How good do you think your organization’s website is doing on google for branded search?

Last week I came across a major sports organization that did not have their official website on the first 8 pages of google search engine results pages(SERP)?.

The keywords that they should be owning were not leading users to their site as anywhere. I reached out to them and helped them but they made a few SEO mistakes that will take time to correct. 

How does something like that happen and what do you need to know to protect yourself from google algorithm changes and basic SEO mistakes. 

1. First we need to review where you are. Check your brand searches on your phone and desktop.
   
   You could use excellent SEO softwares to review this such as Semrush, Moz or a good freenium options such as Ubersuggests but for the most basic, simplest, fastest and free method anybody can do is go to incognito mode and search your brand name + important keywords (such as your name+ location, name+important product, name+ service).
   
   If you are not showing up well for these brand searches or worse not at all, we have big work to do.
   
   
2. If you have failed the brand search test altogether, don’t panic. It happens to thousands of organizations. You must first check if google has been given the ability to rank you.
   
   I have seen companies take security measures to prevent attacks and spammers but inadvertently blocked google at the same time.
   
   Google needs to be able to send little robots that crawl your site and index it for the ranking pages. Go to https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly and enter your website and it will also tell you if your site is being indexed.
   
   Alternatively go to google and type in site: + your company website eg
   site:https://www.mycompany.com/
1. Check how many pages are actually being indexed by the search engine
2. Ensure the most important pages are indexed
   
   
   
3. If your branded searches are not where they should be, let’s start with the basics. Make sure your website is mobile friendly. Sounds obvious but if you have a legacy website or a site that has not been formatted well, google may be punishing your reach.
   
   
   Use this link and enter your website to see how your site is performing
   https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly.
   
   Alternatively you can use https://www.experte.com/mobile-friendly to view loads of pages at the one time. 
   
   
   
4. To determine if your site has been punished by any recent changes, go to your google analytics account.
   
   Go to Acquisition > All Traffic>Channel>Organic Search.
   
   Toggle the dates as far back as you can and check the graph. If the graph is going down markedly, your page may need some TLC to get back up on organic search. (If you don’t have access to this, talk to your webmaster/IT team immediately. Key decision makers in the company should have access to this)
   
   
   
5. Get access to google search console. Different from Google analytics, this free feature is often overlooked. Here you can ensure your site is properly set up. You may need to verify ownership but once done you will be able to check:

1. 1. Has an XML sitemap been correctly added.
   2. Spot any mobile formatting issues
   3. See any issues with google's new core vitals and speed up the process of content ranking by requesting indexing. 
   4. Get insights to the actual keywords that are driving organic clicks and think about what's ranking and what is not ranking. 

Let that fuel your strategy for where the company is and where you want to take it over the next six months and beyond.



This small exercise is worth doing at least every six months as an SEO health check.