6/12: Brand Awareness for Web Publishers

All right, we'll go ahead and move forward here

So just to start, the topic for today's webinar is brand awareness, specifically for web publishers

Wanted to cover brand awareness because I think it's very relevant with the recent Google algorithm updates

and I think it's a topic that's not talked about nearly enough

So first, just to introduce myself, my name's Ryan. I am a publisher success manager here

I specialize in working with Level 3 publishers, trying to help them get the most out of Ezoic and grow their websites

I've been at Ezoic for six years, and I've worked in several other departments

such as the sales and onboarding team. I worked with the affiliate program for a while

I worked on some of the internal. training as well as the hiring. I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico with my wife

I have a one-year-old son and two cats. My hobbies are, I watch a lot of baseball, and my wife and I love movies

First thing, I just wanted to mention where you can find the rest of our webinars

We record and upload all of our webinars. Typically, it takes a couple days for us to get the recording up

But support.ezoic.com will have the webinar library. You can also access it in your publisher dashboard

dashboard clicking on the levels or the support section in your account settings

And there's also a blog post for every webinar. So we've got a great blog that covers a ton of excellent topics

The blog goes back to years too. So we've got some really good stuff in there. First, I want to go over what the agenda or plan for this webinar is going to be

I want to talk a little bit about why are we talking about brand awareness, why is it important to websites

I'm going to share a few tips and ways you can improve your brand awareness

I put digital footprint in here because digital footprint, I believe, is related

So I would like to share some ways that you can increase your digital footprint as well

And we'll finish off with the Q&A. feel free to put any questions that you have in the Q&A section

In addition, it would be really valuable if there is something that you're doing to improve your brand or increase your digital footprint

And I haven't covered it during the webinar. And you feel comfortable sharing with the group

By all means, please put that in the chat. I think with these webinars a lot of times, you know, we as Ezoikers get up here and talk

And I think there are some really valuable insights that we can learn from you as well. or if there's something that's working really well and you want to keep it a secret, that's okay, too

Okay, first, let's just define brand awareness. What do I mean by that

Brand awareness can just be described as users' overall familiarity with your website and your brand as a web publisher

I know we all probably love to get our sites in Google search results

Users can discover it there, maybe on other platforms. but would that user tell your site apart from the others

Would they know what your website is? Would they recall it from memory

Are they just aware of your brand? Brand awareness can be related, like I said, to digital footprint, but also to EEAT

We all know the acronym, expertise, experience, authority, trustworthiness, you know, sort of your authority and your sort of reliability in the niche is related to your brand

And then digital footprint, digital footprint, what I mean by that, digital footprint

it refers to the outside signals that point back to your website. So this can be your presence on, you know, social media sites

It can be backlinks. It can be guest posts, maybe even newsletters where your site is having, you know

email newsletters go out and you get traffic from there. So, yeah, overall brand awareness of your website's brand

Okay. Why is this important to your website? We all know that Google has had a few major, very impactful algorithm updates

one last year and one in March this year. You know, Azoic works with over 50,000 sites

So we have a lot of data to work off of, and we also keep an eye on other websites on the web

And we took a look at what was sort of common among the top traffic loss leaders

in those algorithm updates. and we looked at what was common among the winners in those algorithm updates

The most common denominator we saw among the lost leaders was the lack of overall branding

You know, I mean, this bucket's a lot of smaller sort of niche websites in there, but if they had little to know branding, they were more likely to see traffic losses

On the other hand, the winners from these updates were sites that had excellent brand awareness and promotion

I mean, it's no secret if you've taken a look at what's happened with your own site, you may notice that more large brands and large sort of conglomerate websites

have taken over higher positions and search results. Google's just promoting larger sites more often

I think it's unfortunate for smaller sites, but that's not necessarily something we have control over

So what we can learn from this and what we can use from what we learn from this data

is that as a publisher, it's become more important than ever to push very heavily into creating a brand

that aligns both with Google's EEAT and helpful content guidelines. So that's what I'm here to do today and what I hope to share with you

What can we do to help you sort of get a little bit of piece of the pie of what these

larger brands are doing? I thought I would share an example just to illustrate sort of what I was talking about just now

with what's happened with search results. So let's just look at an example keyword

and see what the search results look like. So I just typed in today's wordal answers as a keyword to see what popped up

We looked at the top search results here. What's common among all of these websites and these articles

These are all major brands for that keyword. So we've got Tom's Guide, CNET, NME, we've got PC Gamer, Parade Magazine, TechRadar

These are all websites that get tens of millions, hundreds of millions of millions of users a month A lot of them are probably owned by large media conglomerates So like large media company owns this large website in addition to others You know what you don see what you see

less often now are fewer sort of smaller niche websites. Before these updates, you know, we might

have seen, you know, smaller niche websites that were built around wordal answers. And you might

you might have seen a site that specialized in wordal answers show up in the search results

