Branding and SEO: The Secret Connection

Even sea­soned site own­ers fail to notice the con­nec­tions between search engine opti­miza­tion and brand­ing. Truth be told, some­times the rela­tions aren’t real­ly obvi­ous between these two, but you should know that improv­ing your rank­ings can actu­al­ly help you with brand aware­ness as well.

As a mat­ter of fact, brand aware­ness and SEO can make quite a good pair­ing, so cre­at­ing a rock-sol­id SEO brand­ing strat­e­gy can make sense.

And while SEO is pri­or­i­tized to gen­er­ate more organ­ic traf­fic, it can also enhance brand­ing efforts. And with the help of an expe­ri­enced brand­ing spe­cial­ist, you can def­i­nite­ly achieve both in one go.

As such, in this arti­cle, we will uncov­er how these two seem­ing­ly dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing strate­gies can help out each other.

Brand Awareness for SEO: The Relationship

The pur­pose of brand­ing is to become mem­o­rable. A busi­ness wants to be rec­og­nized and remem­bered, not just by its name, but its prod­ucts, val­ues, logo, vision, per­son­al­i­ty, and more. Great brand­ing can evoke recog­ni­tion, dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, build more cred­i­bil­i­ty, and ulti­mate­ly, trust.

Because busi­ness­es rarely grow with­out cus­tomer trust, brand­ing is one of the most impor­tant mar­ket­ing objec­tives in the dig­i­tal realm. When explor­ing the con­nec­tions between brand­ing and search mar­ket­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty, it’s sim­ple to see that SEO can do a great deal of improv­ing brand aware­ness and recognition.

SEO’s main objec­tive is to opti­mize web pages and sites to rank high­er in search engine result pages. With well-placed tai­lored, high-qual­i­ty, and valu­able brand­ed con­tent, busi­ness­es can help dri­ve traf­fic to their pages and, at the same time, help improve brand aware­ness as well.

And when you take a clos­er look at it, things make sense. Brand opti­miza­tion is evi­dent when you search for a key­word in Google and see the first few busi­ness­es relat­ed to the said key­word. The top-rank­ing spots alone are enough to evoke a strong sense of trust which is essen­tial for branding.

On the oth­er hand, brand aware­ness for SEO can also work, mean­ing brand­ing can also con­tribute to opti­miza­tion. As more and more peo­ple are aware of a busi­ness, the com­pa­ny can gain dig­i­tal momen­tum and might become more searched on search engines.

The SEO-brand con­nec­tion can also work in anoth­er way. Estab­lished and pop­u­lar brands also have a bet­ter organ­ic click-through rate, which is also a favor­able fac­tor in page ranking.

Benefits of a Good SEO Branding Strategy

When it comes to brand aware­ness for SEO, a lot of dif­fer­ent strate­gies can be imple­ment­ed. As a mat­ter of fact, SEO is gen­er­al­ly over­looked as a brand­ing tool, and even mar­keters often pri­or­i­tize oth­er meth­ods and chan­nels, such as paid adver­tis­ing, social media, and even event sponsorships.

• Organ­ic strat­e­gy: SEO is “ful­ly organ­ic,” mean­ing you don’t have to pay Google to rank you high­er. Vis­i­bil­i­ty and clicks are also free. On the flip side, SEO takes time, knowl­edge, expe­ri­ence, and con­stant work. Still, it’s among the most cost-effec­tive ways to boost brand awareness. 
• Boosts brand reach: This one is obvi­ous. The sole pur­pose of SEO is to make your busi­ness more vis­i­ble online. By improv­ing search mar­ket­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty, you also improve brand awareness.
• Helps estab­lish author­i­ty: When a page ranks among the top spots for a key­word, that means that the web­site it orig­i­nates from deliv­ers up-to-date, qual­i­ty infor­ma­tion and an out­stand­ing user expe­ri­ence. When the user sees your web­site there, they know that the site is a valu­able source, and this per­cep­tion is also cru­cial for brand aware­ness and trust-build­ing. It sim­ply exudes authority. 
• Qual­i­ty con­tent strength­ens brands: Pages rank high only when they can offer valu­able con­tent. Sim­ply put, these mate­ri­als show that the brand can offer solu­tions to vis­i­tor prob­lems. The con­tent we’re talk­ing about isn’t only about prod­ucts, ser­vices, and sales. Good con­tent will also address dif­fi­cul­ties, needs, and doubts. Infor­ma­tive and edu­ca­tion­al con­tent cre­ates con­fi­dence in a brand.
• Improves web­site expe­ri­ence: Rank­ing high also means com­ply­ing with the lat­est user expe­ri­ence prin­ci­ples. In this sense, SEO improves the over­all user expe­ri­ence, which car­ries over to brand­ing, as vis­i­tors asso­ciate the brand’s web­site with pos­i­tive feel­ings and perceptions.

