6 Steps Guide to Turn Your Unlinked Brand Mentions Into Backlinks

Have you ever wondered how often your brand is mentioned without a link and, more importantly, how you can benefit from it? You can turn these unlinked mentions into backlinks to your website. This way, you’ll get an opportunity to boost your online presence.

However, identifying and transforming unlinked mentions into valuable SEO assets requires a strategic outreach and digital networking approach. And we are here to talk about it in detail. If you are ready, let’s dive in.

Why Should You Monitor Unlinked Brand Mentions?

A study conducted by uSERP brought to light that unlinked brand mentions is one of the most effective link building tactics.

Regarding productivity, it is at the same level as Guest Posting (12%). Only Content Marketing (18%) and Digital PR (20%) provide better results. Therefore, you should definitely use this tactic to develop and strengthen your online project.

Monitoring unlinked brand mentions can bring numerous benefits to your business :

• Enhance brand visibility on search engines and awareness.
• Get new opportunities for engagement and community building.
• Gather insights into public perception and sentiment towards your brand.
• Build potential partnerships or collaboration opportunities.
• Bring organic traffic to your website.
• Improve SEO and website authority.
• Protect the brand’s reputation.
• Set a deeper connection with your target audience.

Let’s look at an example.

Imagine your company specializes in sustainable outdoor equipment. By monitoring unlinked mentions, you discovered a popular eco-conscious blog praising your latest product line but not any linked mentions linking to your website.

Recognizing this as an opportunity, you can reach out to the blog post’s editor and gently request a backlink. Consequently, you’ll get targeted traffic to your website and potentially new customers. Isn’t that great?

Let’s look at an example.

Imagine your company specializes in sustainable outdoor equipment. By monitoring unlinked mentions, you discovered a popular eco-conscious blog praising your latest product line but not linking to your website.

Recognizing this as an opportunity, you can reach out to the blog’s editor and gently request a backlink. Consequently, you’ll get targeted traffic to your website and potentially new customers. Isn’t that great?

Types of Unlinked Brand Mentions

Your company name is one of many keyword phrases that can be considered an unclaimed mention. Other references to your brand are also relevant. Here are some examples such mentions :

• Particular product names.
• Brand taglines or slogans (like Just Do It of Nike).
• CEO or key personnel names.
• Names of events or campaigns.
• Unique hashtags.
• Specific technologies, innovations, or features.
• Visual identifiers (logo, images, etc.).
• Proprietary terms or jargon.
• Project or case study unlinked mention.

Identifying these unlinked mentions, you can submit press releases, create targeted content, and initiate collaborations that align with how your brand is already being discussed online. This approach helps you open new opportunities to engage with the audience and correct misconceptions.

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Tools and Techniques to Find Unlinked Mentions

You probably think that you have to manually search for relevant unlinked mentions of your brand on the Internet through a search engine.

We fully agree that this approach is tedious, inefficient, and time-consuming. So don’t worry. We have something better for you. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it, including the tools you can use and examples to help you along the way.

Define Your Search Parameters

Start by listing all the keywords related to your brand that people might use in their online brand mentions. This list should include your company name, product name, unique slogans, or any proprietary terms.

Use Google Alerts

Set up Google Alerts to monitor your brand’s online mentions. Begin by identifying all relevant keywords associated with your brand online now, including its name, product names, key personnel, and even specific campaign slogans.

Let’s take a hypothetical brand EcoFriendlyGear. Your initial setup should include the brand name in various configurations, such as EcoFriendlyGear, Eco-Friendly Outdoor Gear, and other variations your audience might use.

To start, navigate the Google Alerts website and enter each keyword or phrase into the alert creation box. You have the option to customize your alert settings.

For comprehensive coverage, select to receive notifications as it happens and choose All Results to ensure you don’t miss any unlinked brand mentions.

Social Media Monitoring Tools Are Here to Help

There are several monitoring tools you can use. Among the most popular ones are Mention, Hootsuite, and Brand24.

