A search engine optimization (SEO) marketing strategy aims to boost a website’s natural search engine traffic.
It consists of methods in four crucial categories: technical SEO, on-site SEO, off-site SEO, and keyword and content.
The four pillars of SEO are generally seen as being these four areas. Together, they support a website’s search engine optimization.
Even if these four pillars are vast, brand recognition is still necessary for a successful SEO strategy.
Learn why brand awareness should be the fifth SEO pillar in this post for SEO marketers.
The First Four Pedestals of SEO
Keyword And Content
Content is king, and the cornerstone of search is keywords.
The foundation of an SEO plan is a solid piece of content that has been optimised for keywords.
Technical SEO
If the website hosting doesn’t have a solid technical foundation, even great content won’t cut it.
Technical SEO addresses issues with the website’s performance and indexability.
It guarantees that a website’s pages load quickly and that search engines can easily crawl the material.
Notably, Google has created a collection of measures called Core Web Vitals to gauge a web page’s technical efficiency and usability.
On-Site SEO
By improving the website’s structure and pages, this pedestal aids search engines in comprehending the page’s content.
The techniques used to design a website and page structure that is simple for search engine crawlers and users to grasp include site navigation hierarchy, schema markup, page names, meta descriptions, heading tags, and picture alt text.
Off-Site SEO
The beginning goes beyond having excellent content and a fantastic website.
Search engines won’t give it high rankings if a website lacks authority or builds trust in its subject area.
The quantity and quality of backlinks are considered by Google as early indicators when determining the authority of a website.
Even while these four areas seem to cover a lot of ground in developing a search-optimised website, they can only contribute to a small portion of the traffic that comes from non-branded searches.
Why is Branded Search Important?
Branded search traffic has more commercial intent and a higher conversion rate, reflecting the level of interest in a particular brand.
Generally, non-branded search traffic feeds the top of the marketing funnel, whereas branded search traffic feeds the bottom.
For a brand to continue to operate in a healthy and expanding manner, both forms of traffic must increase.
Different Traffic Driver For Non-Branded And Branded Searches
The formula below shows how clickthrough rate (CTR) on the search engine results page and the volume of keyword searches affect search traffic (SERP).
A website with a high clickthrough rate and aggregated keyword search volume will experience high search traffic.
Search traffic = Keyword search volume * Clickthrough rate
A key element in determining the clickthrough rate is keyword ranking.
The clickthrough rate increases as your keywords rise in the search engine results.
According to Advanced Web Ranking, the CTR for the top spot on Google might be as high as 38%. After position #5, CTR maintains 1% or less and decreases to about 5%.
In light of this, how do the four SEO pedestals affect a website’s search traffic?
They help a website increase its search traffic in two ways:
- We are maximising the aggregated keyword search volume through keyword research and targeting.
- We are improving keyword ranking to achieve a higher SERP clickthrough rate through valuable and keyword-optimised content, technical SEO, and on-site and off-site optimization.
However, the issue is that these SEO strategies primarily only produce results for unbranded searches.
Because branded and non-branded search has different traffic generators, their impact on branded search is limited.
Non-Branded Traffic Driver
A website can gather an almost infinite number of keywords and total search traffic for non-branded searches.
Increasing the ranking of your target keywords will enable you to increase clickthrough rates and get a larger share of non-branded search traffic.
A website can gather an almost infinite number of keywords and total search traffic for non-branded searches.
Increasing the ranking of your target keywords will enable you to increase clickthrough rates and get a larger share of non-branded search traffic.
Branded Traffic Driver
The ranking is typically not a concern for branded search if your website is currently No. 1 for your brand name (if not, you must first address this issue).
You always have an advantage on Google for your branded keywords as the brand owner.
Increasing the search volume for your branded keywords is the primary driver of branded search traffic.
However, the first four SEO pedestals don’t do much to increase brand or product searches for your business.
They are, therefore, useless for branded search.
How to Grow Brand Awareness & Branded Search
In a nutshell, brand awareness and interest lead to branded search traffic.
If people were unaware of or uninterested in your brand or your goods, they wouldn’t look for it.
You must make a brand more visible to potential customers, establish authority, and win people’s confidence to enhance brand awareness and interest.
Increased non-branded search traffic and content marketing could also increase brand exposure.
However, relying simply on website visitors to learn about your business and products won’t get you very far.
