SEO Branding: Take Advantage of Brand 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 are not taking advantage of 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 are hitting all your KPIs in your brand awareness strategy. Some of them might even choose your competitors since your competitors are vying for their attention and purchase as well.
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 are those that 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 are those containing the name of your company (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 who are interested to know more about your brand or are currently 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 in the hopes of finding information about your brand or going to your website. They only do this when they are considering the decision to buy from you or are intending to buy or hire you as soon as possible.
It helps you influence people’s buying decisions
During the consideration stage of their 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 on how to use 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 and you want your customers to find this help from you. Otherwise, they are more likely to see your business as lacking in the area of 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 their buying journey. Optimizing your website and relevant content for branded keywords helps your website attract visitors who are close to converting to your landing pages or articles.
Once they are there on these pages, your copy or content takes care of moving them further in their sales journey or converting them to customers. You only have to look at the times when you only intended to research a product after you gained brand awareness as an example 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 a necessity 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 make frequent posts on social media and 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 communicate its value and product or service offer effectively through the content you share in your marketing channels.
How to Optimize for Branded Search
Research search queries for your brand
Identify Google suggestions for your brand
Use keyword research tools
Look for branded search questions
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.