‘Brand mentions’ have become all the hype ever since the introduction of ChatGPT and the booming popularity of ‘AI SEO’.
This leaves off page SEO in a funny position – backlinks are still absolutely fundamental to ‘regular’ SEO (which drives 90% of the results of ‘AI SEO’) – but brand mentions are now the new buzzword that everyone is using.
So, what does this all mean?
Let’s compare brand mentions directly to backlinks to see which is actually the best option, and why combining both might make a lot more sense…
What Is A Brand Mention?
A ‘brand mention’ is literally when your brand is mentioned in a piece of content, usually in this context without a hyperlink (backlink) to your website.
Brand mentions are very popular because LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity tend to cite them quite commonly.
This makes sense, as these tools rely heavily on Google search results:
- Many reports have indicated that ChatGPT relies heavily on Google search results, and our own in-house testing confirms this as well. We actually guarantee citations via posting on high authority websites with our own service, and have results of this working across 20+ brands.
- Perplexity directly cites Google sources by searching the live web, gathering information from top-tier sources.
The Tl.DR here is that if your brand is mentioned in content on ‘high quality’ sources, there’s a good chance the mention will be cited by an LLM when a user searches for a related query.
This can then result in referral traffic to your website, which can then lead to new customers for your brand. Reports show that referral traffic from AI tends to be more highly converting, due to the conversational nature of the person asking questions and then visiting the site.
What Is A Backlink?
Ok, we know what a brand mention is – where do backlinks come into play?
Backlinks are just hyperlinks from one website to another, and can be dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, and so on. The ones SEOs tend to care most about are dofollow, as these pass link equity to the target site.
The confusion here is that not all backlinks are brand mentions, and not all brand mentions are backlinks.
SEOs often like to use specific anchor text (the referring text of the hyperlink) to target specific keywords – this means a car brand, for example, might build a backlink with anchor text ‘Best ways to wash a car’ to boost one of their informational guides on cleaning cars
In this example, the backlink would not be a brand mention – the opposite here would be a brand mention in an article that does not link back to the brand that is actually mentioned.
So, backlinks and brand mentions are not always the same thing, but often can be if branded anchor text is used.
Should You Prioritize Brand Mentions In The Age Of AI?
Brand mentions are exceptional for increasing AI visibility, as long as you are building them on relevant sources that are likely to get cited in AI:
- High DR and traffic websites in your niche.
- Traditional new websites, usually achieved via digital PR.
- Reddit – Ever since Reddit’s deal with Google, it has maintained high visibility in SERPs and AIs love to use it as a reference and training ground.
It’s obvious that brand mentions should be part of any search marketing strategy moving forward, but do backlinks have a place here as well?
The Goldilocks Brand Mention
Building brand mentions with backlinks can be risky, especially if the brand mention doesn’t actually get cited.
That’s where combining a backlink and brand mention comes into play.
By including the backlink, you’re supporting your traditional SEO efforts, which are still largely responsible for AI search performance.
This means that even if the brand mention isn’t picked up, the backlink will benefit your brand regardless.
The brand mention doesn’t need to be the backlink itself, either – you can include several brand mentions in the content, and then include the backlink somewhere else as well.
Obviously, this only works for articles that you can publish on other sites and have control over – digital PR does not usually give you enough control over the backlink to achieve this at scale.
How This Works
To put this into context, we build lots of backlinks for various clients and include brand mentions in the majority of the articles.
One of our tactics to do this is listicles on high authority websites.
ChatGPT and other LLMs cite listicles frequently, and it allows us to position our clients as the number 1 option in their industry for specific keywords.
When you search these keywords on ChatGPT, the listicles are often cited, and the client also benefits from the backlinks that are within the article.
We can work closely with clients to target specific queries, as well as build links to specific pages as well – supporting both traditional SEO, and AI visbility and traffic.
