Is your brand your SEO secret weapon?

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Aug 14, 2020 / by
Is your brand your SEO secret weapon?

What’s in a name? More than you might think, particularly when it comes to SEO. Chances are, if you’ve been building an online content and marketing strategy for a while then you might have reached something of a plateau.

If this is the case, perhaps the only way you’re going to break through that glass ceiling is to fluster your feathers a little and start using the hidden SEO power of your brand.

The bigger the brand the better the results

Major brands will always get better rankings than their smaller rivals and that’s not only because they can afford to pay for it.

Indeed, many of the largest brands might not even need to do much SEO at all as their names will essentially be doing the work for them already.

Think of something like Coca Cola – a brand so vast that the name itself is an incredibly competitive keyword.

The brand power of any content creator will have a major impact on search rankings even though there isn’t technically a direct algorithmic input that measures brand strength. But how can smaller brands be using their lesser-known names to win the SEO game?

What’s in a brand?

A brand is so much more than just a name or a logo – it’s how you’re perceived by the wider world. At its core, it’s an intangible thing but it’s also arguably your business’s most valuable asset. It’s what drives your commercial value and it can be crucial in improving your search rankings in the following ways:-

Reputation – A positive reputation is the foundational building block for any good brand and reputation is also one of the primary factors Google uses to rank the authority of results. By their own admission, Google looks for “expertise, authority and trustworthiness” and these are all features that are built on reputation.

Backlinks – With a strong brand behind you, more people are going to want to be associated with you and this means you’ll be able to attract more and better inbound links. Links that are earned naturally are so much more powerful than bought links, after all.

Click-through – Your click-through-rate is invariably influenced by ranking position but it’s also influenced heavily by brand.

It’s human nature, after all, to go with the familiar over the unfamiliar, so if you’re in the market for an item, you’re always going to be more likely to go with the brand you know and trust even if the competition is more affordable. That’s branding at work in a nutshell.

Using your brand

Positioning your brand to benefit from SEO can be done in several ways. The fastest way to build your brand is on a local level by optimising for local search. If you can develop happy local customers then your brand should expand over time exponentially.

You should also be ensuring you’re targeting the right audience and that you’re providing something of value that underlines your brand as a trusted source.

It’s also important to associate your brand with other brands that are authoritative within your industry as then you’ll build a reputation by association.

Finally, of course, there’s the more direct promotional PR route, which includes everything from managing social media accounts to cultivating a strong community and building relationships with media outlets and influencers.

There’s no one specific thing that can be done and it’s not something that can be built fast. By nature, brand building is a long game but it’s a game that will pay off very well indeed if you’re willing and able to play along.