This article explores seven key SEO strategies that will help you transform your SEO efforts into a brand-building powerhouse. You'll learn how to target branded keywords, craft high-quality content, leverage social media, and optimize your website for a seamless user experience.
While a strong brand can boost your SEO efforts, a well-planned SEO strategy can significantly improve your brand image. This article explores five key strategies to leverage SEO for effective brand building.
What You Will Learn From This Article?
This article dives into the powerful synergy between SEO and branding. You’ll discover proven strategies to leverage SEO and:
Learn how to target branded keywords, utilize social media effectively, and implement PR tactics to get your brand seen by the right audience.
Explore link-building strategies to enhance your website’s authority and discover how high-quality content can establish your brand.
Learn how on-page SEOand technical SEO optimizations can create a seamless user experience that fosters trust and brand loyalty.
Uncover key metrics to monitor the effectiveness of your SEO efforts for branding, including brand mentions, social media engagement, and website traffic sources.
By implementing these strategies, you’ll be well on your way to leveraging SEO to build a strong and successful brand.
How to Improve Your Branding With SEO? 7 Ways Worth Considering
1. Find Branded Keywords
No SEO campaign can start without keyword analysis. The same goes for branding campaigns. If you want to increase brand recognition, then when conducting keyword research, you should primarily focus on queries containing your brand’s name.
Focusing on branded keywords will help you effectively increase your web traffic in the long run. Once the search volume for keywords containing your brand is increased, you can start working on getting higher positions in the search results on non-branded keywords. Why? Google will most likely associate them with your brand and consider them more relevant.
Users enter branded keywords in Google in different ways. When identifying keywords on which you want to target your SEO activities, consider the following choices:
ROPO (Research Online, Purchase Offline) queries – the user has chosen your brand, and now they’re looking for more information about it, e.g., “Delante reviews”;
Comparing your brand to your competitors – the user has probably already heard great things about your brand, but now they want to compare it with the competition and then make the final decision, e.g., “Microsoft Azure vs Amazon Web Services”;
High-intent keywords – add your service or product with the highest conversion potential to your brand name, e.g., “Delante international SEO.”
2. Plan High Quality Link Building Process
Link building is by far one of the most important SEO activities off-site that can support your branding. However, it must be well-planned and perfectly thought out. Many people insist that when it comes to the link building process, only the number of backlinks matters… well, they can’t be more wrong! Sometimes small number of backlinks leading from trusted domains with great parameters and high web traffic can do wonders. If you want your link-building process to be effective and increase brand visibility, you should keep the following rules in mind:
Select only domains trusted by Google and users – if your business is mentioned on reputable websites, you increase brand credibility,
Add some visual content, such as infographics – it attracts users’ attention and makes a post about your brand more visible and eye-catching. What’s more, users are willing to share visual content on social media,
Pay attention to the SEO parameters of domains – Domain Authority (DA) from MOZ and Domain Rating (DR) from Ahrefs are especially trustworthy,
Conduct a competitive analysis and discover on which websites your strongest competitors have backlinks,
Invest in sponsored articles – preferably from websites related to your industry,
Ask your business partner or the company you cooperate with to add a link on their website – e.g., a link in the “Our Clients” section or a case study.
Owing to the above-mentioned link-building strategies, you can increase brand awareness first, and then brand credibility—Google and your potential customers will appreciate all these activities.
3. Promote Your Brand in Social Media
There is no need to explain to anyone how great the power social media have. So, if you want to increase brand awareness and connect with your target audience, follow the latest trends in social media and have accounts on at least a few platforms with the greatest potential for your business. Users have much more trust in active brands on social media, i.e., they post regularly, organize contests, and answer questions in comments.
Social media can also be a great help with SEO — keep in mind that Google crawlers also index posts in social media, which means that Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit will be the perfect place to add strong backlinks to your website. After all, social media have massive web traffic and high SEO parameters.
If you want your social media account to really contribute to both SEO and branding, you must optimize it properly. How? Here are some ideas:
describe your business and your values briefly (include the most important keyword),
add a link to the home page,
provide contact information: opening hours, phone number, e-mail, address,
present your team—let the target audience know that there are real people behind your brand.
Source: Delante’s Linkedin.
4. Focus on Local SEO
Data shows that 87% of consumers used Google to evaluate local businesses in 2022. This means that focusing your SEO campaign on the locality can effectively improve your branding, especially if you are, in fact, a local business.
Remember that local SEO is quite different from global campaigns. Will SEO campaigns for companies in each location be the same? Well, no, they won’t! Whether you want to do local SEO for a beauty salon or a dentist in a big urban area like Berlin or Paris or a small town like Verona or Salzburg, it really matters! Local businesses in big cities have much stronger competition, so reaching out to potential customers is harder. If you want to improve branding with local SEO, you must remember the following things:
create a Google BusinessProfile so users will find out more easily that you are running a local business nearby,
create an Apple Map listing — especially useful for iPhone users,
add your business to local NAPs,
monitor user reviews — respond to their comments and reviews,
optimize your website for local SEO:
add a city to your local business in keywords, e.g., “Delante Krakow”
create a local landing page,
optimize your home page using local keywords (in the particular title tag, meta description, and H1 heading).
5. Create Content Tailored to Your Target Audience
Content marketing is one of the best ways for your target audience to learn more about your brand. By creating high-quality, informative content on your website, you can increase web traffic in the first place and then improve brand awareness and credibility, which will eventually lead to increased conversion rates and revenue.
High-quality content is king for SEO and branding. But it’s not just about creating content; it’s about creating content that resonates with your target audience. Develop a content strategy that considers your audience’s preferred content formats (written articles, videos, infographics) and topics that align with your brand’s message and values.
