Creating An SEO Strategy To Boost Brand Awareness
Creating an SEO and brand awareness strategy may seem daunting, but building a foundation is essential to generating website traffic, reaching a target audience, and increasing brand recognition.
Extensive research on brand awareness proves that it is one of the most important aspects of marketing. A strong brand awareness campaign will result in more website traffic, more customers, and more sales.
Brand awareness and SEO strategies aren’t universal; At the same time, there are general things you will learn and be able to apply; it’s essential that you, as a business owner, understand how to formulate your strategy for your particular business.
Typically, businesses focus most of their attention on traditional advertising and digital marketing practices. Unfortunately, these efforts often see little or no return for e-commerce and online businesses.
The average person gets exposed to over 4,000 ads every day, and the consumer notices only about 10% of those ads. What’s more concerning is that the customer only remembers a fraction of those ads (about 10%). Information overload makes it hard for a business to establish a brand identity with a strong online reputation.
Fortunately, there are ways to improve your chances of retaining and garnering the brand value and attention of these prospects. You’ll achieve this by increasing brand awareness through the use of SEO.
Increase Brand Awareness With SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a process of optimizing a website for search engines to earn higher web traffic levels and increase site visibility.
Search engine optimization is essential because the top three results within the search engine get the lion’s share of traffic. Search rankings are a crucial factor in consumer decision-making and can influence purchase decisions, brand loyalty, and brand switching. Online brand management starts with a solid online strategy of content marketing and link building to deliver optimal brand equity.
Earning higher web traffic affects your business in multiple ways. First, SEO can help create a more favorable brand image by improving your website’s ranking in search results and making it more visible to potential customers.
Secondly, customers you convert from the traffic generated on your website will help create more online traffic, assuming you’ve provided them with what they need from your website. Sites that offer users an optimal user experience (UX) with ample tools and resources to deliver more information to consumers than their competitors will have greater success. A brand strategy for reaching potential customers should always start with a search engine optimization strategy.
Lastly, if you’re an e-commerce business generating traffic and a high conversion rate is crucial to gaining sales. Companies focus on increasing brand awareness mainly to increase their sales.
Goals For Branding With SEO
SEO can help you build brand awareness in three ways: by increasing your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs), by driving traffic to your site, and by improving your click-through rate (CTR). (Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-brand-awareness/348076/)
Your goal as a business is to retain and capture the attention of the people within your market, so it’s vital that you’re on that first result page. SEO ensures that your website is fit to show at the top of the other search result.
You’ll increase web traffic by being in the top search results for your industry through the proper use of keywords, meta tags, and concise and straightforward language. A recent study concluded that by using these three site organization tools, you can increase your web traffic by up to 50%. This is because potential customers will be able to find your site more easily when they are searching for products or services that you offer.
Focused keywords associated with your brand and what it stands for will make your website and content easier to show up alongside those other keywords creating organic web traffic.
When your website, products, and content is easier to find, it will naturally increase your brand awareness. With your high-quality products and content, consumers will substantially increase your brand awareness by recommending your product on their social media or to their friends.
Online Branding Boosts Local and National Recognition
Unsurprisingly, online advertising has become essential for any business to boost brand recognition. The problem with traditional advertising is the difficulty of building your brand outside of your physical location.
Reports show that people are becoming increasingly resistant to advertising that interrupts their day, whether it’s a commercial on TV or a banner ad on a website. This means that businesses need to find new ways to reach their target audiences. A recent study found that the majority of people now get their news and information online, through social media, and from word-of-mouth recommendations. This means that businesses need to focus their marketing efforts on these channels in order to reach the most people. According to a recent study, this is the most effective way to reach the largest number of potential customers with over 63% of consumers using online resources to make buying decisions.
Fortunately, internet marketing not only reaches locally, but it reaches nationally and additionally has the potential to reach globally. Businesses are no longer limited to a physical location for their marketing practices.
Therefore, online marketing efforts use social media, influencer marketing, and SEO content. A solid online presence translates to a more noticeable local presence, while a notable local presence doesn’t always translate to a reliable company online.
A Strong Correlation Between Brand Awareness and SEO
According to research by Michael R. Baye, Babur De Los Santos, and Matthijs R. Wildenbeest, there is a correlation between SEO and brand awareness.
Their research found that brand awareness and SEO work together to solidify a solid online presence. Additionally, they found that any brand awareness strategy should include SEO and quality initiatives.
They came to this conclusion because of how important it is for prospects to find your website and, more importantly, how well you present it.
A brand’s position in search results gets determined by many factors, including its website’s quality, its content’s relevance, and the number of inbound links pointing to it. This idea makes web development extremely important to brand awareness and SEO.
Good web design and optimization will significantly impact how consumers view your brand.
While SEO is important to garner attention, the site’s quality retains the attention. SEO focuses on optimizing your website for generating web traffic, but you’ll also be improving the website’s visual, content, and organizational qualities.
SEO helps put you in front of the consumer, but once they walk through that door, your brand, products, and content will be driving the conversion of visitors to customers.
It’s true that most consumers only pay attention to the first three results, but their focus tends to be on the highest quality and most recognizable brand.
Brand Awareness Can Be Measured Through Brand Recall, Brand Recognition, and Brand Salience
It’s not enough for customers to know your brand’s existence. Your brand must be something that garners a spark of interest and recollection for them. Your brand must stand out to the consumer fully to achieve brand awareness.
For a brand to be “top of mind,” it must be one of the first to come to mind when considering a product or service category. A brand’s position in search engine results is a significant factor in determining its “top of mind” status.
There are three sure ways to determine if you’ve won the minds of others: brand recall, recognition, and salience.
Brand Recall Is the Ability of Consumers To Recall a Brand When Given a Cue, Such as the Brand Name or Logo.
When a consumer is asked a question or prompted to resolve an issue, and your brand is the first thing that pops into their head, you have succeeded. Similar to when someone wants to find an answer, the usual first thought in a person’s head is “I should Google it.”
Brand Recognition Is the Ability of Consumers To Identify the Brand When Presented With a Cue, Such as the Brand Name or Logo.
Recognition is the key to actively pushing your brand further. Your brand name or logo has to mean something to the consumer.
In the last 10 years, we’ve seen a lot of brands come and go. Some have been able to stand the test of time, while others have faded into obscurity. Some have been around for centuries, while others are new and trying to make a name for themselves. But in order for a brand to really succeed, it has to have a meaning that resonates with current consumer lifestyles.
When they see your logo, they think about your product or services, it has to solicit some response for them to recognize your presence in the market.
Brand Salience Is the Extent to Which a Brand Is Salient or Noticeable in the Minds of Consumers
Brand salience becomes vital to maintaining relevancy as time passes. Your brand being active or at least recognizable in the consumer’s minds will prompt memories and associations that will remind the consumer why they know your brand.
Recent studies have shown that when people are exposed to a brand, they will have a positive association with that brand if they have had a positive experience with it in the past. This is because the human brain is wired to remember things that have resulted in pleasure or that have caused us pain. According to a study done by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, our brains are hardwired to remember things that make us feel good and to avoid things that make us feel bad. Brand recognition goes far beyond fonts and color schemes, and can trigger emotions that will either increase or decrease sales.
Brand awareness boosted by data-driven SEO strategies can deliver a positive consumer response to seeing and interacting with a brand. Businesses should use an online marketing strategy to build brand equity.