Why Single-Subject Sites Still Count as Brands

We’re a week away in the U.S. from another Presidential Election. I was reminded recently of a quote from CNN’s Jake Tapper after the first debate of the last Presidential Election cycle in 2020, where he described the evening’s proceedings as “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck.”

That’s probably a fair characterization of what publishers, especially smaller ones, feel about Google and the broader state of organic search in 2024.

We’re living through as tumultuous a period in Search as there’s been in recent history, with niche publishers and websites continuing to struggle with the fallout of the September 2023 Helpful Content Update.

Some sites affected by the HCU update recovered slightly after the August Core Update before returning to Earth. There continue to be very few documented cases of full HCU recovery, although they’ve slowly started to trickle in; seemingly around certain verticals.

In parallel, there’s been a lot of conversation about branding and how “building a brand” might be the answer to recovering or gaining traffic in this new day and age.

A recent study conducted by Moz’s Tom Capper suggested a correlation between sites that lost visibility during last September’s HCU and a lack of brand search activity, as expressed through Moz’s proprietary Brand Authority metric which takes into account, among other things, the relationship between branded searches and links.

Quoting Capper:

“The hypothesis, then, is that the helpful content system has something to do with a suspect ratio of search volume for a site’s navigational terms, to its link signals. If you have lots of links (over-SEOd?), and not much navigational interest in your site, you probably don’t deserve to rank as well as it might look like you do.”

Google has, as they have since last September’s HCU started, denied they favor big brands or even pay attention to brands at all, with search liaison Danny Sullivan recently stating in an interview with Aleyda Solis:

"Our ranking systems aren’t saying ‘are you a big brand therefore you rank’… The core of it isn’t really whether you’re big or you’re small; the core of it is whether you have the most useful, the most relevant, most satisfying information."

There have been many, many, many, many examples posted publicly that contradict this assertion that Google’s search algorithms only reward the best content. And Sullivan, to his credit, has admitted in both that interview and elsewhere, that Google doesn’t always get this right, despite their best efforts.

SEOs have learned over the years not to ignore what Google’s telling us but to use what’s being produced in the SERPs as the ultimate compass for what direction you should be moving in.

Whether or not you believe brand is or isn’t a ranking factor doesn’t matter. The real-world data Capper shared suggests some causal relationship between a website and its underlying signals as it relates to branding.

"So, this is not conclusive. But to my mind it is pretty compelling — HCU was about the demand for your brand. That makes sense, given what Google is trying to do — what they have always been trying to do — in avoiding embarrassing search results, and showing people what they expect to see. It also aligns, potentially, with some other studies of “over-SEO-d” websites being hurt by these updates."

What the heck is a brand anyway?

With all of the hype in recent years about personal brands, legacy brands, etc. we’ve probably gotten lost in the sauce of what a brand actually is in 2024.

One of the growing chorus of small publishers is the team behind the online dating app review site Healthy Framework.

From their post An Open Letter to Google from a Small Publisher:

“The internet has been riddled with people lately saying “go build a brand” and you’ll recover. What are small publishers like us who are passionate about something people only think about once in a blue moon supposed to do to “build a brand?” And does it even make sense to expect this of small publishers? Even if a niche site were to do everything right in building a brand they would still never be a household name.”

It’s a fair point. After all, many products and services are bought once by the end user and then never again, or at least for a long period of time.

For instance, the average shelf life of a refrigerator is 12 years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. So as a consumer, I might only need to visit a theoretical appliance review site that covers refrigerators once every decade or two. This means unless you give me another incentive to come back before that, I probably won’t.

There’s also the affiliate business model itself, particularly for sites that make money primarily off of lead generation.

When you’re not servicing the end user but instead, acting as a middleman to funnel them to somebody else, whomever somebody else is will capture most of the value in the transaction. And not just revenue from the sale itself but also any customer reviews and feedback, which are the lifeblood of most online businesses.

I’ve experienced this with clients and previous in-house roles where the publisher doesn’t own the customer relationship. For instance, the revenue model for the financial sites I worked on in my last full-time role was pure lead-gen. Once the consumer filled out the required information on our sites, their information was passed on to the partner, who worked the lead and (if all went well) sold the customer an insurance product.

We’d never hear from the end customer again unless we contacted them directly and begged for a review. And even then, it was hit-or-miss whether they even remembered who we were.

This lack of stickiness with the product, and the difficulty of generating return visits makes it hard for a niche site to build true brand equity, or so it seems.

So back to the question posed by the Healthy Framework team above: can a niche site, particularly one focused on a single product or service that might not often be thought about, be considered a brand?

To use Investopedia’s definition of a brand:

"A brand is a product or a business with a distinct identity among consumers. A brand is created through design, packaging, and advertising elements that distinguish the product from its competitors."

OK. So what’s the marker for whether or not a brand has a distinct identity?

I believe that the moment you have proof of a user seeing your site in search from a keyword that includes the name of your site, you can consider yourself a brand.

