What if you could increase your rankings by increasing the number of times your brand is mentioned on the web? Is that possible? You bet it is and that’s what I’m going to explain in this blog post. This strategy is all about Brand Signals in SEO. The theory here is that the more times your brand is mentioned by someone on the web in contextual format, the higher your “brand signal” becomes and thus your rankings with Google.

Google loves to rank brands, and loves to hate on affiliate sites. For this reason brand signals have become more and more important over the past couple of years. Google has gotten better at evaluating contextual mentions of a brand that are not in link form, and are using this ability to influence rankings for major keywords more and more. So how does one go about getting more of these brand mentions?

Rather than talking about branding or general marketing practices, I would like to show you some specific ways you as an SEO can increase your brand mentions and signals. Here are 3 specific strategies you can start doing today:

Strategy #1: Blog Commenting

Blog commenting gets a bad rap in SEO because of the many years black-hat SEOs have spent spamming the crap out of WordPress and Blogspot blogs. But I’m talking about spamming. I’m talking about commenting on blog posts related to your brand and leaving valuable, insightful, and/or engaging comments to help add value to the blog. And because we are going for brand mentions, don’t let a blog that doesn’t allow links in the comment form stop you. Remember, you’re going after the brand mention not the link.

Strategy #2: Google+ Marketing

If you can find a way to get your brand mentioned by more Google+ users than lucky you… because this will have a direct impact on your rankings. The question is how? Become great at marketing on Google+ that’s how. The details of which is not meant for this article.

Strategy #3: Guest Posting

Guest posting done the old fashioned way. That is, going after guest blogs purely from a marketing perspective rather than from an SEO perspective. The more popular the blog, the better for you and your brand.

Strategy #4: Infographics

We all know how powerful Infographics can be. Make sure that your Logo is visually visible to all who view your infographic so there’s no question who worked hard to put it together. Then use sites like Visual.ly to get it out to the public.

Strategy #5: YouTube Videos

Don’t be too picky with your video content. Get in the habit of creating videos and publishing them on YouTube. Make sure that your brand is mentioned in the description of your video as well as a visual representation of your brand in the video itself. Remember… YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world so your efforts here are critical!

Strategy #6: Slideshare Presentations

Slideshare.net is like YouTube but for slideshow presentations. And trust me, people love consuming them! Create valuable slideshows with your logo front and center.

I challenge you to give these a try and work equally hard on building brand mentions as you do building anchor text backlinks. The results are not as far distant as they once were in doing this type of work. Two metrics I highly recommend you tracking to help you monitor your progress are 1) # of visits from branded keywords and 2) # of direct navigation visits. You can correlate your efforts to those 2 metrics which can then be correlated back to conversions and bottom line figures.

Nicole writes blog posts for www.eBrandz.com. They help companies increase their search engine rankings in an organic manner. Find an SEO Consultant India.