Branding is important for every business in order to differentiate their products or services from other businesses by the use of a slogan, logo or design scheme or the experience which is provided to customers. It helps create a certain perception about the business in the minds of customers which is why it is very important for businesses to have a brand strategy to create the right message for customers to understand.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO in short is the use of techniques to increase the amount of traffic to your business website through the use of organic search results. It has quickly become one of the most important tools for businesses to target customers, especially for online businesses.
As the world becomes more technology driven, the use of SEO in marketing will play a huge role in determining the success of a business.
Importance of the Relationship
SEO and branding go hand in hand when it comes to developing a successful marketing strategy for a business. Both SEO and branding are linked and a strategy needs to be developed in order to incorporate both of these. It is important for a business to use these two effectively in order to gain a competitive advantage.
When SEO and branding are both incorporated in the marketing strategy, it will help customers to become loyal and buy products from the business.
So how does Branding relate to SEO?
One must be wondering that how does branding relate to SEO which is why it is important to understand the underlying basics of the two. Branding is vital for SEO to succeed. SEO is an extension of branding. Famous brands have a better Google ranking which is not a coincidence. Branding is one of the most powerful tools which help a business to build a reputation in the market. It influences others to speak positively about the product of the company.
Google employs an algorithm for calculating the SEO rankings. SEO experts research the Google algorithm in order to create content which maximizes chances of the SEO ranking increasing. One already knows the important bits of the process such as inserting keywords into the URL, domains linked to the website, the amount of time it takes to load a page and etc. It is easy to quantify the results and measure the results in an objective manner. Whereas, branding is more complex and it is not easy to calculate or measure it.
Branding Helps Get Links
Since Google relies so heavily on links for calculating the search engine ranking, it is more important to have naturally earned links as compared to ones which are bought. When people already know about the brand, they will be more likely to read content on your website or visit it as well as link to it.
Not everyone who visits your website would link to you which is why it is important to have a brand to encourage visitors to link to you. As published on the website of marlon muller, reputation of your business goes a long way to convince others to link to your website.
Branding Helps Get Social Shares
It has been debated whether the social shares help influence the search engine ranking but let’s just think about it. The more social shares your content gets, the more chances of your website being visited and improving in the search engine ranking.
The more social shares a business website gets, the more likely it would be for the business to attract new customers and increase revenue by targeting these customers. Branding helps businesses create a reputation in the market so that new customers would trust the business.
Branding Helps Improve Click-Through Rates
Click-through rates help in the search rankings. For example if your website is on third place in the top ranking page and when people skip other websites to click on yours, the website will automatically improve in rankings.
Now, the important thing to think about is how you would convince them to click on your website instead of others. This is where brand comes into place; people who are more familiar with your brand will already trust your business and would more likely click on your website. Therefore, even though Google might have the other websites as higher, and those websites might have more backlinks as compared to your website, people who are familiar with your brand will automatically click your website instead of others.
Branding Helps Build Reputation
One of the greatest things about branding is the fact that it helps build reputation for your business. Google just recently announced its Search Quality Rating Guidelines to assess the quality of the pages which appear in search engine results. The document provides guidelines about what Google looks for in terms of quality.
The websites which are ranked the highest are the ones which have the highest quality of content. One of the important things which the guidelines speak about is the outside influence which helps a website improve in rankings, that is to say that reputation is necessary in order for a business to succeed online. Businesses which have blogs written about their services, and discussions tend to perform better in search engine ranking.
Brand Mentions Are Rewarded
Google understands the importance of a brand for the search engine results which is why it rewards every brand mention and it helps improve search engine ranking. Brand mentions on news websites are one of the easiest ways to get rewarded.
Build a Brand Strategy to Boost Your SEO
The relationship between SEO and branding makes it important for branding to be used effectively in order for the best professional SEO results. Businesses need to develop a brand strategy which maximizes the chances of search engine rankings being boosted.
In bound and out bound marketing techniques will also help improve the brand value and increase traffic to the website. Create a brand strategy which highlights all the best features about the business in order to boost your SEO.