Business Branding 2026: Control Your SERP | James Dooley Interviews Panel

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, 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 if someone has heard your name through word of mouth and they Google you, but also if you get cited by ChatGPT or something similar.

They are going to Google you straight away, and they have already had that vote from an AI search engine. 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 some mean things about you, so 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 you have been recommended to them, sometimes they are 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 not to transact. Especially in this day and age, when it is so easy through LLMs and search engines to Google your brand, if you do not control the narrative and positively reinforce it, you are leaving that to chance. I am not talking about platitudes. I am talking about actual information. Make sure you put good testimonials, reviews and proof 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 so that they 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 either convinces someone to do business with you or, at the very least, keeps them on track. If you have been recommended, positive brand messaging reassures them. They go, “My friend recommended them, and what I am seeing online looks like that was 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 talk about it here because it is relevant, is that my background is in teaching Latin and Greek as a languages teacher.

The reason I bring that up is because there is more than 2,000 years of very 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 they search your brand, you can infer 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 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 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, it is the business card. Your brand SERP is the business card of who you are and what you do.

They see that before they see your website if they are searching your name. That is more important than even what you are saying on your website. People like seeing what other people are saying about you. Mike, you touched on people who get seen in AI overviews and then might go on to search 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 you click that, it goes through and does your branded search. You do not even need to open a new tab and physically do a search. It links through to your branded search. So who you are, what you do, and why you create that initial brand SERP is key for the business. I love that idea that people have three choices. Are they going to order from you? Are they going to order from a competitor? Are they going to do nothing? Like you said, I reckon probably 70% of people do nothing, so you have only got a 30% chance of winning. You have to make certain that you are the choice for selling that product, providing that service, or whatever else it is. Mike, with business branding, let’s throw something out there. Let’s say you have an article ranked on page one in position two or three, just behind your brand, and it says, “Do not use this company.” They have had a bad experience and have gone out of their way to create an article saying not to use that company. What are you doing from an online reputation management or business branding point of view to suppress it, remove it, or control the narrative?

Mike Lovatt: I have seen people try to use negative SEO tactics to get things down, like mass spamming 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 gone and got a fairly average website and written something there, maybe a forum thread or something, trying to get stronger websites saying good things about you will eventually push that down. There is always the freshness factor, and eventually things will 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 go out and get interviews or guest appearances on podcasts. That is fresh, and it can be turned into blog posts and extra content. A lot of people would say the founder of the company has had some negative press. Can he get an interview on his university alumni website? That can outrank it. Can he get some kind of founder or business interview? Can we get positive testimonials published on other sites? You can pay for expensive PR with websites like Forbes, Business.com or Investing.com, and get that above a really negative forum post. Sometimes it is going to cost money, and they are going to have to throw money at it.

James Dooley: What about you, Paul?

Paul Truscott: I agree with everything Mike has just said, but one pre-emptive thing I see businesses simply not doing, and we even do this with our lead generation business, is responding to reviews.

Make sure you respond to not just bad reviews, but all reviews. Always respond to customers who complain, even if they have not left a review. Sometimes the bad press you get happens because you failed to address an issue. Sometimes you are the cause of these problems because you did not address the issue and fix it. Some of these things can be addressed before they happen. Other than that, I can only agree with what Mike said. If, after the event, you have negative content ranking there, I would not engage anyone to do spammy negative SEO tactics. That can backfire, and it is not an ethical way of going about it. It is far more beneficial in the long term to put your resources into positive reinforcement and try to push those negative things down. If you have higher authority, better semantically written content, more timely content and enough of it, you will start suppressing those bad results. Unless there is a lot of it, in which case you might have some fundamental things to address. But if it is just one or two things that you need to push down, I agree with Mike. Positive reinforcement is the way to go.

Luke Bastin: That makes sense. I would say the cold-blooded answer, which is simple to say but not simple to do, is that you need to outrank whatever the offending article is 10 times, push it onto page two, and then control what the LLMs say in terms of any specific citation synthesis.

That is when the issue goes away. It is easy to say and harder to do. 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 for your brand, you can push down negative ones. If someone types your brand into Google, they often get that dropdown or suggested extra words on the end. If you can start to control what those are, you can push down negative ones and stop those SERPs being searched in the first place, or at least mitigate them. That is a twist on what Paul is saying, but it is about cutting off the stem of search demand going to those articles in the first place.

James Dooley: Is there anything else with regards to business branding? If you could sum up business branding in 30 seconds, Mike, what would you say business branding is and what would you do?

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

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 they have not given them a refund. Just give them the refund. It is costing you more now with the bad review rating. Be nice.

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

Paul Truscott: As an extension of what Mike has just said, I have a thing I call the 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 outside your business and view it from outside as a customer would. It is harder to do than it sounds, but try to be as impartial as you can and 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 that you want. We could talk endlessly about the digital ways to do that, but fundamentally the biggest challenge and the biggest problem is that people do not want to be honest with themselves. That is really where it all stems from. A lot of these things can be avoided and pre-empted just 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 it is 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 this fantastic idea of serving lawyers in the US, for example, because you hear all these wonderful stories about how lucrative that is. That just may not be you. Objectively, going back to what Paul was saying, you may not be any good at that. It may not be a good fit. Find out who you are really good at serving. Find out who you do not want to serve. Base all of your messaging and every touchpoint people might have online 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 who your ideal customer persona is is key, and then you build all the marketing strategies around it.

For me, one of the most important parts is that, Paul, in previous videos, you spoke about being a good all-round marketer in general. When you do a good job and have a case study and a review, so many businesses are doing amazing things but 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 a really good job, they should turn that into a strong case study, get a review and a testimonial, and not just from the person they have been dealing with. If you work in a school, it could be the headteacher, the person you dealt with, or the sports teacher. Get three or four different testimonials from different people and wrap them into the case study. Spend money promoting that. It could be through press releases or guest posts in as many different places 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, getting that message out there. When you have done something good, shout and scream about it everywhere because I can guarantee that when you do something bad, and there will be times when you get upset customers, they will shout and scream about how bad you are. That is the key part of branding. I do not think people win enough awards when they could be winning awards. Even Mike, we laughed in another video when someone reached out 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 is quite cringey at times, but get the awards, reviews, testimonials and case studies. Shout and scream about why you are brilliant. The case studies should be for your ideal customer persona. If it was schools, and you have worked with other schools, other headteachers will see that and think, “That is what I want.” With business branding, we initially did it for people for online reputation management and to defend against bad press. But the amount of new business they have brought in from it now, because they look great online, shows it should have just been part of their business branding. They were only doing it to suppress bad articles, and now they are starting to realise that this is actual marketing. This is what they should be 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.