Branding vs SEO – Does Brand Building Affect SEO?

Branding incorporates more than the word itself – it means brand awareness, associations, and positive feelings your company evokes in the customer. It’s directly linked to the ideas and values represented by your business – it’s about strength, expanding horizons, working out to achieve the desired body shape, overcoming your limitations, and pursuing success. When thinking about specific brands, you could easily name the ideas that drive them.

However, it’s worth asking yourself one important question – what’s the importance of brand recognition during the SEO process? Does a strong brand impact SEO? Let’s scrutinize this issue!

Brand building – what is it?

When creating a company and establishing its market position, brand building is one of the key factors. Branding aims at developing a powerful business image, it includes both the initial stages and subsequent marketing activities that are supposed to reinforce your company’s importance against its competitors.

The concept of branding is a kind of a deeply rooted guarantee of quality and reliability that lets customers sleep soundly knowing that they chose the finest company. Building a strong brand and buyer trust helps the company to become more popular, attract new customers and ensure that the company is no longer associated solely with its name. Recognition doesn’t necessarily indicate that the brand is powerful and it’s worth changing that.

How do brand names affect the popularity of companies?

Coming up with a brand name is one of the key elements of the branding process. It should be a catchy and creative word that conveys values of the company and ingrains the brand in customers’ memory. Thus, the name should have the appropriate meaning and it should correspond to the field of expertise of the brand.

A creative brand name makes the company stand out from the crowd and ensures it’s associated with pleasant things. It’s vital to make sure that the brand name doesn’t evoke negative connotations. Companies frequently select names that sound good in one country but aren’t perceived positively in another. The persuasiveness of the name itself also plays an important role. According to research, it’s worth following a simple rule – familiar things are seen as safe. The ease of pronunciation and reading of a given word is extremely important in the process of creating names as it makes it easier to remember the brand and consequently helps the potential buyer to make the purchase decision.

Tycoons of the marketing world – the most famous brands

We all probably have favorite brands that won our hearts thanks to the quality, design, taste or flawless marketing activities. There’s probably no one in the world who hasn’t heard about tycoons such as Coca Cola, Lacoste or Nike. Some of these brands are well established on the market and became real giants, not only in their fields. What values do they believe in? What products do they deliver to customers? Let’s take a closer look!

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is a brand that doesn’t need a special introduction. It’s been enjoying incredible popularity for years and it became a real tycoon, not only in regard to the carbonated beverage market. The branding strategy revolves around the long-standing history, tradition, and quality of offered products. Coca-Cola is an incredible marketing machine. Everybody knows that the emergence of Coca-Cola’s Santa Claus indicates the beginning of the Christmas season. Unblemished marketing and brand recognition have helped the company to develop so rapidly over the years. Currently, Coca-Cola offers a number of flavors eagerly tasted by fans from across the globe. However, the original, already iconic flavor which is the brand’s flagship product remains the number one Coca-Cola drink.

Lacoste

It’s a French fashion brand offering products like shoes, clothes, perfumes, glasses or watches. The crocodile logo represents a trendy style in a sporty edition. The brand is renowned for prestigious clothes of reliable quality. This company specializes mainly in production of sporty clothes which is related directly to its history. The brand founded by a renowned French tennis player advocates the motto that “life is a beautiful sport”. Lacoste is a true legacy in the world of sports fashion and it goes to great lengths to ensure proper reputation among customers.

Nike

One of the largest manufacturers of sports footwear, clothing and accessories in the world. The company’s name alludes to the Greek goddess of victory. In this case, the name is incredibly relevant when taking into consideration the successes achieved by the American company, which enjoys continuous popularity. The brand supports the idea of striving for self-development and pushing one’s limits. Its slogan “just do it” is known all over the world.

What is the key to their success?

The abovementioned brands are one of the greatest companies present on the market. What has contributed to their success? First of all, staying faithful to their history and tradition. All the brands presented above have a rich history which became one of the main elements building their recognition. Experience translates into professionalism, market knowledge, and ongoing quality improvements.

Coca-Cola was founded at the end of the 19th century and was a symbol of its time. Its flagship product is the classic Coca-Cola in a distinctive, hallmark bottle. Not surprisingly, the shape of the glass bottle was legally reserved and the company has exclusive rights to it. The brand became an icon of the ‘American Dream’ and was appreciated by famous people. Andy Warhol said:

“You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it and you know it.”