In this part, we discuss the first of them in detail. It is a powerful, comprehensive tool designed for monitoring your brand’s presence across the Internet, with a strong focus on social media platforms.

How can you use Mention?

• Start by creating an account and logging in.
• Create a new alert by entering the keywords you want to monitor.
• Input your primary keywords and use exclusion terms to filter out irrelevant unlinked mentions.
• Choose where Mention should look for these keywords.
• Specify the languages and regions you’re interested in.

Mention provides real-time updates on your alerts by monitoring 1 billion sources daily. Be sure you’ll never miss a mention. Notifications are sent via email, in-app, or through integrated platforms like Slack. Moreover, you can respond to social media mentions directly from the platform, facilitating timely and efficient engagement with your audience.

It’s time for an example. Let’s continue with the brand EcoFriendlyGear we were talking about before.

After setting up Mention to track your brand name, you can receive real-time notifications whenever someone talks about your brand on platforms like X, Pinterest, TikTok, or YouTube.

This way, you can quickly engage with users who are promoting your products, address any negative feedback before it escalates, and identify trending topics or concerns among your audience.

If you want to learn more about how to use brand monitoring tools to get backlinks, check how Hunter built 200+ high-quality backlinks using Mention.

Use SEO Tools for Deeper Insights

You can employ Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to identify unlinked mentions on blogs, forums, and news sites.

These are also helpful in tracking backlinks. For instance, in Ahrefs, you have the Content Explorer. Search for EcoFriendlyGear, use the phrase site:ecofriendlygear.com to exclude your own site, and find external brand mentions on a particular site or blog post.

Conduct Manual Searches on Forums and Discussion Boards

Perform manual searches using your keywords on platforms like Reddit and industry-specific forums. These communities often discuss brands without linking to them. Try to search Reddit for threads discussing eco-friendly outdoor equipment and look for unlinked mentions of EcoFriendlyGear that aren’t hyperlinked.

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Analyze Video and Podcast Descriptions

You understand it correctly. Your brand can also be mentioned in videos or podcasts. It is an additional opportunity for you. YouTube, Vimeo, and podcast directories are your target platforms.

Use specific search functions to find videos and podcasts that mention your brand. Check the descriptions and comments for unlinked mentions of your brand.

Set Up Alerts for Image Mentions

Google Reverse Image Search or TinEye are two of the most helpful tools in this case. Use it to find where images related to your brand are being used online, which can lead to discovering unlinked text or finding brand mentions alongside images.

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Review and Update Your Search Parameters

As your brand becomes more powerful and successful, new products are launched, and campaigns are run, update your list of keywords and search parameters to ensure you’re not missing out on new unlinked brand mentions.

How Can You Convert Unlinked Mentions into Links?

Now that you know how to find unlinked mentions, you have an equally important task ahead – turn them into backlinks. Here’s the strategy we’re using to get relevant backlinks :

Evaluate the Mention for Relevance and Authority

Not all unlinked mentions on authoritative websites are created equal. To find unlinked brand mentions, begin by assessing the citation’s relevance to your brand and the website’s authority.

An unlinked mention on a reputable site closely aligned with your industry is more valuable than a passing one on a less relevant or lower authority resource.

Use tools like Moz’s Domain Authority Checker or Ahrefs Domain Rating to gauge the website’s credibility. Focus your efforts where they’ll have the most impact.

Be careful that the link you’ll ask for doesn’t come from a link farm.

Craft a Compelling Outreach Email

After you find unlinked mentions, you need to convert them into backlinks. Your outreach email is crucial for this. It should be concise and personalized and explain why adding a link would be mutually beneficial.

Highlight how the link adds value to their content or offers additional resources to their readers. Mention any shared connections or interests to make your email more personable.

Grammarly can help you write an error-free and entertaining email. The goal here is to make your request compelling enough that the recipient sees the benefit of taking action.

Follow Up Strategically

If you don’t receive a response to your initial outreach, don’t be disheartened. A strategic follow-up can often tip the balance. Wait for a week or two before sending a polite reminder, reiterating your request’s value succinctly.

