Branding a company can seem rather daunting at times. Making sure that your tone of voice and design style is on point, is something that can take a long time to get just right. So is it worth the time and effort of creating a brand? Yes, it is! Here are some reasons to why effective brand building can benefit your online visibility.

Search Engine Preference

For quite some time now, search engines (in particular Google) have been favouring large brands in the search engine rankings. This is mainly due to the fact that they are trusted and established companies that have offered quality products for quite some time now.

If you are a smaller company, then you may be thinking of how to compete with such well established companies. Of course, it will be tough, but its not impossible and working towards establishing your trust (along with other things) will help you to start establishing a long-term SEO strategy. Some technical optimisations you can implement straight away are;

• Schema: Schema is great to structure your online data so that it can be read by search engines. If you sell products, ensure you have product reviews, pricing and delivery information. To implement this, take a look at the guide on product schema here.
• Company Information: Be sure to declare your company information such as tax number, limited status and alike. Although its not proven, there is a myth that stating such information is a SERP boost.
• Reviews from External Websites: Search engines absolutely love review websites such as TrustPilot, Money Saving Expert and Glassdoor’s company review section. Be sure to get as many positive reviews as possible. This will help your online reputation and can be a key decision factor when someone is about to buy your product.

Link Building Opportunities

Off the back of trusted reviews, product reviews have reached an all time high in 2017. With many people using comparison websites all the way down to YouTube reviews. It is an important part of showcasing your products or services. Be sure to obtain as many backlinks as possible when this is happening. Backlinks in general are one of the most influential ranking factors in SEO today, so the more the better.

To aid your link building strategy, you could try the following techniques:

• Product Reviews: As said above, this can be a great way to get people to your products or services.
• Affiliate Codes/Links: A lot of major brands do this to ensure resellers push the products and services. A good example of how well this works is Amazon’s affiliate program.
• Becoming an Industry Influencer: Influencers actually do influence the way people shop for your services. Build on your personal profile to get in the mix of things and showcase why you (and your brand) is the best around!

Rich Snippet Features

Schema is not just useful for showcasing products within the SERP’s. You can also use it to showcase individual people and your company status. Find below, some more relative Schema;

• Organisation Schema: This really helps search engines to establish who you are. As a result of this, you can get a rich snippet that is displayed when someone searches for your brand name. To apply this, it is recommended that you only apply it to your index page, so that it is not mistaken for one of your products or brands that you sell.
• Wikipedia: If you are allowed to, create (or get some else to) a Wikipedia page. Ensure that you follow Wikipedia’s guidelines as they do not accept self promotion or advertising. However if your company or business change the world in one way or another, you will have a good chance of getting your page accepted.
• Answering Questions: You may find that in your keyword research that there are plenty of questions are asked about your services or products. Be sure to create a unique post, offering high quality information about the subject, as well as a direct answer to the question. This may get featured in the search engines as a top answer and drive traffic your way.

Brand Recognition

Brand recognition plays a huge part of your branding strategy. Although this is technically design, it will play a part in your SEO. This is because your images, name and alike will be instantly recognisable. Here are some things you can do with your design work to help you stand out.

• Unique Logo: Having a distinctive logo will help you stand out from the crowd. Ensure that the logo has meaning and describes your tone of voice and service offerings.
• Colour Branding: Having a unique set of colours is also helpful. It will remind customers of who you are and what you stand for. Choose your colours well though, colours have many meanings and ensuring complimentary colours are used together is essential.
• Using a Mascot: Having a character or set of relative imagery is also key to good brand awareness. Similar to the logo use, it will help customers know who you are instantly and adds to the over all quality of the branding campaign.

Conclusion

These days, if you want to have any chance of competing with the big companies of the world, branding should be up there with your top marketing ventures in 2018. It helps enormously with your online visibility and can be easily incorporated with your SEO tactics.

If you need any help with your SEO goals for 2018, get in touch with one of the team here at Bravr. We have had numerous successful SEO campaigns that include branding as part of it.