SEO vs branding

Now, once we know what branding is, it’s worth devoting a while to analyze how it affects SEO. Every company has to adopt an individual SEO strategy. Regardless of the advertised industry, every business owner wants his/her brand to be displayed high in the search results. SEO for branding plays a crucial role in building brand credibility and popularity in search results.

SEO for branding is supposed to ensure that potential customers searching for your company collect satisfactory information which encourages them to do it more and more frequently. When it comes to the objectives of SEO, we can mention:

• Acquiring branded search traffic,
• Developing channels redirecting recipients to the brand,
• Creating a brand image in the search engine,
• Creating a consistent and favorable brand image.

It’s important to place great emphasis on doing SEO for brand phrases guaranteeing that your company website is displayed in the search results. All phrases with the brand name should redirect users straight to the location related to the business. Why is it so important? Displaying the brand name in the first place in the search engine makes you more competitive.

Remember to reserve brand keywords so that companies operating in the same industry aren’t able to use them. Effective SEO for branding helps to improve the number of search results related to your company. Therefore, SEO improves not only the website traffic but also the overall value of the page.

Why is SEO for branding so important? First of all, it creates a sense of customer loyalty to the brand. Currently, it’s one of the deciding factors when fighting for potential buyers. Customer loyalty means trust. A person decides to buy an item that costs an arm and a leg only because of the fact that the company has always met the expectations. It’s also helpful to build relationships that affect a company’s credibility and improve positions in the search results.

Netcube – our exemplary client

SEO for branding is essential for building brand recognition which can be evidenced especially by Delante’s clients. Netcube is a great example of an online shop whose brand name is at the top of the search results.

Thanks to activities performed by Delante, Netcube started appearing in very high positions under its brand name. In the beginning, the position of the shop distributing puzzles, brain teasers, and speed cubes was rather low. In the case of this store, the process of building a strong brand through SEO activities was carried out from scratch. A correct map added to Search Console and indexation improved the positions of phrases. The brand name quickly appeared in top positions.

Does branding really impact SEO? Truths and myths

It’s high time to resolve the doubts and address all the myths in this regard. It turns out that branding is closely linked to SEO activities. A good brand reputation has an enormous impact on the SEO process. Thanks to it, the brand attracts more and more clicks and the average web session time also increases, together with the number of impressions. The power of the brand influences the number of new links to the website and the frequency of queries related to the company and its products.

Long-tail phrases are extremely important when doing SEO for branding. Internet users often search for a brand by entering its name with additional keywords that are supposed to narrow down the search results.

A strong brand means greater popularity among trustworthy recipients that are more willing to share website links. This creates a natural link profile based on the credibility and reputation of the company.

This is particularly evident in personal branding, which is based on thoughtful and strategic development of one’s image and personal brand. It’s about managing your career and image in a way that ensures that your name is a guarantee of the highest quality and credibility. At this point, the consistency of your statements, actions or even professional achievements play a crucial role. It’s about treating your personality as the finest advertisement. As an example, we can mention the brand created by Ewa Chodakowska, a polish based personal trainer who has a large group of loyal followers.

The trainer has developed a powerful personal brand that allows her to come up with new projects highly appreciated by the recipients. The number of impressions and searches for new products constantly increases which translates into more website visits and natural link profiles. Such activities affect SEO for branding and improve brand recognition.

Want to improve brand recognition with SEO activities?

Below you can find a few tips that are worth applying if you want to improve your brand recognition.

1. Run a company blog – it’s one of the most popular activities that bring the intended results in regard to brand recognition and the SEO process. A blog is a recipe for enriching your website with more quality keywords and content that attracts users.
2. Be active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media platforms – when it comes to brand recognition, it’s important to be displayed in the search results and to be active on the most popular social media platforms. Publishing refined content will make your brand credible not only for Google robots but also for users coming across your professional company profile.
3. Increase RSS subscriptions – an increase in RSS subscriptions signalizes Google that the brand is strong and popular.
4. Focus on Google News – the “there is no such thing as bad publicity” motto doesn’t apply in this case. Appreciated and recognizable brands are mentioned in Google News and even have separate channels.

The takeaway

Strong and powerful branding has a positive impact on the way the company is perceived by customers and it turns out that it’s closely linked to SEO activities. As you can see, branding and SEO couldn’t exist without each other and they’re mutually dependent. Therefore, it’s worth devoting time to SEO for branding to increase the credibility of your company and make customers familiar with it. Both SEO and skillful brand-building activities are supposed to evoke natural associations and guide users to values important to the company – respect for tradition, excellent quality and care for customer satisfaction. With meticulous and well-thought-out marketing activities, your brand has a chance to flourish and become even more successful.