Ryan says: “My additional insight for SEOin2025 is to place a relentless focus on building your brand search volume.”

Relentless focus. That sounds a bit scary. Why is building brand search volume so important?

“I don't necessarily think it's such a scary thing, but I think there are some key points we need to focus on. One of them links to a study that Ahrefs put out a week or two ago, where they looked at 150,000,000 keywords via their data, and they found that approximately 45% of all of these keywords were brand-related in some way.”

Has that changed historically? Has that significantly increased or was that not really part of the study?

“It wasn't part of the recent study, but I know Rand Fishkin from SparkToro has done a few studies in the past, and the trend is gearing upwards at the minute.

I'm sure there are various reasons tying into it but it shows that, if we're not placing a focus on brand search volume, then there's a lot of traffic being left on the table if we're just rolling with the punches or doing what we've done in the past, essentially, and building that organic search volume without necessarily focusing on brand.”

I'm just wondering if bigger, older online brands will skew those figures. For instance, Amazon, eBay, and massive brands like that have been around for 20+ years now. If people use Google, they are going to search for ‘generic keyword + Amazon’, ‘+ eBay’, or wherever they actually want to buy an item from. That's perhaps nearly 100% brand search volume.

You've got up-and-coming brands and starter brands that need to establish themselves and, hopefully, get some generic search to begin with before they actually establish themselves as a brand.

Do you not think it's perhaps the more established brands that are skewing the fact that brand search volume is more common nowadays?

“Yeah, to a point. I know, just based on anecdotal data from myself, if I'm searching on Google, I have preferences for brands that I might go to for clothes, for instance, or trainers, if I'm looking for shoes.

I still don't think that takes away from the importance of smaller brands, or more up-and-coming brands, trying to focus on building that search volume, and I think that then links into the SERP changes that we see Google making, with AI overviews probably being your biggest example at the minute.

It kind of seems like, with AI overviews, their goal is to answer whatever the question is within the SERP. I think trying to, not necessarily target them exclusively, but get our brand mentioned within those AI overviews and those other SERP features that we see, which can then build the brand knowledge, which will then lead into when people start searching for other reasons – whether they're further down the funnel or searching competitors or something like that.

Then, they might also have that brand as front-of-mind as well, to potentially start searching for ‘your brand + whatever keywords’ as well.”

By the sound of it, what you’re saying is that brands are more important for Google and other search engines nowadays, because it's a different SERP with AI overviews and non-standard SERP result pages – i.e. not every page being 10 blue links.

It means that there are more opportunities for brands and, unless you actually focus on brand, then you won’t have an opportunity to feature on the real estate that exists nowadays.

“Yeah, absolutely that. We were talking just before we started recording about how I've been in SEO for nearly 10 years. When I first started, you might have had a couple of SERP features here and there but, for a lot of keywords, the SERPs were still almost exclusively those 10 blue links that we see. That's where we focused on, ‘Let's now just try and build organic traffic this way.’

I think, with the changes Google are trying to make at the minute, I can't answer for Google but, obviously, one of the things it looks like they're doing is they're trying to be as helpful as they can – and why wouldn't they?

Any SERP features that they can put out that might necessarily keep users using Google and answering their questions there and then, I can see them doing that.”

How do you measure success in increased brand search volume? If you've got something like AI overviews and other features in the SERPs, are there tools nowadays that actually do a decent job of being able to report back on that data?

“In terms of tools, I'm not necessarily sure that there are many tools out there, other than your standard keyword tracking tools, to measure the SERP for you.

But, when you're looking at brand as a whole (and even brand search volume as well), it doesn't necessarily have to come from search engines and that kind of thing. You can measure it by looking at brand search volume, which is obviously your main one, but then direct traffic as well, which is another success metric that you can use because that'll measure it coming from different search engines as well as different things like that.

SERP ownership as well. When you search your own brand keywords, what kind of features do you have there? Are you featured prominently in the knowledge panels, in the Google business profiles, etc.? Is that fully optimized?

Then you can look at social mentions and referrals as well, which can then, even further down the line, lead to branded search.

Then, a more ‘out there’ one that is focused off the SERP, where you can get a measure of how your brand is performing, is by doing customer surveys as well. That is one of the most important tasks in SEO because it'll help you know where your brand stands in terms of existing customers and maybe even leads as well.

Obviously, as you know, when your brand is regarded highly, then that'll lead to brand search volume in the future as well.”

How do you know which marketing activity increased the brand search volume or the direct traffic that you talk about?

“It's hard to know.

One of the things we do is using GTM tags and that kind of thing, if we're doing a particular campaign, which then leads to referral traffic or something like that, then we can attribute that to that.

I think attribution is messy as a whole, so it's one of those difficult things to really track. It's one of those ones that's just messy, and you've got to try and do the best job that you can of it.”

Can SEOs claim credit for increasing brand search volume? You would like to think that they can claim credit for all organic traffic, but I guess that's not the case.

“I think they can claim some credit, but I don't think they can necessarily claim all the credit just because there are a lot of different hands that will have a part in how your brand is regarded by customers, potential customers, etc.

That will even come from people outside of marketing itself. That will come from people who work in your sales team and how well they are following up on leads and being active that way. It'll have an impact with your ownership as well, if they're getting their personal brands out there, which will link into it in a way as well.