And I know that this is a bit of a crude answer because obviously

Wordle is a very popular game. It's understandable that the large brands would cover the wordal answers because it's a very

popular topic for users. But we have seen this exact scenario replicated across so many, so many keywords

just larger brands shown up at the top, smaller niche websites, getting pushed further

and further down in search results. So how does this relate to your website

you own a smaller niche website or a smaller site. I would say, you know, just to start, compare your website to another site in your niche

maybe a large brand. Like, let's use Tom's Guide as an example. Tom's Guide was the first website that we saw in that Wordle example

Ask yourself a couple of questions. How can you make your content more trustworthy than Tom's Guide

You know, this is a large brand. They're reliable. How can you make your content something

that the user would trust more than they would Tom's guide. In what ways can you, or ask yourself

in what ways is Tom's guide more effective than my website? Are they answering the question that

the user is asking more effectively? Are they doing a better job with the content than I'm doing

What can I do to make my content better? Third thing to ask yourself is, what can you do to

demonstrate that your content is more helpful than this big brand? Google published their helpful

content guidelines. Maybe there are some things that you can do to make your content more valuable

and more helpful to the user. Again, Tom Skate's a huge website. A lot of the brands, if you compare

your site to some of the brands that maybe are performing well in search results, you might look at

this as sort of a daunting task. It's a really, really difficult problem to solve when you're looking

and saying, wow, I'm competing with these large brands now. But that is simply how the game is

played now. It's a necessary part when you're considering the sort of long-term growth of your

website. The reality is, you know, you're going to find yourself competing more and more with

these large brands, just given what we've seen from a recent Google algorithm updates

So now I want to talk about a few tips for improving your branding. Just kind of throw some ideas

out there that you can use to hopefully build your brand awareness. Some of this you may have already

been doing. Hopefully some of this is new information. Maybe things you haven't tried before

If you've lost traffic in the updates, it's worth trying something new, right? The first thing I

want to talk about in terms of branding is your homepage. From what I've seen, homepages tend to be

very much an afterthought. A lot of websites, if you go to their homepage, you'll see it as

sort of a landing page just for recent articles. So how many times maybe you've gone on a website or

maybe your own website, if you go to the homepage, and it's simply just your most recent

articles that you've written. I believe that your homepage should be a really effective introduction to your brand

demonstrating your authority, your reliability in the niche, and your credibility over the

topics that you cover. And what I'll add to this, too, is that a lack of homepage or a sort of bare bones homepage with

only the recent articles, something like that. This was a common denominator, another common denominator among traffic loss leaders

So sites that had almost no homepage tended to see larger losses in traffic

So I wanted to explore, I wanted to go back to Tom's guide and just pick apart a couple of things from their homepage that I think they do really well, that I don't see on a lot of other sites that can feedback into what I was talking about, about making an effective homepage

page. And I want to highlight three sort of objects or screenshots from their homepage. So the first one

this is just the initial viewport or the first thing that you see when you go to tom's guide.com

Notice how they've got, they've got a few things that are really cool here. At the top

notice how they're present on all social media platforms. And they've got links at the top to

their presence on all those platforms. So they've got, you know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

YouTube, Pinterest. It looks like Flipboard. I think that is. They've got an RSS feed

They've got a link to subscribe. So users can just click to subscribe to their site

So they've got all of these like sort of examples of their digital footprint here at the top

They've also got, you know, they have their recent articles or their sort of latest news

It's a technology news website. But they've also got listed a few categories here that I would describe as like most popular, you know

So they've got the latest news. They've got, you know, their categories at the top

In the middle here, they've got links to like, what are the trending or most popular categories right now

iOS 18, iPhone 16, stuff like that. So they've got some really helpful links that go beyond just, hey, here are our most recent articles

And this is all in that initial viewpoint. They've also got a forum

Forums are great. That's where users can gain engagement. Two other things I think they do really well on the homepage

They've got a newsletter. They've got a link on the newsletter and a section where users are

can sign up, enter their email, and get Tom's Guide content sent to their email

A lot of users are still getting their content this way. You know, we're seeing newsletters still remain very popular

A lot of sites have a lot of success with newsletters. So it's great that on their homepage, they've got that there available for users

And then another, the last thing I want to highlight is they've got a section here that

introduces you to the writers of the articles that they have on their site, this sort of

meet the team section. It sort of plays back into EAT, right

It sort of plays back into them demonstrating sort of like their realness or their

authority in the niche. They've got a list of the writers that write on the website and a short snippet here

about sort of their expertise in the niche. I mean, some of these, you know, demonstrating that they have, you know, experience

and what they're writing in, things like that. I know not all of us can afford to pay writers

