Take Advantage of IBrand Awareness for SEO

A brand awareness strategy is one of the most important investments you can make for your business. It is the primary driver for your target market’s familiarity with your product or service and unique positioning in the market. It also increases your chances of converting new customers since people are more likely to buy from brands they know.

However, your results can fall short if you do not use your audience’s brand awareness for your SEO strategy. Potential customers will find it difficult to learn more about what you offer since your website does not appear at the top of their search results. This can lead to slower conversions even if you hit all your KPIs in your brand awareness strategy. Some might even choose your competitors since they are also vying for the customer’s attention and purchase.

So, what can you do to avoid this? This is where SEO branding can help you.

What is SEO Branding?

Search engine users use two kinds of search queries – non-branded and branded. Non-branded search queries do not refer to a brand name but may refer to your product, service, industry, or any other topic relevant to your business. On the other hand, branded search queries contain your company’s name (this does not include keywords that include other brand names).

SEO branding is the process of optimizing your website for branded search queries. It aims to have your website and the relevant pages rank on top of the results for any search query that contains your company’s brand name. When done right, it can bring visitors interested to know more about your brand or who are considering purchasing your product or service.

Why You Need to Optimize for Branded Search

It can be difficult to picture brand awareness contributing to your website’s SEO. It is usually the other way around – implementing SEO for better brand awareness by targeting top-of-the-funnel keywords. But, optimizing your website for branded search leads to the following benefits:

Branded search attracts high-intent search traffic.

Search engine users who search for your brand name do so, hoping to find information about your brand or go to your website. They only do this when deciding to buy from you or they intend to hire you as soon as possible.

It helps you influence people’s buying decisions.

During the consideration stage of the buyers’ journey, your potential customers search for branded search queries to find information that will help them in their decision. Optimizing for branded search can help you dominate the first page of their search results with pages relevant to their query. And, with the right content on these pages, your website visitors are more likely to become your customers.

It is crucial for after-sales support.

Some of your customers will have questions about using your product or service or have issues with their experience. When this happens, they will search online for the relevant information with your brand name. You want your customers to find this help from you. Otherwise, they are more likely to see your business as lacking in customer support.

It prevents the competition from poaching your customers

Other brands can bid on your branded keywords for PPC ads. Your customers are not likely to click on these ads since they are looking for content from your website. However, if they do not find what they are looking for in their search results, it only takes catchy copywriting to draw their attention and have a competitor get a shot at converting them into customers.

It is crucial for converting your audience into customers.

People who search for branded keywords are further along in their buying journey. Optimizing your website and relevant content for branded keywords helps your website attract visitors who are close to converting to customers.

Once they are there on these pages, your copy or content moves them further in their sales journey or converts them to customers. For example, look at the times when you only intended to research a product after gaining brand awareness but ended up buying after reading an article or sales copy.

What You Need Before Using Brand Awareness for SEO

The awareness of your audience in regards to your brand is necessary if you want to take advantage of branded search for your marketing efforts. However, do not make the mistake that it only requires you to post frequently on social media with several articles on your website. This only takes care of brand visibility but falls short of creating brand awareness.

So, what is brand awareness? In business, this is how familiar your target market is with your brand and how well they recognize it, its values, and its products or services.

To create awareness for your brand, your audience must have no trouble recognizing it. This requires creating recognizable brand elements such as your logo, aesthetics, and voice. You must also effectively communicate its value and product or service offer through the content you share in your marketing channels.

How to Optimize for Branded Search

Research search queries for your brand

You must first find out what people search for that contains your brand name. Here are some tasks you must accomplish to find these:

Identify Google suggestions for your brand

Google suggestions show search users the most frequently searched queries that include your brand name. Optimizing your website for these branded keywords is crucial since some suggestions may lead them to consider alternatives with bad information. With content in place, you can control this risk and provide information you want your audience to see.