Remember, persistence is key, but always maintain professionalism and respect for the recipient’s time. That’s crucial to obtain relevant mentions of your brand.

Offering a Reciprocal Value

Delivering something of value in return can help you transform unlinked mentions into valuable backlinks. This reciprocity facilitates the conversion process and lays the groundwork for mutually beneficial relationships.

Among various strategies such as free service access (for a month or year), reciprocal link, offer to write a guest post to replace broken links, exclusive discounts, product giveaways, etc., we recommend considering guest blogging

It involves creating and providing high-quality, relevant content for another website, which, in return, agrees to include a linked mention to your site within the content.

This strategy benefits both parties: your site gains a backlink, enhancing its SEO and driving targeted traffic, while the host site receives fresh, engaging content for its audience. Let’s talk about the key advantages of guest blogging.

• Guest blogging introduces your brand to a new, relevant audience, expanding visibility.
• Each guest post with a backlink to your site can improve your search engine ranking, driving more organic traffic.
• Sharing your expertise on reputable sites helps establish your brand as an authority.
• Collaborating with other websites opens up partnerships, and collaboration opportunities.
• Guest posts allow you to engage with audiences directly, answering comments and receiving feedback.

By the way, if you are interested in guest posting as one of the core strategies for your project, take a look at the Collaborator PR distribution marketplace.

Here, you can find a large catalog of relevant websites where you can post articles. Precise, upfront details about the site owners what each resource expects and offers can eliminate guesswork and facilitate smooth collaborations.

Track Your Outreach and Results

Track your outreach efforts, responses, and the unlinked brand mentions you successfully acquire to measure success and refine your strategy.

A simple spreadsheet can work, but CRM tools like HubSpot suggest more functionality, allowing you to automate follow-ups, schedule emails, and track interactions.

Documenting this process helps you understand what works, what doesn’t, and how you can improve future outreach efforts, so that you can claim even more brand mentions.

Engage and Build Relationships on Social Media

Building a rapport with potential link sources on social media before making an outreach attempt can significantly increase your chances of success. Engaging with their content by liking, commenting, and sharing can put you on their radar in a positive light.

Common Mistakes You Should Avoid

Turning unlinked mentions into backlinks is a nuanced strategy that, when executed correctly, can greatly boost your brand’s online presence.

However, several common pitfalls often undermine these efforts, leading to missed opportunities or damaging your brand’s reputation.

Understanding these mistakes can help you navigate the process more effectively and ensure your outreach efforts yield more unlinked brand mentions.

• Overlooking the quality of the site. Prioritizing quantity over quality, in many cases, leads to pursuing links from low-authority or irrelevant sites.
• Generic outreach messages. Sending impersonal, template-based outreach emails lacks sincerity and can decrease your chances of a positive response — personalization matters.
• Not offering genuine value. Proposals that lack a clear benefit to the site owner or their audience are less likely to be successful. Your proposal should be compelling and relevant.
• Ignoring follow-up etiquette. Following up too frequently or aggressively can alienate potential contacts. Be patient and respectful of people’s time and inbox space.
• Failing to track and analyze efforts. Not keeping a record of outreach attempts, responses, and outcomes can lead to disorganized efforts and missed opportunities for learning and improvement.

By taking a personalized approach, offering clear value, and maintaining a respectful follow-up protocol, you can improve your success rate in converting unlinked mentions into links.

Consistently analyzing your actions helps refine your strategy over time, making each attempt more effective than the last.

Conclusion

Turning unlinked mentions into backlinks is a powerful yet underutilized link-building SEO strategy that can significantly boost your online presence. However, as we’ve seen, this link-building tactic is nuanced and requires a thoughtful approach.

Each unlinked brand mention represents a chance to expand your brand’s footprint, but the quality of these conversions, not just the quantity, truly matters.

To easily find new unlinked mentions that you could transform into backlinks, try Mention for free!