Branding is so much more than a memorable logo. Consumers love their favorite brands far more than most marketing departments realize.
Brand Loyalty
With an internet full of similar products to choose from at a mere touch, consumers build an emotional connection to a specific brand. This allows them to quickly determine which of those similar products deserves their money.
Once that emotional connection develops, 77 percent of customers will stay faithful to a brand for 10-years or longer. And 61 percent will actually go out of their way to purchase from that brand.
Good branding touches the mind and heart of the consumer. It lets you build the value of your business through your reputation. Done correctly, good branding makes your products instantly identifiable and trustworthy to consumers.
But branding can also be leveraged into better results on search engine pages. The connection between branding and search engine optimization (SEO) is something you can’t afford to overlook.
How are SEO And Branding Related?
The relationship between branding and SEO runs deep. A well-developed SEO campaign can improve your brand’s image and reach. Good branding can, in turn, improve your ability to catch the consumer’s eye on those search engine results pages (SERPS) and gain more clicks.
Brand recognition also helps you climb higher in the search results because consumer recognition and trust help you rank higher with Google. It’s a cyclical process that gradually pushes your brand’s reach outward toward new consumers and untapped markets and upward in the rankings on search.
Do a quick search for any product or service you use, and you’ll notice that the top of your search results is dominated by names you easily recognize. That’s because Google rewards brands that consumers trust and consumers trust what they recognize and know.
When consumers think “cola,” they don’t think about Coke or Pepsi, not RC, even though RC is cheaper and tastes similar. When consumers want their taxes done, they think TurboTax or H&R Block, not TaxSlayer, even though TaxSlayer can get the job done.
Consumers certainly put thought into their searches, but they’re also operating (at least partially) on emotion and instinct. Emotion and instinct tend to make people reach for what is most familiar. What is most familiar is the basis of brand recognition.
Since Google is increasingly focused on making its search engine operate the way that the consumer’s mind operates, brand recognition and trust naturally play into the way that search results are displayed. In turn, the prominence of any particular brand in search results often increases consumer familiarity even further.
Improve Your Branding to Boost Your Search Results
Developing a logo for your company and a set of colors for your webpage is only part of your branding. You also need to focus heavily on the customer experience you deliver.
That means making sure that your brand’s core values (the things that distinguish you from your competitors) are highlighted throughout your website and on every social campaign. What you represent should be reflected on every page. The places you choose to promote your brand and the influencers you use should also correspond well with your brand’s image.
Branding is also the experience a user has on your website. You can’t ignore the importance of functionality. Users will quickly grow frustrated with slow loading times, cluttered pages and broken links. Competence and authority are hard to convey if your pages aren’t easy to navigate.
Encourage Brand Recognition Across Platforms
Brand recognition can turn your business from “just another company” into a trusted consumer partner and a household name, ensuring your future. Working with an SEO partner like Boostability is an excellent way to make sure that you have a solid social media campaign strategy that promotes your brand and good content on relevant blogs and websites away from your own site.
An SEO partner can also help you incorporate the right long-tail keyword strategy, incorporating your brand name, as a way to build additional brand awareness and recognition.
Visual content is also indispensable to branding success. Create and promote visual content that not only delights and informs your consumers but reinforces the overall visibility of your brand through the use of your logo, fonts, and colors. (Take a look at anything put out by Target, Coke, or Apple if you want great examples.)
Don’t overlook the importance of local search, either. Increasingly, people “consume on the run,” and Google search results on a smartphone take geography into account. This is the case even when the user doesn’t include geographical data in the search.
Part of your SEO and branding joint strategy absolutely needs to be focused on building those local markers and local links back to your page, increasing customer reviews, and becoming a community resource.
Final Thoughts
An SEO strategy needs to be focused on your brand to be successful. Every social post, every influencer, every piece of content that you put out should reflect your brand both visually and substantially. The more familiar your brand is to consumers, the more consumers associate your brand with reliable service and quality content. You’ll climb higher in search results. Your logo is ultimately a type of visual shorthand that reminds consumers of everything that your brand represents whenever they see it.
