Business owners often don’t realize that their brand is one of their most valuable assets. Generally, brand managers will agree that boosting how recognizable your brand is should be a top priority. In marketing, the level of familiarity of consumers with your brand is often called brand awareness. There are several ways to increase brand awareness, but not all are directly tied to traditional marketing. Of course, you can increase your advertising budget; however, you could also implement SEO techniques that give even better results. Here are seven ways SEO can help you build brand awareness.
1. Create high-quality content
Nowadays, the heart and soul of any marketing campaign is the content you produce. At Set Fire Creative, we believe the best way to engage your audience is to offer interesting and informative content. Once you start creating quality content, you can use that as the basis for other forms of marketing. Keep in mind that your content will need to be optimized to be efficient.
Your content can be crucial at all stages of a sales funnel. SEO-optimized content can help you build brand awareness and direct traffic to your site. However, it can also educate your audience and help them make informed decisions. Cleverly written content highlighting your products’ value can bring website visitors closer to completing a purchase.
2. Focus on the right audience
Even if you want to increase brand awareness, targeting everyone is a mistake. Most businesses cater to a specific audience with their products and services. There is no reason your SEO efforts should be any different. Small businesses can get an advantage over their competition if they focus SEO on a niche audience. Create a profile of your ideal customer and focus on individuals who fit your profile. Try catering to the audience most likely to become customers in the future to maximize your ROI. If you already have an existing following, you can use them to boost your reach on social media and get more organic interest for your brand.
3. Use optimized keywords
Constantly popping up in user web searches is a great way to build awareness for your brand. If you want that to happen, you’ll need a good idea of what users are searching for. Do keyword research, review your website pages, and optimize the keywords. SEO marketing relies on frequent optimization of old content and the existing pages of your site. One thing to remember is that users frequently form complex queries when performing searches. This means that you should look into long-tail keywords, typically composed of three or four words. If you optimize keywords for organic traffic, you’ll see an uptick in visitors who find your site through search engines.
4. Build engaging landing pages
Once you entice online users to visit your site, you will have very little time before they move on. Make sure that you build engaging landing pages that can grab attention quickly. This means that you should have a strong Call to Action that is immediately visible. The CTA needs to stand out from the rest of your page. You should also use clear language to tell users exactly what you want them to do.
Your landing page has to represent what your brand is about accurately. Try to be consistent in the wording, color themes, and overall design choices across your online presence. This will help you stand out, and users will be more likely to differentiate you from the competition.
5. Expand your SEO efforts to multiple platforms
Business owners who want to improve their SEO are typically more focused on on-page SEO techniques. This includes the optimization that you perform on your website. However, off-page SEO can help you build brand awareness, and it can have a massive impact on your incoming traffic and how online users perceive your brand. For these reasons, we suggest you extend your optimization to any platforms where you have an online presence. Even when you do build a strong presence on social media networks, you should still lead users back to your website. Optimizing the rate of conversions on your site will be much easier. This is because you can test different designs and get immediate feedback on what works and what doesn’t.
6. Optimize for different devices
The average user will probably arrive at your website using their phone or tablet. Mobile users account for the majority of all online activity. Therefore, it makes sense to optimize your website so that it works well on mobile devices. Some businesses like to develop specialized apps to enable additional features for their users. In this situation, you should create versions for Android and iOS to cater to a broad user base.
7. Don’t neglect local SEO
Depending on your business type, customers from your area may represent a large percentage of your overall profit. Even when many of your customers are international, improving your brand awareness won’t be easy if you don’t have a solid local presence. You can even use geo-targeting to adjust your website’s content based on your users’ location. You can optimize for local searches and create dedicated landing pages with your city name to get more users in your area. Google also tends to promote businesses that have a Google Business profile. Make sure to claim your GMB profile and update it regularly.
SEO can help you build brand awareness, so make use of it!
Without a fully developed SEO strategy, it will be hard for your business to stand out in online spaces. Not only can SEO be used to increase the organic traffic to your website, but it can also help boost your brand awareness. We have gone through 7 ways SEO can help you build brand awareness; now, it’s up to you to make changes to your website and improve your online reputation.
McCain is the founder and VP of Client Services at Set Fire Creative. When he isn’t busy helping his clients grow their business through digital marketing, you will most likely find him with his nose in a Stephen King book, eating spicy buffalo wings, hanging out with his wife and Blue Heeler Ozzy, or listening to Guns N’ Roses—sometimes all at the same time.
