Using SEO to increase brand awareness continues to be a major goal of companies who invest in Digital Marketing. The reason is simple: reaching the so-dreamed-of first positions in search results strengthens recognition and can turn things around, especially for small companies.
Did you know that 75% of Internet users don’t even bother to access the second page of search results?
There is a common joke in the digital world that relates directly to Search Engine Optimization:
“Where should you bury something that you don’t want people to find?”
Answer: On the second page of Google.
SEO consists of optimizing web pages and websites in order for them to be well-positioned in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), and it’s no secret that the first organic result receives the majority of users’ clicks. The percentage of the three first positions calls our attention: According to a study published by Sistrix, 28,5% of Google users click on the first organic result, while the second organic result receives 15,7% of the clicks, and the third position has an average Click-Through Rate (CTR) of 11%.
As brand awareness represents how well the target audience recognizes your brand and how familiar it’s to the public, reaching these spots can be a game-changer situation. Now, in this article, you’ll also understand why brand awareness and SEO hold hands.
So, right to the point: What are the benefits of using SEO to increase brand awareness?
It Is an Organic Strategy
When we type something into the search engine’s search bar and press enter, we see a list of organic and paid results, right? The former is free, while the latter consists basically of advertisements and appears at the top of the SERPs.
As SEO is an organic strategy, you don’t have to pay the search engine to place your site in the results — the main benefit here is that your company can gain media, visibility, and clicks without direct costs. Reaching the first positions requires some effort, though.
To achieve the expected results, a solid strategy will demand:
- a good plan;
- qualified professionals;
- adequate tools.
So, SEO is not a cost-free deal. However, it’s cost-effective when we think about increasing brand awareness and attracting new customers.
Even small businesses can compete for the first place, especially if they’re focused on a specific and narrowed niche. When reading about SEO, you’ll realize that less popular long-tail keywords can help small businesses’ websites gain positions in SERPs, as large organizations tend to dispute popular keywords.
It Brings Authority to Your Company
Reaching the first page of search engines is an achievement — and sometimes a must! — for every company out there. However, it’s not just about earning clicks: it’s about visibility, authority, and engagement.
Helpful content has the power to turn small businesses into reliable references when their websites/blog posts appear on highlighted spots, and it has an enormous effect on users’ perception, which is directly related to brand awareness.
To be seen as an authority in a particular field has way too many perks, and once your brand is associated with authority, its image becomes reinforced in the public eye. Let’s see some great examples:
- When you think about coffee, there is a chance that the Starbucks brand comes popping into your mind.
- When we have to perform Web searches about an item, we say we’ll “Google it”.
- In Brazil, there is a company named Bombril that sells steel wool. The collective consciousness about this brand became so strong that the brand and the product became the same thing over the years. Now, when we’re going to the supermarket to buy steel wool, we just say we’re going to buy Bombril — even if the product is sold by another brand.
It’s a powerful thing, isn’t it?
We’re aware that SEO is mainly used to generate organic traffic, but when it comes to using SEO to increase brand awareness and strengthen authority, we have to deliver the best content possible to the audience. It must have key components to offer value:
- Expertise;
- Authority;
- Trustworthy.
The prominent SERPs’ spots are probably taken by content that embraces the elements mentioned above and delivers the best response altogether with the best user experience.
And this brings us back to SEO.
It Expands Your Brand Reach
When we think about brand awareness, we think about broad recognition.
So it’s no wonder that being on the first page of search engines attracts new consumers and expands your brand reach, and a solid SEO strategy is an excellent way to get there.
However, being able to understand what the company’s target audience is looking for and using SEO to solve customer pain points is crucial to expanding reach.
Think about your own experience as a consumer using search engines. As an average user, you probably do more than three searches per day, right? Let’s suppose you’re looking to solve a personal problem or buy an item. In that case, you type in certain words that probably generate equivalent and useful search results (both paid and organic), possibly click on one of the first five links, choose the best option, and that’s it.
So, considering estimations, Google processes approximately 5.8 billion searches per day and approximately 2 trillion global searches per year. Taking this into account, can you imagine what well-positioned content could do for your business?
Just like you, people are searching for products or services to solve specific problems. If your company offers the solution they’re looking for and appears in prominent spots, it gains visibility and automatically expands its reach.
Valuable Content Gives Power to Your Strategy
“Content Marketing is the gap between what brands produce and what consumers actually want.”
This is a quote by Michael Brenner, CEO of the Marketing Insider Group, that summarizes the concept of Content Marketing.
To boost your SEO strategy, it’s imperative to give away content that talks eye to eye with the consumers’ pain points.
Simply put, SEO techniques help to create useful content, besides improving user experience on your website. This, in its turn, gives power to your strategy of increasing brand awareness.
Have you already heard that “content is king”?
As mentioned in the authority topic, content that gives the best response to the audience has a great chance to gain key spots.
These materials aim to solve the persona’s problems (always within the scope of the buyer’s journey) showing, at some point, how the products or services offered by the brand can help. It’s not just about conversion and sales. It’s about solutions.
SEO is part of a Content Marketing strategy, which has two main pillars:
- education;
- information.
The more a company educates and informs, the more it’s strengthened. As a result, confidence in the brand increases, and brand awareness becomes even more powerful, which leads to even more visibility to reach more people. That is why SEO and brand awareness often walk side by side — and, of course, it’s why content is so important.
But remember: Using SEO to increase brand awareness requires a solid strategy. So, besides understanding how to apply SEO techniques, it’s essential to understand how the search engine’s algorithms work and elaborate a well-thought-out plan.
In conclusion, brand awareness is not only about knowing a company name, understanding its values and business niche, how its products or services can help consumers, and why it’s unique. It’s also about being able to find it online and trust the content it offers. It’s about visibility and connection, and Search Engine Optimization is here to give you a hand.
See? Using SEO to increase brand awareness yields lots of long-term benefits. Now, what do you think about understanding how a Digital Marketing strategy generates value for your business? I hope you enjoy it!
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