Does Your Brand Matter in SEO?

Branding is immensely important for digital marketing. It lets you present your business effectively to potential customers and build recognition so that they know what to expect from every engagement with you.

But while the impact of your brand on humans may be important, what about SEO? Do you really need to worry about branding when optimising your site for search dominance, or is this something that you can just add to you “guilt list” and just ignore for the time being?

SEO and Brand Strength

To put it simply, the stronger the branding, the more likely it is to appear high in Google’s SERPs for relevant queries. And yet there is no specific brand-related ranking factor at work here; it has more to do with the fact that the strategies involved in successfully building branding can also lead to a solid search rank.

In fact some major brands are not particularly strong at search optimisation at a technical level, yet they still manage to consistently appear at the top of the pile. And this is because a well-established branding exudes authority, generates a great deal of search activity, and allows companies to overcome whatever weaknesses their sites might otherwise have.

This is explicitly covered in the guidelines that Google provides to its search quality evaluators. They are told that the reputation of an organisation can be enough on its own to bump a site from a medium to a high rating.

Small Business Suggestions

This is all well and good for the Apples and the Coca-Colas of the world, but what about up and coming companies which cannot rely on their innate branding clout to maximise their search impact?
Building branding from the ground-up will ultimately lead to ranking improvements, but you have to think about all the elements which go into making this a possibility. And while a name and logo are important, they are just elements of a far larger branding picture.

You need to think of every detail that defines your business in the public domain, from the fonts and colours you use on your site to the tone of voice you adopt when crafting the copy that appears on it. Even the images you pick will say something about what your firm represents.

Search optimisation and branding effectively go hand in hand and if you get the latter right then the former will benefit.