You know some of us we publish our websites ourselves and don have a team of writers But still I mean you can use this as an opportunity to introduce yourself a little bit on the homepage maybe write a little section about your expertise

So that's a very effective homepage. A lot of these other branded sites do something similar

to this. So I would definitely encourage you. If you find large branded websites

check out their homepage and see if that's something that you can explore or change on your own site

Next, I want to talk about the second aspect of what you can do to improve your brand awareness, which is increasing your digital footprint

There are a few concepts that we list here in this sort of diagram about digital footprint

I just want to touch on each one, and then I'll share a few examples of publishers, I think, who have done a really good job of doing these

And hopefully you can try one or two or maybe all of these and see if there's something that sticks

See if there's something that either brings more traffic to your site, gets your brand out there, you know, creates a new avenue for engagement, something like that

So starting at the top, getting involved in Reddit forums and threads

That was another thing we noticed with the algorithm updates. You probably see this too. There's a lot more Reddit showing up higher in search results

getting involved in Reddit forums, even other forum sites are a great way for you to engage

maybe a new audience and get your website out there. So you can create a Reddit account, use it as an opportunity to share maybe some of your

articles where it's relevant, comment, just in general engage in these sort of user-generated

content forums. Another great forum is Qura, kiora.com. This is a question and answer site

Users will ask questions and other users can answer questions on Kiora

Kiora is a great way for you to, if you have expertise in a niche

feel free to go on there and answer questions around that niche. And with Kiora, I'll share an example of this in a moment

One great thing about this is you can create a profile that is sort of branded for you

So your Kiora profile, maybe you answer a question about, you know

air conditioners or home improvement. and then your profile on Kiora is a link to your website

So a great way to source traffic and get your brand out there. You can start a Facebook group around your niche

I've seen a lot of publishers do this. If they publish content in the web publishing niche

I'm a part of a lot of those groups because I just like to learn more about publishing

and SEO and things like that. You can definitely feel free to start a Facebook group or a Facebook page

if you don't already have one around your niche. Facebook is just another really great way to reach an audience

Aside from Google, Facebook is one of the top traffic sources. It's still a platform that users engage very heavily in

So Facebook is something you should definitely, definitely utilize. Getting active on Twitter or X and responding to people in your community

I'll share an example of someone doing that. But Twitter is great for quick replies

There's a lot of action on there from web publishers. It's a great way to get your brand out there as well

Video content, video content, we have been talking about a ton over the last few months

If you're not taking advantage of video content, I strongly encourage you to, you know, whether

it's YouTube, definitely HUMICS, video content now shows in search results, but users a lot of times

you know, maybe use more YouTube than they do any other platform. So if you create some video content, that also is a way for you to reach sort of a different

type of user that maybe you wouldn't reach through other means. Other social site, LinkedIn is great

LinkedIn is sort of a professional resource. So I'd say there are probably certain niches related to, you know

professional or business that might do well on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn has some different things for engagement that are similar to Facebook

Guest posting, guest posting is a great way for you to get your brand out there

I know that a lot of these are paid opportunities. But, you know, it's a great way that you can sort of maybe tag along on a site that's larger

and reaches a different audience, you know, backlink to your site. The last thing would be a newsletter

I touched on newsletters before, but creating a newsletter around your niche is great

There are a lot of automated tools that can send email newsletters out

and, again, maybe reach another segment, another audience that you aren't reaching through other means

So those are all ideas for digital footprint. My suggestion, start with one of these

one or two of these. If you're not doing them already, try it out for a little bit, see if you gain any traction and go from there

I wanted to share a couple examples touching on digital footprint, just because I know that some of those are sort of general concepts

So I wanted to dive in specifically to what some publishers are doing. I'll start with Reddit

That was the first one I mentioned. Like I said, Reddit has seen such a significant traffic increase with the algorithm updates

and I think it's a great way to get traffic to your site and increase your brand

I found this user on a JavaScript subreddit. So on Reddit, there are different subreddits or groups where you can make posts

And this user, I can only assume webtips.dev is their website because their posts

they link to this website pretty frequently in their posts. And you can see on these posts, these are getting a lot of engagement

So they have, you know, on this most recent one, they have 18 comments, 531 of votes

So, you know, hundreds of users getting their eye, if not thousands of users, getting their eyeballs on this

With Reddit, there's a little bit, I think, of a learning curve. If you haven't used it, each of the subreddit, so like they're posting in the JavaScript subreddit because these are JavaScript tutorials

Their top rule in that subreddit is avoiding excessive self-promotion. So with Reddit, you know, you can promote your own content, but oftentimes they don't like if you're, you know, spamming your website constantly

So for this user, for example, you know, they have their website posted a lot of times, but they also have other posts

So it's not like they're only posting their own site. So just something to keep in mind, but just an idea if you haven't tried this out yet

