If you own a business and if it is comparatively newer, you need to focus on creating and enhancing brand awareness. This will help people recognize your brand easily. Not only will people recognize the brand name, but people will also know what your business is about and what your values are. 

If you are to increase brand awareness, many digital marketers will advise you to utilize social media and other platforms. However, SEO too can be of great help in increasing brand awareness. Although SEO is generally utilized to gain organic traffic, it can also promote brand awareness and strengthen branding. 

Who doesn’t want to implement a good SEO strategy to rank their business on the top spot in Google or any other SERPs? After all, that will mean more organic traffic and more clicks! But have you ever thought that building brand awareness and SEO could go together? 

Ranking in the top spot increases the visibility, authority, and engagement of the brand. Thus, a good SEO strategy can help your business earn and grow recognition in the market. 

If you are looking for the best SEO company to cater to your digital marketing requirements, you can always connect with us for the finest services. 

SEO and Brand Awareness: What’s the Relationship Between Them?

As mentioned, building brand awareness is a must for companies to grow. Every company targets building awareness for its brand so that people recognize them immediately. So, the marketing strategies of organizations involve actions that support their target. 

Although most marketers say that building brand awareness will involve advertising your brand on social media, SEO too can be a major boost to building your brand. 

SEO involves building and applying strategies to websites and web pages to help them rank better. Meaning, that a proper SEO strategy will help business websites to rank high in SERPs. This mostly involves including content that helps people with their queries, and thus the brand gains recognition and authority in its particular field of operation. Thus with a proper SEO strategy implied, businesses gain brand recognition without investing in media investments. Isn’t it just great!

On the other hand, brand awareness too reinforces the SEO strategy. As the brand becomes well-known to people, it automatically becomes more searched on Google and attains authority in its field of work. As the brand gains authority, the CTR also increases and becomes popular, and people tend to think that the content they are getting is more reliable and comprehensive. 

Thus, SEO and brand awareness are complementary to each other. Getting to the top position in the SERPs gives the brand more recognition, while with the increase in brand awareness, the brand name becomes more visible in Google’s algorithm. 

Benefits of SEO in Increasing Brand Awareness

Brand awareness can be built using several strategies, and SEO is one of them. However, SEO is often overlooked as a way of building brand awareness. More emphasis is put on social media, paid to advertise, branded content, and event sponsorship. 

However, these strategies can easily become costly and laborious. Particularly for small businesses, implementing a strategy involving paid advertising can be difficult. In comparison, SEO is a cost-friendlier and viable means for building brand awareness. 

Now, let’s take a look at the benefits of SEO in increasing brand awareness.

SEO is an Organic Strategy

A quality SEO strategy involves specific on-page or off-page work to help websites rank higher. However, for the most part, it does not involve payments of any kind. You can’t pay Google to make your website rank high. Gaining visibility and organic traffic is free.

A good SEO strategy, of course, involves time, professional expertise, and tools to work well. Still, it is much more cost-effective when compared to other strategies, both offline and digital. 

SEO strategies are particularly useful for building brand identity for small businesses. These businesses find it quite difficult to compete with big brands. But in SEO, you can develop strategies focused on niches and long-tail keywords with less competition to help businesses rank higher on SERPs.

We, as the best SEO company in Coffs Harbour, will always suggest implementing a good SEO strategy that will automatically work in increasing brand awareness. 

It Increases Brand Reach

Search engines are widely used on the internet. According to Google, a search engine processes 2 trillion searches per year. A good SEO strategy will always help websites rank high. And when a business ranks high on organic searches, they automatically gain the reach they are looking for. Not only that, but when a business ranks high on organic searches, the chances of conversion increase. Because they are appearing for queries of people who are interested in the products or services your business has to offer. 

It Establishes Authority in the Market

A business ranking in the top positions in Google or any other search engine has the attention of the public and the search engine. It is in that position because it delivers the best response and the best user experience. 

When users find your website ranking at the top place, they take your website as an authority in your domain. This perception helps build brand value since it attaches an authority to your brand, and thus the brand image also gets strengthened in the consumer’s mind. 

SEO Content Strengthens Branding

A web page only ranks topmost when it offers valuable content to users. The content must answer the user queries and enrich the readers regarding what they are searching for. 

These types of content show how the brand can help people. They need not be sales or promotional articles but can be soluions to doubts, difficulties, and queries of the users. 

This educational or informative characteristic of Content Marketing is a sure winner. This strengthens branding and brings confidence to the brand. And when the content ranks topmost, it gains more visibility and reaches. 

Improves Website Experience

A typical part of SEO is creating a valuable user experience for the website. The website must be fast-loading, easy to use, and accessible on all platforms to be able to provide a great user experience. 

