Is it better to use your store brand or a popular brand for accessory products?

A JSON-LD for SEO customer emailed me the other day asking about using his store’s brand name when his products are accessories for another, more popular brand name.

As we currently only sell OUR BRAND products, we use the brand name of the device we’re supporting (so in the given example, we’re using "Apple" as the brand). It’s handy for admin product searches, but I’m concerned we might be harming our SEO.

We have the brand field hidden on our customer site but you’ll be well aware, it still gets submitted to Google. Do you know if it’s better for us to be using "Apple" or "OUR BRAND" for the purpose of Google SEO?

I’d use both your store’s brand and Apple in the product title and on the product page. The device brand name (Apple) will be searched for more and it acts like a model name.

Having your brand name in there will help make it stand out from competitors who have a generic screen protector.

For the product data setup I’d do the following.

• Have your store’s brand be the vendor.
• Use the product barcode (GTIN) which would become the manufacturer part number (MPN).
• Use your SKU if you have one, otherwise use the barcode.

Then you can send that data to Google Merchant Center without having to convert or scrub it.

Today would be a good day to Install JSON-LD for SEO if you haven’t yet.

It can take some time before Google awards Rich Snippets to a store so if you want to be competitive in 2018, you should get this done soon.