How to Create an SEO Branding Strategy

As you might have guessed from above, a com­pre­hen­sive SEO strat­e­gy alone can help with your brand­ing efforts. How­ev­er, there are a few addi­tion­al steps you can take if you want to put more empha­sis on brand awareness.

• Pro­duce valu­able con­tent: This is obvi­ous but should be men­tioned nonethe­less. In order to cre­ate use­ful con­tent, focus on your client/buyer per­sona. Cre­ate con­tent that address­es and under­stands the persona’s needs, doubts, inten­tions, and char­ac­ter­is­tics. Strength­en your ties with your audi­ence and show that your brand is a valu­able source of help.
• Cre­ate expe­ri­ence-based con­tent: Brand­ing ties close­ly togeth­er with expe­ri­ence, exper­tise, and knowl­edge. Use your expe­ri­ences to cre­ate your con­tent. Tell your sto­ries and dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self with­in your SEO brand­ing strat­e­gy. Cre­ate authen­tic­i­ty and dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self from the competition.
• Improve user expe­ri­ence: We’ve already talked about the con­nec­tion between SEO, brand­ing, and UX. Great user expe­ri­ence can go a long way in build­ing trust, and it can gen­er­ate more traf­fic which can eas­i­ly boost brand aware­ness in the process. So, make sure to improve your nav­i­ga­tion, load­ing speeds, site secu­ri­ty, and site functionality.
• Focus on brand per­son­al­i­ty: When you’re improv­ing your search mar­ket­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty with qual­i­ty con­tent, make sure to “insert” the per­son­al­i­ty of your brand in the con­tent. Bet­ter yet, make sure to reflect that per­son­al­i­ty on the entire web­site. From blog posts to over­all site design, images, site lay­out – make sure that the entire plat­form reflects what your brand’s about. The tex­tu­al and visu­al lan­guage are both impor­tant, so make sure to use the right tone of voice, col­or palette, and design ele­ments that align with your brand’s mes­sage the most.
• Choose link-build­ing part­ners wise­ly: A good back­link strat­e­gy can also increase brand aware­ness, espe­cial­ly when you’re fea­tured by oth­er author­i­ta­tive sites with­in your indus­try. Make sure to choose a rep­utable part­ner with sim­i­lar brand­ing val­ues and image as yours.

Brand Awareness for SEO: Measuring Success

Mea­sur­ing brand aware­ness is no easy task since there aren’t real­ly direct met­rics that can give them actu­al insight. How­ev­er, there are some indi­ca­tors that can sig­nal whether a brand is get­ting noticed or not.

• Brand search­es: Keep an eye on your brand­ed key­words in Google Ana­lyt­ics. If they are doing well and show­ing that more and more peo­ple are using them, your brand is get­ting traction.
• Direct traf­fic: Just like brand­ed search­es, the met­rics of direct traf­fic can also show whether users active­ly remem­ber your busi­ness, i.e., brand.
• Brand men­tions: Fol­low brand men­tions through Google Alerts. These men­tions can appear on the web or social net­works, and they sig­nal that peo­ple are talk­ing about your brand online. As a mat­ter of fact, there are sev­er­al mon­i­tor­ing tools out there that can help with this.

Always Focus on Your Brand

When it comes to brand opti­miza­tion, it should be some­thing that sim­ply flows across your over­all mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. The fact of the mat­ter is that there are lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of oth­er busi­ness­es online from your indus­try offer­ing sim­i­lar prod­ucts and ser­vices. Your vision, brand mes­sage, and iden­ti­ty are most often the most dis­tinc­tive fac­tors which can dif­fer­en­ti­ate you from the rest of the pack. When know­ing this, it becomes much eas­i­er (and impor­tant) to boost brand aware­ness in every pos­si­ble way.

Pro­duc­ing con­tent that aligns with your brand val­ues show­cas­es your strengths, and author­i­ty is only one way to help you get noticed. In terms of SEO, you can also use qual­i­ty back­links from reli­able sites. Your web design and user expe­ri­ence also close­ly tie into SEO, help­ing boost brand aware­ness as well. 

Apart from SEO, a strong social media pres­ence (with you active­ly engag­ing with your fol­low­ers) can do won­ders for your brand­ing efforts. Even a well-designed newslet­ter strat­e­gy can evoke trust in your poten­tial customers.

Stand Out with the Help of Experts

After read­ing this arti­cle, you might find brand­ing a bit con­fus­ing. Cre­at­ing a sol­id and over­ar­ch­ing brand­ing strat­e­gy isn’t dif­fi­cult, but it does take time, exper­tise, expe­ri­ence, and knowl­edge. Hir­ing a team of sea­soned dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing experts such as our­selves can aid you in cre­at­ing a com­pre­hen­sive brand-focused mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that will put your busi­ness at the fore­front of your indus­try. If you’d like to know more, don’t hes­i­tate to reach out to us.