With a good user experience, a visitor feels well-guided, at ease, and welcomed to accomplish what they want. This not only helps in conversion but also enhances brand awareness, all of which helps the brand build a more positive perception of the brand. 

How to Create an SEO Strategy Focused on Brand Awareness?

A quality SEO strategy will always be able to create a great user experience which will, in turn, boost brand awareness. 

Quality and relevant content engages readers, answers their queries, and shows that your brand is an authority. A good On-Page SEO will make the web pages ready with keywords from your niche. With Off-Page SEO, Google will find that other websites are recommending your website and thus will rank you as an authority in your niche.

Create Valuable Content for Your Persona

This may sound obvious but needs mentioning. Quality content will be read by people and help them with their queries. 

Therefore, create content according to the persona your business caters to. You need to understand the users’ characteristics, intentions, doubts, and queries to create relevant posts in the right language and tone. 

Create Unique Content

Branding is all about creating differentials and being unique to help your brand stand out from the rest. Now, how to create this difference in SEO? One way of doing it is to create unique content that no other site is doing. 

Use your experience to create unique and valuable content. Tell stories, give examples, mention customer cases, and talk about the winnings and failures of the company. 

Provide the Best User Experience

Another way to build brand identity is by providing the best user experience. Create a website that is user-friendly and offers good usability. A brand that offers a quality user experience on its website easily wins the trust of the consumers. If the users can easily do what they want without facing obstacles on the website i.e., it provides a good user experience. And by providing such an experience, the brand gets noticed. Factors such as good loading speed, responsiveness, site security, and functional links and buttons are a factor in a good SEO strategy, and these things done right always empower the brand. 

How to Measure Brand Awareness in SEO?

Measuring brand awareness is not that easy a task. Even professionals dealing with data all day might be uncomfortable measuring a brand’s awareness which is more subjective than data-driven or measurable.

That being said, there are some indicators that show whether a brand is winning over people’s minds or not. 

Another difficulty is measuring how much did SEO contribute to building brand awareness. This is due to the fact that brands might be running other marketing strategies as well. So, pinpointing exactly how much did SEO contribute to building brand awareness is difficult. 

Mentioned below are the few ways in which you can measure or get a grasp on how your brand is doing and how to improve the branding.

Branded Searches

Branded searches are searches that involve the brand name or branded keywords. In Google searches, branded keywords are used to have more specific information about your brand, such as an address, products, and prices, or as a key to get into your website. 

If you follow Google Analytics, you’ll see a range of keywords that users have used to get into your website. If the searches involve a lot of branded keywords, then it can be an indicator that your brand is being followed by people. 

Direct Traffic

Direct traffic means the visitors who arrive at your website by typing the URL of your website. Just like branded searches, direct traffic also means that people are actively following your brand and remembering it.

Google Analytics provides this information as well. So, when you see a lot of people arriving at your website by typing the URL directly, you can be sure that people are noticing your brand.

Brand Mentions

When you find the mention of your brand on social networks with or without a link, you can be sure that your brand is in the conversation of people. When this happens, you can be sure that your brand is gaining prominence and is growing organically. 

To monitor these brand mentions, you can use Google Alerts and receive notifications whenever your brand is mentioned on social networks. You can use monitoring tools on social media to identify the number of mentions and the feelings (positive, negative, or neutral) associated with them. 

Share of Mind and Share of Voice

Share of mind and share of voice is market share indicators. The first one speaks of brand recall, and the latter one is related to market visibility. They show how popular your brand has become to appear in people’s minds and conversations, respectively. 

Share of mind can be measured by market research by specialized companies. Share of voice can be measured by tools, as mentioned before. 

We are the best SEO company, and you can always rely on us for the finest services. 

Brand Perceptions

To measure brand awareness, you need to learn about the values and perceptions that people associate with the brand. However, figuring this out is not really data-driven. It requires more in-depth research, questionnaires, and interviews that will show what people think about your brand. 

For questionnaires, you can use Google Forms or Typeforms. You can also use Hotjar, which allows you to gain customer feedback directly from the website. 

Wrapping Up

Now you know what SEO can do to build brand awareness and how to get a clear idea about how your brand is doing. 

SEO and brand awareness are thus complementary to each other. Search Engine Optimization is usually thought of as a way to increase organic traffic, but it can also be used as a viable means to increase brand awareness. 

Particularly for small businesses who find it a bit difficult to carry out social media campaigns, or other ways that are usually used to build brand awareness, SEO can be a great way to enhance brand awareness. 

A good SEO strategy takes care of the usability of the website, which also acts as a positive factor in building brand awareness. 

So, if you want to create a good SEO strategy that also helps in building brand awareness, you can connect with us, the best SEO company in Coffs Harbour.