Use keyword research tools

Using keyword research tools is the basic approach for finding keywords that can bring quality traffic to your website. This remains the same when it comes to researching branded search queries. What makes it different for researching branded keywords is you are looking for popular queries that contain your brand name.

Look for branded search questions

Questions get additional visibility in search engines. Because of this, it is important to identify any questions people are searching for related to your brand. You can use keyword research tools to find these by filtering the results to those that are questions. You can also take inspiration from the questions in the People Also Ask section of the results for the branded keywords you found in your research.

Some keyword research tools have a feature for finding search questions related to a particular keyword. You can use this feature by using your brand name or a branded search query as its basis.

Conduct a branded search audit

Once you have identified some of your keywords, you can start analyzing the current state of your website in terms of branded search. A branded search audit identifies gaps in your branded content and lapses in best practices for branded search optimization. Some of what it looks out for includes placing your brand name in the meta title of your pages and having pages dedicated to branded content and FAQs on your website.

Categorize your branded search queries based on search intent

Identifying the search intent for each query will help you determine the best approach to optimizing your website for it. Here are the different search intents your audience will have when performing a branded search for your business:

Identifying the search intent for each query will help you determine the best approach to optimizing your website for it. Here are the different search intents your audience will have when performing a branded search for your business:
Competitive research– Your audience performs this search when looking for alternatives to your offer. This type of search has “alternative”, “competitors”, and “substitute” as part of their search query.
Transactional search– People make this search when they are considering a purchase. The transactional search contains “buy”, “price”, or “near me” with your brand name in the query.
Commercial search– These searches look for reviews and information about your brand or your specific product or service. Branded search under this category contains the keywords “review”, “vs alternative brand”, and “best”.
Navigational search– These searches are performed when your website users are looking for a specific section or page on your website. Alternatively, your customers may also search for this type of query when they have trouble using a feature of your product or service.

Assign the appropriate action for each branded query

Once you have determined the search intent for the keywords you researched, you will have an easier time deciding on the appropriate action for optimizing your website for each branded query. Here are the different ways you can target branded search queries based on the user’s intent:

Add relevant content to an existing article– This is best for branded queries with informational or navigational intent. You can take this approach as long as it fits the context of the content. If it is in question form, using it as a header and providing the appropriate answer as content is best.
Create a new article– You can take this approach when the search query has enough substance to create an article or blog post of at least 800 words. This can apply to queries with informative, commercial, and navigational search intents.
Create a landing page– This is best used for branded search queries for competitive research or with commercial or transactional intent. Examples of landing pages include product or service, sales, comparison, contact, and signup pages.
Add another item to your FAQ page– This is another approach for targeting branded search questions with an informative or navigational intent. This is best for questions that require a short and straight-to-the-point response.
Add another item to your FAQ page– This is another approach for targeting branded search questions with an informative or navigational intent. This is best for questions that require a short and straight-to-the-point response.

Consider creating a small website for your most popular branded search

If you have a very popular product or service, you can create a dedicated website separate from your main website. This is the best approach if you have several products, product categories, or product lines, and one of them has a significant branded search volume.

Interlink relevant pages and other channels of your brand

Links remain an important part of optimizing your website for branded search. Here are some linking opportunities you can pursue to build your website’s authority for your branded keywords:

Links remain an important part of optimizing your website for branded search. Here are some linking opportunities you can pursue to build your website’s authority for your branded keywords:
Place links on your website that lead to your brand’s social media or business directory page
Leave links to your homepage in your video descriptions

Take Advantage of Brand Awareness and SEO for More Conversions!

Brand awareness significantly contributes to your goals in branding SEO and conversions. Follow the steps provided to create content and optimize your content for branded keywords, and you will find your website attracting more potential customers who only need the right information before they buy what you offer.

Aside from brand building and SEO, Big Market Solutions can also provide services to build your brand from the ground up. This includes brand identity services, social media management, traditional media design, video marketing, and lead generation. Contact us today for a free marketing consultation to find out how you can take advantage of what we offer.

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