Focus on creating great descriptions of categories, products, or services — provide users with all the necessary information, making them more convinced that your brand should be chosen. Moreover, due to the high-quality content, users will spend much more time on your website, reducing bounce rates. Follow these rules, and your content will definitely contribute to the improvement of your branding:
Create content tailored to the demands and expectations of your target audience — come up with some blog post ideas that will gain their interest;
Conduct a comparative analysis of the content of your strong competitors — check the weak and strong points of your content, what stands out from your competitors;
your content should be supportive and understandable to all users — this will create positive relations with your potential customers (besides, the more relevant information you provide on the site, the fewer customers will contact you directly with some questions or doubts);
Remember that not only words but also design and typography matter — content on your website should be visually consistent, always use the same fonts, colors, illustrative elements,
Add internal links to the most important categories or products — this will boost even more traffic;
Create content that is engaging, catchy, and natural — nobody likes to read content stuffed with keywords;
If you have a company blog (and you really should have), post articles regularly, at least several times a month;
Add crucial elements to schema — publication date, author’s name, reviews.
6. Leverage Public Relations (PR) for Brand Awareness
SEO focuses on organic search visibility, but PR efforts can visibly boost your branding. Explore opportunities to get your brand featured in relevant publications, industry awards, or conferences. Strategic PR placements can significantly increase brand awareness and establish credibility among your target audience. You can also see your other article referring to this issue – Can PR Affect Your SEO Activities?
7. Optimize Your Website for Search and User Experience
While link building is an important off-page SEO tactic, don’t neglect on-page optimization. Optimize your website’s title tags, meta descriptions, and content for relevant keywords to improve SERP positions and user experience. This ensures your website shows up in relevant searches and provides a positive experience for visitors, which can build trust and brand loyalty.
Besides, technical SEO factors like website speed, mobile-friendliness, and security play a crucial role in user experience.
A website that takes too long to load or is difficult to navigate on mobile devices can negatively impact your brand image. By prioritizing technical SEO, you ensure a smooth user experience that keeps visitors engaged and reinforces a positive brand perception.
But Most Importantly: Track Your Success!
Tracking the success of your SEO efforts for branding goes beyond just website traffic. Here’s a breakdown of some key metrics to consider:
Brand Awareness
Brand Mentions. Monitor how often your brand name is mentioned online. Tools like Brandwatch, Mention, and Google Alerts can track mentions across social media, news websites, forums, and blogs. Increased brand mentions indicate growing brand awareness.
Social Media Engagement. Track metrics like likes, shares, comments, and follower growth on your social media channels. Higher engagement suggests your brand is resonating with your audience.
Search Volume for Branded Keywords. Monitor the search volume for keywords containing your brand name. An increase indicates more people are searching for your brand specifically, suggesting brand awareness is growing.
Brand Perception and Trust
Online Reviews and Ratings. Track reviews and ratings on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, and Capterra. Positive reviews build trust and credibility for your brand.
Social Listening: Analyze the sentiment of online conversations about your brand. Positive sentiment suggests a good brand perception. Tools like Brandwatch and Sprout Social can help with sentiment analysis.
Website Traffic Sources. Track where your website traffic comes from. An increase in referral traffic from branded searches (people searching for your brand name) indicates users are familiar with your brand and actively seeking you out.
Tools and Resources You Might Need
Google Search Console. This free tool from Google provides insights into your website’s search traffic, including branded keyword performance.
Social Media Analytic Tools. Most social media platforms offer built-in analytics dashboards to track engagement metrics.
Brand Monitoring Tools. Tools like Brandwatch, Mention, and Sprout Social can help you track brand mentions, analyze sentiment, and measure the overall impact of your branding efforts.
Remember:
Set Benchmarks. Establish baseline metrics before implementing your SEO for branding strategy. This allows you to track progress and measure the impact of your efforts.
Track Consistently. Monitor your chosen metrics regularly to identify trends and adjust your strategy as needed.
Focus on Quality. While increased traffic and brand mentions are positive signs, prioritize attracting the right audience and building genuine brand loyalty.
By tracking these metrics, you can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your SEO for branding efforts. You’ll be able to see if your brand awareness is growing, how users perceive your brand, and, ultimately, if your SEO strategy is contributing to your overall branding goals.
Elevating Your Branding Activities With SEO: Conclusions
If you want your brand to be discovered by potential customers, you need to appear high in the search results.
Without this, you have very little chance of success. And that’s why SEO comes into play. With the right strategies, you will increase brand awareness among your target audience, connect with your future customers, and build positive relations with them. Whether it is content, user experience, reviews, or activity in social media, SEO will certainly give you added value. If you want to improve your brand, an SEO campaign will certainly make it happen! Contact us, and our SEO experts will prepare long-term strategies for you — owing to reliable and transparent SEO activities, our clients’ brands gain the trust of customers and Google.
An editor by profession. She has been working in marketing for the past 5 years — first in the social media teams of Krakow publishing houses, then in SEO and copywriting, until she finally decided to excel in content marketing and combine her organizational skills with her extraordinary linguistic sense of style. She works on content projects at Delante, conducting content audits, arranging content plans, and creating content for the most demanding clients. Privately, a cat behaviorist, future dog trainer, and a lover of tattoos and RPG games.
An editor by profession. She has been working in marketing for the past 5 years — first in the social media teams of Krakow publishing houses, then in SEO and copywriting, until she finally decided to excel in content marketing and combine her organizational skills with her extraordinary linguistic sense of style. She works on content projects at Delante, conducting content audits, arranging content plans, and creating content for the most demanding clients. Privately, a cat behaviorist, future dog trainer, and a lover of tattoos and RPG games.
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