At Wildcat Digital, we have had a few clients that were concerned about the impact SEO can have on branding. Whilst we understand that your brand and aesthetic is important, sometimes we need to make changes in order to improve SEO. When done well, these SEO changes can compliment branding without having a large visible impact. So, how do you balance branding with SEO?
To balance branding and SEO it is important to consider your brand voice but do keyword research around what your users are searching for. Ensuring there are clear trust signals on your website such as testimonials and your address as well as having a good user experience is also recommended.
Keep reading to find out more about how SEO and branding can be balanced, as well as why branding benefits SEO.
Balancing branding with SEO best practices may seem difficult to begin with, but we are here to show you how this can be achieved effectively. Have a read below to find some of the key features of balancing branding with SEO.
As a business, it is imperative to identify your audience so that you are aware of the type of user you are targeting your content towards. This helps you determine the type of brand voice to use as well as tone. For example, as a law firm we expect your audience would be looking for a formal and factual tone that gets straight to the point. Whereas, if you are a dance training company you might expect your audience to enjoy a more friendly and informal tone.
Having a good understanding of your brand voice can then be intertwined with your keyword research. Now that you know your audience you can research keywords that they would be searching for. The purpose of keyword research is to identify these keywords, assess the intent, keyword volume and difficulty before you start targeting them within your content. The end goal would then be to rank highly on the first page for these search terms.
Being aware of your audience can make keyword research more focused, but it is important to be open-minded with branding and keywords. Ideally you would want your key pages, services and products to be titled what people in the industry are searching for. That is how you would draw them onto your page.
For example, if you are a law firm and you have a service page titled ‘Personal’ or ‘Commercial’. These are extremely generic terms that your audience is not going to be searching for. A better example would be ‘Personal Legal Services’. You need to have targeted keywords within your H1s and H2s. Some clients do not like having keyword oriented headers appearing at the top of their pages but there are ways around this such as having smaller H1s created that work for SEO, whilst you have your branded header visually larger.
For more information on keyword research including best practices and how to avoid keyword stuffing, take a read of our recent blog by clicking here.
Once your content is optimised for keywords, it is important to start thinking about trust signals as part of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness). Whoever your audience is, it is natural to assume that they will be looking for certain trust signals to convince them to convert, especially if your industry is YMYL. For example,
Common trust signals include:
Whilst trust signals are an SEO factor, they also have to incorporate branding because they are relevant to your audience. If you have a particular style of font or page design, you can find ways of implementing trust signals on your website that adheres to these stylistic rules.
To learn more about E-E-A-T and how you can improve trust with your audience, take a read of our informative blog by clicking here.
User experience is another SEO factor that can be incorporated with your branding. It is important in SEO because it can determine whether a user stays on a website or clicks off, which is a ranking factor. For example, if your website loads slowly then a user may decide to go to a competitor instead. Similarly, if your navigation is confusing and makes it harder for a user to find what they are looking for, they may also go elsewhere.
When considering user experience on your website, it is also helpful to consider branding and your audience. Try to put yourself in your audience’s position and think about the journey they would want to follow on your website.
Typically, businesses in a more creative industry tend to have more of a design-focused website to display their skills. Other industries may require a more content heavy website to answer users questions. Either way, the user experience of that website needs to be seamless. Even if your website is image or video heavy you should ensure that:
Now that you know how SEO and branding can be utilised together, you may be interested to learn how SEO can actually benefit your branding. Keep reading to find out more.
SEO strategies are designed to attract users to your website to potentially convert. Having a SEO strategy that compliments your branding can help you become a market leader in the industry. If you are ranking highly against competitors for key terms, provide a great product or service and your branding is on point, there is no reason why this cannot happen.
SEO can also help your branding to become recognisable, which may help increase returning customers. For example, if you have a strong blog strategy which answers commonly searched user queries, users may land on your website when they are not even looking for a product or service. The brand awareness achieved by blogs puts the company in the customer’s choice set for when they are ready to purchase or convert.
Backlinks are a big factor in SEO. Typically, trusted sources or content that is helpful to the user gain the most backlinks. This in turn can help improve your domain authority and result in you ranking higher for search queries. Users could be reading an online forum, magazine or even a social media post and come across your brand referenced via a backlink. By having SEO optimised content, your online presence can become recognised as a trusted brand within the industry.
There is no doubt that SEO adds a lot of value to branding, and attracts users to your website so that they recognise your brand. However you may be wondering, what value does branding bring to SEO?
The reality is that without a strong brand it is possible that all the hard work achieved by SEO may be lost. If a user lands on your website and you don’t have a strong brand that looks professional and trustworthy, then it’s highly unlikely that they will convert.
Without a strong brand message, mission statement and proven brand success, users may doubt your business and look elsewhere. Inconsistencies in branding such as fonts, design and colours may seem a little suspicious to a user, because these are details that are expected of a trustworthy company.
Wildcat Digital is a team of experts that specialise in designing and implementing comprehensive SEO strategies that not only incorporate but compliment your brand. As part of our client onboarding process we have in depth discussions about your brand positioning, tone of voice and choice of language so we can tailor our strategy around this. To improve your online presence and make your brand more recognisable, don’t hesitate to contact us today.
