Business Branding 2026 – Control Your Brand SERP (James ft Paul Truscott, Luke Bastin & Mike Lovatt)

James Dooley: Business branding in 2026.

Why is it important to get that corporate brand looking good online? Is it part of your online reputation management strategy or is it not? Mike Lovatt, why is it important to have that brand SERP, that brand search engine results page, looking positive for your corporate brand?

Mike Lovatt: I think it is important not only when someone has heard your name through word of mouth and then Googles you, but also when you get cited by ChatGPT or something similar.

They are going to Google you straight away. They have already had that vote from an AI search engine, and if they Google you and see something undesirable or random scattered results, it does not look good. It is your digital presence. It is the front window of your office. It needs to look good, smart and professional. You want to see review stars, the right images and the right videos. If you do not paint a good picture of your own brand, then you are letting other people paint that picture. If you upset the wrong people, they are going to write mean things about you. You need to control the narrative yourself.

James Dooley: For sure. What about you, Paul? With regards to any brands that you work with, why is it important to sort that branding out initially?

Paul Truscott: I think this goes back to marketing techniques and marketing knowledge.

When people search online, even if they have been recommended to you, they are still going to search your brand. If you have a product that has been recommended, they are going to search your brand. A lot of people are searching because they want to be told not to spend the money. They are looking for a reason not to transact because they are in a state of uncertainty. It is always easier to not do something, and you should not give them any reason to avoid transacting. Especially now, when it is so easy through LLMs and search engines to Google your brand, you need to control the narrative. You need to positively control the narrative and reinforce it, not with platitudes, but with actual information. That means making sure you put good testimonials, reviews and proof points front and centre. A lot of people get reviews online through Google or Trustpilot, but what they should be doing is taking screenshots of those reviews and pushing them out further and wider. That helps you cover the SERPs with good testimonials and reviews. Get video testimonials from people if you can. Do everything you can to encourage people to produce something you can use online. That content can help convince someone to do business with you, or at the very least, keep them on track. If you have been recommended, it reassures them with a positive brand message. They think, “My friend recommended them, and what I am seeing online makes that look like a good decision.” People will look for any reason not to deal with anybody. I remember Dan Kennedy saying people always have three options. They can buy from you, they can buy from someone else, or they can do nothing. Most people do nothing. So do not give them that option. That is my take on it.

James Dooley: I love that. Luke, what about yourself?

Luke Bastin: One of the things I tend to keep secret, but I can probably talk about here because it is relevant, is that I used to teach Latin and Greek as a languages teacher.

The reason I bring that up is because there are more than 2,000 years of clear, documentable evidence that human nature has not changed that much just because we are online. It still comes down to whether a prospect knows, likes and trusts you, or your brand by extension. When someone searches your brand, you can infer that they already know who you are. That part is inferred by the fact they are searching for you. So it comes down to whether they like and trust you. Search engine results pages and LLM results give a very opinionated slant on what they think, and therefore what the user should think, about your brand. It is a wonderful opportunity to promote yourself in the ways you want to. At the moment, we are in this golden era of LLMs where you can pretty much prime them to say what you want them to say about your brand. You can start to get these technologies not just to know you, but also to like and trust you in terms of what they are saying about your brand. For all these reasons, I think this is hugely important for corporate online branding.

James Dooley: For sure.

For me, your brand SERP is the business card of who you are and what you do. People see it before they see your website if they are searching your name. That makes it more important than what you are saying on your website. People like seeing what other people are saying about you. Mike, you touched on people seeing you in AI overviews and then searching for you. Even more than that, a lot of the time in AI overviews, when you get mentioned, you get the dotted link underneath your name. When someone clicks on that, it goes through and does your branded search. They do not even need to open a new tab and search manually. It links through to your branded search. So who you are, what you do and why you are credible becomes key through that initial brand SERP. I also love the idea that people have three choices. Are they going to order from you, order from a competitor or do nothing? I reckon probably 70% of people do nothing. So you only have a 30% chance of winning, and you have to make certain that you are the choice for that product, service or offer. Mike, with business branding, what are you doing if you have an article ranking on page one, maybe position two or three, just behind your brand, and it says “do not use this company”? If someone has had a bad experience and created an article saying not to use a company, what are you doing from an online reputation management or business branding point of view? How do you suppress it, remove it or control that narrative?

Mike Lovatt: I have seen people try to use negative SEO tactics to get things down, like mass spamming pages with commercial anchor text links or adult-themed links. That has worked before.

But from the other side of the hat, getting better quality press mentions is probably the best thing to do. If someone has created a fairly average website or forum thread saying something negative, trying to get stronger websites saying positive things about you will eventually push that down. There is also a freshness factor where things will eventually drop over time, but it is better to be proactive and have content ready to go already. One of the best things you can do is get interviews, guest appearances on podcasts and similar content. That is fresh, and it can be turned into blog posts and extra content. If the founder of a company has had negative press, can they get an interview on their university alumni website? That can outrank it. Can they get a founder story or business interview published somewhere? Can they get positive testimonials published on other sites? Sometimes you may need to pay for expensive PR on places like Forbes, Business.com or Investing.com to get that above a negative forum post. Sometimes it is going to cost money, and companies are going to have to throw money at it.

