loyalty in a time where weighing your options is easier than ever is hard for businesses. That’s why it is so important to stand out from the crowd.
Branding is a big part of this. It’s not just about a logo; it’s about your ethos and how you present yourself to the world so that consumers trust you.
Trust is a core concern for consumers, and 71% of people have said that it is more important to trust brands than before.
Brand mentions are a way of building trust that is growing in importance for businesses. It’s important to know what brand mentions are, why they matter for SEO and how you can benefit from them.
What Is a Brand Mention?
Brand mentions are when your products, brand, company or anything related to your business is referenced on some online medium.
Examples of brand mentions include:
- Press articles
- Blog posts
- Mentions on social media
- Online forums
- Online reviews
Direct and Indirect Brand Mentions
These brand mentions can be direct, meaning that the reference is explicit, mentioning your company name. An indirect mention is when your brand isn’t directly mentioned, but something connected to your business is.
Linked and Unlinked Brand Mentions
Brand mentions can be linked to, which is where the mention comes with a backlink to your website. Unlinked brand mentions are when there is no link to your site.
Why Are Brand Mentions Important for SEO?
Brand mentions affect SEO because of Google’s changing opinion on them. It used to be that for SEO, backlinks were king, and that means that linked mentions (mention comes with a backlink) were what many SEOs thought was the key to success, due to the correlation of high organic traffic rankings and lots of valuable, high DR referring domains.
Now, unlinked mentions (no backlink) can be just as important.
Brand mentions are now thought to be one of Google’s trust signals, a factor that their algorithm considers when determining your website’s overall trustworthiness. Trust signals are indicators of your relevance in your market, your credibility to your audience and how authoritative your business is.
Brand mentions can also help with E-E-A-T. This stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, and it is a framework that Google uses to determine the quality of your content and website.
Basically, if you get consistent brand mentions from authoritative sources, then that lets Google know you are the real deal, and you’ll get ranked higher in search engines.
Types of Brand Mentions
In the modern online and media-filled world, there are many ways in which you can gain brand mentions, and customers can express their feelings about businesses. It may seem overwhelming as a growing business, but engaging across the spectrum of media is beneficial to growing your brand reputation.
Social Media Mentions
Social media platforms dominate, which is why social media marketing is more important than ever. Social media can actually have a really positive effect on SEO, and Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and Reddit are ripe for brand mentions.
These mentions can come in the form of direct mentions in posts, tags, comments, shares and hashtags.
Press and Media Coverage
Mentions in online articles, talk about on the news or on podcasts, features in industry publications and references in local news can all be forms of press and media coverage. What sets these apart from social media mentions is that the people discussing your business already have some credibility, which lends more authority to the mention.
Blog and Forum Mentions
Another, more informal type of mention is when your business is referenced by communities. On sites such as Reddit and Quora, there are forums for basically every niche interest. These types of mentions could be something asking a question about your business, putting up a link to a product, or your business being referenced in a discussion on the forum.
Local Directories and Reviews
Even in a more globalised world, engaging locally is still important. Being mentioned in reviews and local directories is important to growing your business. A local directory is a website that lists the basic information of your business. Reviews can appear on social media and are easily visible on Google reviews, located on the side of the search page.
How to Earn More Brand Mentions
It might seem like you can’t force people to talk about your business, but there are ways to get yourself into the wider conversation and increase brand mentions.
PR and Outreach
Running digital PR campaigns can help build brand mentions. Make press releases, reach out to industry journalists, and provide them with compelling reasons to feature your brand. Utilise guest posting to get people in your niche writing content for you, and contact influencers in your sphere and see if they are interested in collaborating.
Content Marketing and Thought Leadership
Create content that is original, relevant and appeals to your audience. Make it diverse and not just similarly formatted blog posts. Get this content out to your audience on social media, through email marketing and by creating multimodal content such as video and audio pieces.
Thought leadership content is where you provide unique and insightful perspectives in your content, positioning yourself as a voice of authority and knowledge that sets you apart from your competition. This type of content can bring on discussion and really resonate with your audience.
Social Media Engagement
If you want to be talked about on social media, you have to be present on these platforms. Building up your social media presence and connecting with your audience will help you be connected to your customers and build your reputation. Even engaging with things such as negative reviews is beneficial. A study found that customers preferred businesses that responded to both good and bad reviews.
How to Track and Monitor Brand Mentions
There are methods for tracking and monitoring your brand mentions. Tools available include:
Google Alerts is a free tool that allows you to track your mentions automatically. You can set up a keyword and then every day you’ll receive an email to notify you of mentions.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs has a paid tool called Alerts that lets you get notified about lost and gained backlinks, web mentions and keyword rankings. It also has Brand Radar, an add-on that monitors mentions across AI overviews, ChatGPT and other AI platforms.
Semrush
Semrush has the paid Brand Monitoring app that tracks brand mentions across websites, blogs and forums and provides you with real-time alerts and analysis.
All this is well and good, but it is so important to build these mentions in the first place. You do this by responding to your audience and the data you uncover and forging relationships to increase your brand mentions.
How Maxweb Solutions Can Help
Getting people talking can be hard, but we at Maxweb Solutions can help. We can help you with brand building, SEO, gaining brand mentions and building up your brand authority. Our team is full of professionals who bring a wealth of experience and knowledge, excelling in bringing solutions to your digital marketing issues.
To learn more about us and how we can help, get in touch today. Talk to a member of the team by calling us at 0151 652 4777 or emailing us at info@maxwebsolutions.com.
Posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2025 in SEO.
