A brand SERP is the search results page that appears when someone types the name of your company, your product or yourself into Google. It is often the first impression a customer, a journalist or a partner has of you, so it is worth knowing what is on it and how much of it you can influence.
What a brand SERP contains
- Your official website, usually in first position, often with sitelinks to its main pages.
- Social profiles and other profiles that Google trusts as belonging to you.
- News, videos, images and reviews, when they exist.
- A Knowledge Panel on the side, when Google recognizes you as an entity. See how to earn a Google Knowledge Panel.
- Pages written by others, such as directories, articles and forum threads.
What you can control and what you cannot
You control the pages you own: your website and the profiles you create. You do not control what third parties write, and you cannot buy a place in the results. What you can do is make your own pages clear, consistent and easy to connect to one entity.
Practical steps to improve it
- Choose one entity home, a page that describes you completely. The idea is explained in what is a Google entity home.
- Add Organization or Person markup to it with the free Organization generator or Person generator.
- List your official profiles in the sameAs property and keep names and descriptions identical everywhere.
- Publish useful pages that answer what people ask about you, for example an About page and a page for each product or service.
- Look at the results regularly and fix the weak spots, such as missing profiles or outdated pages.
Check where you stand
Start by measuring. The brand reputation checker on this site looks at how your name appears in Google, and the guide how to use the free tool explains how to read the result. If you find that no panel appears, read why your brand has no Google Knowledge Panel for the usual causes.
Be patient
Changes to a brand SERP are slow. Google needs time to find your new pages, to trust your profiles and to connect them. Consistent work over several months matters more than any single trick.