Social media, I wanted to share three examples of social media. I included Kiora in there as well that I think are effective if you're not using these yet

The first one going back to Twitter this is the Twitter for not sure if you familiar with niche pursuits or not but this is a big influencer and publisher in the web publishing space He got a lot of great

information for publishers and he tweets all the time with information about Google algorithm

updates, SEO, how to build an online business, stuff like that. But he tweets a lot and he gets

a lot of replies. He's been able to develop a lot of followers and engage

through these tweets and these replies. He's got almost 31,000 followers that are seeing these tweets and, you know

subscribing to his profile. And he's got a link to his website

He actually puts a link to his newsletter in his Twitter profile. So he's got his brand very well established on Twitter

Facebook, you know, if you use Facebook, I'm sure you've seen web publishers and websites

that have their own Facebook page. So I grab the National Geographic just has a quick example

I know this is a large brand, but they've got a great branded Facebook page with a link to their website and they're sharing their posts

You can engage in Facebook groups as well. Facebook is a great tool with a lot of different option you can use

And then I wanted to share the Qura example as well. So I pulled up a Qura question and answer

So someone asked about will there be a seven season seven of them? Better Call Saul, TV show

And the top answer was this user, R.I. Topper answers the question

He goes into a lot of detail in answering this question. But you can see his Qura profile

It's his owner at R.I. Topper. R.I. Topper is, it's his YouTube channel

But you can do the same for a website, right? You can be an owner at your domain name, go on QRA, answer questions

that way you're sort of like I said getting your brand out there on a different platform

just opens up the chance for users that are using the Kiora to come across your brand

if you're on there if someone asks a question about home improvement what have you and

you have a website about home improvement that may be a user that is going to have other

home improvement needs in the future so they may visit your website in the future for other

things so yeah Kiora is great Finally wanted to touch on video again

I know, like I said, that we have talked about video a ton over the last few months here at Ezoic

We have the Humix tool, which now Humix videos are showing up in search results

So if you search terms now, you'll see some videos populate in search results, along with articles and blue links

This is an example of that. So this is a website, the hockey writers

they have their article showing up in search results, and they've also got a video

So that is another great way to get your brand out there. There are certain users who are just more apt to watch video than to read articles

So if you can get your content in sort of a different form or reach a different audience

that's just going to get your brand out there more and more. So use Humix. You can use Humix and YouTube at the same time

You can publish a video both on Humix, which will be on your website and on YouTube

So you can sort of reach both of those sort of audiences with video

You can also use the video that's available on social platforms. You know, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all have video platforms on them

Some of those, you know, if the user's watching the video, you know, sometimes that's going to be a user only watching the video on the social platform

maybe not coming back to your site. But again, just another way for you to get your brand out there

and increase your digital footprint. So that's video. I wanted to just touch on a few final thoughts

as I was putting this together and thinking about brand awareness. The first one is brand awareness

is really a long-term play. The brands that you see that populate in search results

many of those brands were not built overnight. There are a lot of successful websites

that started maybe 10, 15 years ago and now they're gigantic brands

But there's work that goes into that, right? And if you're only relying on Google search traffic, you know, you're just trying to optimize for SEO keywords

Or on the other side, maybe you are only using Facebook traffic. Like you're only trying to focus on this one sort of traffic source or this one way to put your website out there

You're missing out on other options to build your brand and increase your digital footprint

So it takes work. It takes testing. but, you know, these are sort of strategies that can help you see better traffic next year, the year after, really over the long term

The other thing that I'll mention, you know, I think the sentiment I'm getting from a lot of publishers, and I'm definitely feeling it too, you know

Seeing the large sites be the big winners in these most recent round of Google updates, it can feel defeating

It can be, it can be difficult. you're like, man, how am I going to get my site

You know, how am I going to get my traffic back? If I'm competing against these large brands and I'm competing against YouTube

and I'm competing against these big players, you can do things more effectively than them

There are things if you look at their content and you think about what are they not providing that I can provide

or what sort of questions are they not answering with this article that I can answer

If you think in that sort of term and you think that, yeah, I can compete with them on certain grounds

then that's going to pay off for you. You can't change the fact that they're large sites

They have a lot of authority. You can't change the fact that Google is now promoting them search results

But you have complete control over your own brand and the way that you compete

The last thing that I'll mention is that there are two other Azoic webinars that I think are really great and related to brand awareness

These both were done by our SEO team. So our SEO team has a bit of a different perspective on brand awareness

We have Robert who did a webinar about the March algorithm updates

Naturally, because the algorithm updates promoted a lot of brands, that webinar touches on a little bit of branding

And then my colleague, Zach, did a webinar about EEAT and its relation to SEO

Like I said, EEAT is related to brand as well