As SEOs, we all want to know that we're useful in some way, shape, or form – which, obviously, organic traffic's easy to measure as an SEO, but there are certainly tasks that we do that will also increase brand traffic as well as non-brand traffic. I think we can take some credit, but not all of the credit.”

It'd be good to talk a little bit about which SEO activities can increase brand search volumes. I'm talking about things like what SEO activities can impact AI overviews and perhaps other features on the SERP.

Then, on the other hand, what are the key non-SEO ways to increase brand search volumes? Perhaps SEOs having conversations with and impacting/influencing other marketing channels or departments to enhance their activities and encourage more brand searches.

Maybe starting off with SEO activities that they have direct control over initially. Do you have any thoughts on how to go about optimizing your site to make it more likely that you're going to appear on more recent SERP features?

“With SEO tasks as a whole, it will come down to what we've always been pretty good at, which is things like content production and being original with content production.

Anecdotally, if you were to search for something very top of the funnel on Google, an informative piece of content, you might read this really amazing piece of content, and then you might remember the brand from that.

It’s that traditional sales funnel technique that we've all been using for quite some time now, where you might resonate with that brand. ‘Oh, they put out a really nice piece of content. I might now search for their brand and what they do to try and find that out’ or ‘I might be aware of a competitor, but I'm not necessarily aware of who these guys are yet.’

I think content production is one of the biggest ones, but then making sure your website also caters for the entire funnel as well because brand search will come from lots of different places. It might come from someone checking out what you offer, whether it's product, services, etc. It might come from someone who's actively in that research stage just before that buying stage, and they might be looking at competitors versus you, or they might be set on a competitor but having one last little look.

Then it might come from people who are ready to buy as well, and who are just looking to get on the site and click on a CTA somewhere and get ready to actively buy. I think those are some of the biggest things that SEOs can contribute to brand search.”

Just a quick question in relation to what you're saying there.

Content production was one of the first areas that you focused on. How do you know what piece of content to produce for an AI overview? Is that any different to more conventional keyword research that you need to do?

“It's kind of the same thing, at least in my case, and the only examples I can give is the AI overviews that we've won that we can see. That's come from, you can do your keyword research using the tools and get a little bit of data to back you up, but then actively looking at that SERP as well in a few different locales that you might target.

VPNs are always a good option to use. Connect to some different servers and search your keyword there.

If we're targeting a certain keyword in the US, for instance, because we have an inkling that search volume might be higher (which it almost always is), I'll connect to a VPN in a server in the US and actively search that keyword there and often finding that it has an AI overview.

Then it comes down to what we used to do when featured snippets were the new big upcoming thing in SEO and seeing what's on the featured snippet. Finding what that generative AI is pulling out, looking at who's featured in those AI overviews and what information are they putting out. Not necessarily copying that, obviously, but making sure you have the same thing in and then making it better and that kind of thing.

That's the process that we've used before, and we've definitely had a few features in AI overviews that way as well.”

What were the non-SEO ways that you were going to mention there to increase brand traffic?

“So, for not exclusively SEO ways, one of your biggest ones is still going to be digital PR because that's the type of link building that they do, and the sort of brand building that they do.

Also (not necessarily tied to SEO, but it will have an impact on brand), working with a social media team or a video production team and that kind of thing, and getting content out – whether it's content that's related to the blog post and the content that you're putting out or not. Making sure you have social media content going out regularly, and you can obviously use social media to distribute your blog content as well.

Then, obviously, doing the same thing with video content as well.”

We've majored on Google here. Are there other up-and-coming AI search engines, or even discovery platforms, that you focus more on nowadays than you used to, as a way to actually demonstrate that brand search that you're managing to achieve?

“Yeah. Reddit. We’ve focused on that quite a bit since the news broke that Reddit would be featured prominently in SERPs.

Reddit was something we were targeting anyway but placing a more active focus on being an active presence in communities around what we do. For instance, I have an account, and I'm actively putting things on and replying to things in SEO subreddits and testing subreddits, obviously, because we're a testing source. It makes sense for us to be there as well.

Not necessarily doing that thing of answering the questions and saying, ‘Here's a piece of content.’ but, if someone asks a question and says, ‘I'm trying to do this, and I want to know if I should use a single test or an A/B test’, then I'll answer that question wholeheartedly.

Then I just make sure that, within my profile, my brand name is mentioned somewhere. Then, if they come in to look at that, they may say, ‘Okay, maybe I'll give them a look.’

That's one of the things we've been doing on Reddit. But then there are obviously lots of other search engines that you shouldn't necessarily ignore just because Google is still so big. You can still focus on Bing, that kind of thing, and the upcoming ones like SearchGPT, Perplexity, and those AI ones.

We've not necessarily placed a massive focus on that yet. We're still in the learning stage when it comes to that.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2025?

“I think they should spend less time doing that more traditional link building that we've seen before and focus on avenues such as digital PR and brand building, which will then lead to links as well.

Stop cramming inboxes, trying to get links to content, and focus generally on being helpful with the content that you put out, being helpful to people as a whole, and then links will come from that.”

Ryan Jones is Marketing Manager at SEOTesting, and you can find him over at SEOTesting.com.