Marketers must introduce their brand to potential customers if they want to increase brand recognition on a large scale. You can’t just sit back and wait for them to find you.
Advertising, influencer marketing, customer marketing, and digital PR are just a few of the instruments in the arsenal of digital marketing that can help marketers increase brand awareness.
Advertising
Retargeting and brand awareness campaigns are the two categories into which AdRoll divides advertising.
As the names imply, brand awareness initiatives target potential buyers who have not yet connected with you. In contrast, retargeting campaigns target people who have engaged with you (e.g., visited your website).
Marketers have various targeting options for reaching prospective customers with your brand.
Contextual Targeting
One of the first techniques for advertisement targeting is contextual targeting.
Imagine a hotel chain advertising in a guidebook. A company might insert advertisements on websites or mobile applications with content related to its goods or services.
One of the first techniques for advertisement targeting is contextual targeting.
Imagine a hotel chain advertising in a guidebook. A company might insert advertisements on websites or mobile applications with content related to its goods or services.
Contextual targeting doesn’t rely on identifying or behavioural information about the target population, which distinguishes it significantly from other targeting strategies.
It gives advertisers a more private way to engage with and find potential clients.
Contextual targeting will likely become more significant to advertisers as authorities, and tech companies explore ways to preserve consumers’ privacy.
Demographic & Interest Targeting
Using demographic and interest targeting, you can find new customers by using the information about your current clients.
Assume that your clients fall under a particular demographic category or have a specific area of interest. In that instance, you can reach potential clients by running advertisements directed at those with comparable demographic traits or interests.
Lookalike Targeting
Targeting based on interests and demographics is comparable to lookalike targeting.
Advertising platforms use machine learning technology to locate target audiences that look or behave similarly to the seed audience provided by marketers instead of manually defining the target audience group based on demographic or interest attributes.
A portion of current consumers often makes up the seed audience.
Influencer Marketing
Using someone who has the potential to influence your target market to promote your brand and products is known as influencer marketing.
Before the advent of the internet, significant corporations frequently hired famous athletes or celebrities to promote their goods. Consider Nike and Michael Jordan in the 1980s.
Today’s “influencers” are social media users who have developed a fan base among a specific demographic.
Because there are so many social media influencers, influencer marketing is no longer just a perk for well-funded companies.
By reaching out to folks who have expressed interest in or made investments in your service, including your clients, marketers can find influencers for very little or no money (more on that in the next section).
Although influencer marketing is frequently used in the B2C industry, it is also effective in the B2B.
Customer Marketing
Before purchasing at an online store like Amazon, you might read customer reviews of the products.
On Amazon.com, ranking factors for product searches include the quantity and quality of a product’s reviews.
A product receives more visibility and traffic, and the more reviews it receives and the better the rating.
The same reasoning still holds even if Amazon isn’t the channel for your company.
Customer reviews on G2, Trustpilot, etc., fulfil a similar role for B2B SaaS suppliers.
Customer testimonials and product sharing on social media assist direct-to-consumer (D2C) firms gain new clients and build brand loyalty.
Use Halfbikes.com as an illustration.
Customers from this D2C company in Bulgaria act as brand ambassadors, spreading the word about the company and its products simply by posting about their experiences on social media.
Even some of their clients started Halfbikes-specific YouTube accounts.
Digital PR
Digital PR is the brand awareness tactic that is most closely tied to SEO out of all the ones used. In fact, “link building 2.0” is frequently used to describe it.
The primary distinction between link building and digital PR is that the former concentrates on obtaining links from other websites, while the latter does not.
In contrast, digital PR aims to increase brand awareness among your target consumers by having stories about your company appear in reputable, pertinent sources.
Depending on the subjects and sectors, several types of stories are told.
Consider Facebook’s rebranding as Meta. For example, a tale about how customers view the metaverse could be valuable for B2C marketers in this setting.
Because reputable newspapers typically have very rigorous link restrictions, brand visibility and reach are given priority in digital PR, with link acquisition coming in second.
Conclusion
Just as a complete SEO strategy should strive to increase both branded and non-branded searches, one of the aims of a comprehensive marketing plan should be to raise brand awareness.
Branded search traffic is generated mainly by the search volume of the branded terms, whereas non-branded search traffic is determined by keyword ranking.
A brand receives more branded search traffic the more people are aware of and interested in it.
Because branded and non-branded searches have various growth drivers, brand awareness needs to be a foundational element of SEO.
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