Even if it only registers a single impression in Google Search Console, it shows someone had the wherewithal to seek you out among the many faceless solutions available for a specific product or service.

A framework for determining where you sit on the brand spectrum

So we have a definition of a brand's meaning in a digital context. But there’s still a massive difference between a standard single-subject-matter “niche” site and some of the most well-known digital brands in the world.

How do we explain those differences? And what are the stages an emerging brand might pass through on the way to becoming more recognized by Google and other search engines, as well as users?

Let’s use the following framework, as illustrated by the pyramid below. There are four levels, with example brands below. The left rail represents what I would categorize as media companies or other publishers that lead with content. The right rail represents consumer goods or service providers.

You’ll notice a category called “Emerging Digital Brands” at the base of the pyramid. This represents a good amount of the web today. All websites, products or services that don’t have an existing, analog or physical brand, start here, no matter how much or how little attention they receive at the outset.

Some stay in this mode permanently, doing little to no work in the background to grow their brand. They may generate traffic and revenue temporarily or through seasons. But often, these are the first sites that get knocked back after Core Updates. Many, though not all, of the sites that were hit by last September’s HCU fall onto this bucket.

At this point, no matter how good your content, product, or service is, no matter how well you showcase your expertise, you’re still considered a commodity in Google’s eyes. And the longer you stay in this sandbox, the less likely it’ll be for you to ever climb out.

The next step up is a specialist digital brand. At this point, you’re perhaps not a “household name” to anyone outside your niche. But you’re getting some recognition.

This is the point where you’ve finally got some measure of branded traffic expressed through keyword data either in your own tools (e.g. Google Search Console) or that of the popular 3rd party keyword research tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs. People know who you are, and they’re actively seeking you out: either by just your name or with your name appended to some other modifier (“your brand name reviews,” for instance. Or the name of your YouTube channel + videos).

One of the review site model brands I mentioned in the pyramid above is RunRepeat, which specializes in sneaker reviews. They rank for tons of keywords related to shoe models, etc., which drives the bulk of their traffic. But they’ve also got a good number of people searching for their brand on both a stand-alone basis as well as in conjunction with of specific shoe models. There are enough people who hold RunRepeat in high enough regard that they’re actively looking for the site’s review of specific shoes before they buy.

If you continue to accrue branded search volume at a compounding rate, you might someday be a household digital brand. Think of brands like Wayfair, Booking.com and other well-known e-tailers. Not only do people seek them out by name but they’re known to people outside of those categories. For instance, I’m the farthest thing from a home decor enthusiast but I know just from their presence online that Wayfair is the place to go when I need to look for something at home.

And then, at the top you have the brands that transcend the digital landscape and are globally recognized in both physical and virtual spaces. That includes the Nikes, the Apples, the Proctor and Gambles and probably a few hundred other brands. From a publishing standpoint, though, it also means some of the digital goliaths like Forbes, CNN and the like who’ve been able to use their authority to muscle their way into some of the most lucrative digital spaces; not because their content’s necessarily better but because people know their name and associate it with quality.

Specialist digital brands can still beat household AND legacy brands in Search. Here are just two examples.

DogFoodAdvisor.com was started by Dr. Mike Sagman in 2008, who turned a simple WordPress blog into the number one resource for online dog food reviews. In 2023, he sold the site to the Wag! Group for $9 million, per a press release.

For years, the site has held #1 rankings for terms like “best dog food,” “best dog food brands,” “best puppy food” and countless others, over the likes of The Wirecutter, US News, and other household digital (and analog) brands who can’t seem to beat them for most keywords, despite the authority of their domains.

Branded keyword activity is also significant beyond just the head term/name of the site. People are actively seeking out 3rd party opinions as to whether or not the site is trustworthy.

Now, consider another affiliate-driven site I stumbled on, called Vacuum Wars.

This is largely the same story, albeit with an interesting twist. The site first built its brand on YouTube, now totaling just over 327,000 subscribers, while at the same time maintaining a much smaller web presence. For all the traction they made on YouTube, they had very little visibility on Google until this year, when you see that big spike around the August Core Update of 2024. They’ve since gone through a bit more flux but are currently ranking #1 for many high-volume, transactionally-oriented terms around vacuums and carpet cleaners.

Again, look at the branded search activity reflected numerically in volume and with 3rd party sites like this Reddit thread where people are actively looking for advice on the brand’s trustworthiness.

For now, just recognize that both sites have developed valuable digital brands despite being oriented around a single subject, not being “household names,” and offering reviews of products that might only be bought occasionally.

Takeaways

Don’t get hung up on the semantics of whether or not you’re what you might traditionally think of as a brand. Focus on what you can offer your audience that’s unique and differentiated enough that people actively seek you out: whether that’s along the lines of quality and detail that no one else offers, whether it’s your story; anything to help you stand out from the sea of undifferentiated, commodity content is likely to pay dividends for you down the road.