James Dooley: What about you, Paul?

Paul Truscott: I agree with everything Mike just said.

One pre-emptive thing I see businesses simply not doing is responding to all reviews, not just bad reviews. We even do this with our lead generation business. Always respond to customers who complain, even if they have not left a review. Sometimes the bad press you get is because you failed to address an issue. Sometimes you are directly causing the problem by not fixing the issue properly. Some of these things can be addressed before they happen. Other than that, I agree with Mike. If the negative content is already there, I would not use spammy negative SEO tactics. That can backfire. It is also not an ethical way to approach it. It is far more beneficial long term to put your resources into positive reinforcement and push negative results down. If you have more high-authority, semantically written and up-to-date content, and you do enough of it, you can start suppressing those bad results. If there is a lot of negative content, you may have fundamental issues to address. But if it is just one or two things you need to push down, I agree with Mike. Use positive reinforcement.

Luke Bastin: That makes sense.

The cold-blooded simple answer, although it is simple to say and not simple to do, is that you need to outrank the offending article ten times, push it onto page two, and control what LLMs say in terms of specific citation synthesis. That is when the issue goes away. Until you get to that point, one thing you can do is potentially stop or mitigate the issue at source. If you control some of the autosuggest suggestions when someone searches your brand, you can push down negative ones. When someone types your brand into Google, they often see suggested extra words in the dropdown. If you can control what those suggestions are, you can reduce how often negative SERPs are searched in the first place. That is a twist on what Paul is saying. You are trying to cut off the search demand going to those articles.

James Dooley: Is there anything else with regards to business branding?

Mike, if you could sum up business branding in 30 seconds, what would you say it is and what would you do?

Mike Lovatt: Do a good job with your business and make sure your online message portrays that.

Like Paul said, a lot can be avoided by fixing issues in the first place. You see a lot of companies with three-star reviews on TripAdvisor because people have asked for refunds and the company has refused. Just give them the refund. It is costing you more now through a bad review rating. Be nice.

James Dooley: For sure. What about yourself, Paul?

Paul Truscott: I would extend what Mike said.

I have a thing I call ugly baby syndrome. Everyone can see an ugly baby, but the only person it is not ugly to is the mother. A lot of businesses are like this. The business owner does not see the reality of what they have created. You need to step out from inside your business and view it from the outside as a customer would. It is harder to do than it sounds, but try to be as impartial as you can. Be honest with yourself about what your brand actually looks like to the outside world, then set about fixing things if it is not the image you want. We could go on and on about the digital ways to do that, but fundamentally the biggest problem is that people do not want to be honest with themselves. That is where it all stems from. A lot of these things can be avoided and pre-empted by being brutally honest with yourself about what you represent as a brand.

James Dooley: What about yourself, Luke?

Luke Bastin: I would say spend as much time as you need to identify who you serve, who you want to serve, who you are a good fit for, and equally who you are not a good fit for.

You might have a fantastic idea of serving lawyers in the US because you hear stories about how lucrative that market is. That just may not be you. You may not objectively be any good at that. It might not be a good fit. Find out who you are really good at serving and who you do not want to serve. Base all of your messaging and every online touchpoint around the people you do want to serve. Then double down on what you know is a good match, and it becomes a virtuous circle from there.

James Dooley: I completely agree. Understanding your ideal customer persona is key, then building all your marketing strategies around it.

For me, the most important part is that when you do a good job, get a case study and secure a review. So many businesses are doing amazing things, but they are just not shouting and screaming about it enough. They obsess when something goes wrong and say, “We need to fix it.” But when they have done a really good job, they do not turn it into a strong case study. They should be trying to get reviews and testimonials, not just from the person they dealt with directly. If you worked with a school, it could be the head teacher, the sports teacher or another stakeholder. Go and get three or four testimonials from the different people connected to that case study. Spend money promoting it. Use press releases, guest posts and as many platforms as possible. Then share it across every social media platform, repeating who you are, what you do and why you are brilliant. That is the key to business branding. When you have done something good, shout about it everywhere. When you do something bad, and there will be times when customers are upset, they will shout about how bad you are. That is the key part to branding. I do not think people win enough awards when they could be winning awards. Mike, we laughed in one of the other videos about someone reaching out and saying, “Do you want to attend this awards night? It is going to cost you £500.” Attend some of them. Get some awards. I know it can be cringeworthy, but get the awards, reviews, testimonials and case studies. Shout about why you are brilliant. Those case studies should match your ideal customer persona. If you work with schools, and other head teachers see that, they will think, “That is what I want.” With business branding, we were initially doing it for people as online reputation management to defend against bad press. But it has now brought them new business because they look great online. It should have been part of their business branding from the start, but they were only doing it to suppress bad articles. Now they are realising that this is actual marketing. This is what they should have been doing. You do not need to be reactive. You should be proactive in controlling that brand. Anyway, guys, it has been an absolute pleasure. Mike, Paul, Luke, I hope you liked this podcast on business branding in 2026.