Modern SEO: Showcasing your brand

Shifting from technical SEO to an integrated branding and content strategy for customers and search engines.

As business owners and marketers, we some times get too focused on tactics and techy solutions, but what is the main purpose of our business? To serve our customers.

And this mission doesn't change with the times, new tech, or fancy new ideas.

Modern SEO is about developing a cohesive brand identity and implementing a content strategy that serves your target audience across the web and offline.

Why brand matters when communicating with your audience

If you’re still treating SEO as a technical thing to satisfy Google, it’s time for a strategy shift. And if you don't do SEO yet, you are in a position to do it right from the get go.

Modern SEO is packaging a brand’s marketing efforts and online presence to align with Google’s framework. Google builds its understanding of a brand across its entire digital ecosystem, not just its website. More than building a “Google-friendly” website, your SEO efforts should involve developing a web-wide branding and marketing strategy and packaging the relevant parts for Google. 

But don't forget your customers. A brand is vital for a business, enabling communication and presenting a unique identity, voice, personality and emotional connection to the audience. Without it, a business lacks a meaningful presence.

A brand is the cornerstone of marketing, shaping how a business 1) Communicates with customers, 2) Positions itself in the market, and 3) Is perceived in terms of value. 

Investing time in understanding and developing a unique brand is crucial for meaningful audience connections.

And then you use this cohesive branding both in real life and online. On your website, social media, etc. and for signaling Google.

Go to where your audience is, present your solution to their problem

Brand comes first, marketing second.

Without a solid brand, a business has nothing to market. A great brand can create marketing materials, online and offline, with a message that addresses the problems its audience is facing.

The brand voice resonates with the audience because it appeals to their emotions.

Marketing strategically places a brand in the exact locations where its target audience actively searches for solutions. By crafting and distributing messages that directly address the audience's problems, marketing presents the brand as the perfect solution.

Know where potential customers search. This targeted presence ensures your product or service is readily available and top of mind when potential customers need them.

And consistently communicate your brand solution (product/service) on your website, your social media, your overall marketing, your review sites, etc. Google will pick it up from there.

What types of content to use for marketing and packaging for Google?

Create great marketing content that stands on its own, thinking of your customers, not Google.

This approach makes business sense as the content educates the audience, moves potential customers down the funnel and generates revenue before relying on Google. SEO becomes a natural extension and revenues from Google traffic are a bonus.

Types of content you can use for marketing and packaging for Google to pick up are:

Text: Blog posts providing helpful information. Viral text-based posts to encourage sharing. Articles offering expertise. Use cases from customer success stories. Email newsletters with value propositions (like the one you're reading).

Landing pages and service pages: Pages crafted with clear calls to action (CTAs) encourage user engagement, whether signing up for newsletters or making purchases.

Downloads: High-value ebooks or guides in exchange for contact details help build an email list while providing users with useful information.

Blog: Informative, entertaining mid-length content that your audience will want to share. Easy for you to repurpose on social media and in newsletters.

FAQs: Frequently asked questions help preemptively solve customer issues and reduce customer support overhead.

Videos: Long-form videos and short clips tailored for quick consumption on social media platforms and YouTube.

Visuals: Infographics condense complex data into digestible graphics that communicate ideas and reflect brand identity.

Audio: Podcast episodes reach audiences who prefer listening over reading.

Social media: Each platform requires a different approach, choose 2 or 3 most relevant to your core audience. The goal is to build a loyal community around your brand through engaging posts and interactions.

Forum content: Engage with your audience, both those talking about you and the problems your business solves. In your forum posts, take the opportunity to provide context that will help the engines.

Crafting cohesive marketing across various channels makes your brand visible and communicates its value proposition where potential customers spend time online. Marketing enhances your brand’s core values by delivering a clear and purposeful message to the right audience when they need it.

Package your brand and marketing with SEO

Crafting targeted marketing messages and sharing them on platforms frequented by your audience is common sense. Optimizing your content for Google and Microsoft Bing involves making it algorithm-friendly, enhancing credibility and reaching potential customers where they search for what you do.

Brand content exists on both on internal (your website) and external (social media, etc.) platforms. Google analyzes the entire digital ecosystem and a business’s web-wide marketing efforts.

When creating content, consider the following carefully:

• Who it is for: Identify the target demographic or persona that will consume the content.
• What purpose it serves: Determine what problem or need the piece of content addresses.
• The best format: Decide whether the content is better as a blog post, video, infographic, podcast episode, etc., based on what effectively conveys the message.
• Where to put it: Choose whether the content belongs primarily on your site or if another platform offers better exposure or engagement.
• How to package it for Google: Use traditional SEO techniques such as keyword optimization, structured data markup, video captions, semantic HTML5 etc., so search engines can easily understand and use your content.

Packaging for Google and Microsoft Bing gives the content a strong chance of being recognized as worthy material to present when someone searches for what you offer.

Remember: The goal of SEO isn’t just visibility or clicks. Your aim is to effectively communicate with your audience through visibility on search engines. 

Takeaways

SEO is not a standalone marketing strategy. It works best when it supports and relies on your web-wide digital and offline branding and marketing strategy.

Counterintuitive but a smart SEO strategy involves pretending search engines don’t exist. Instead, focus on:

• Creating content that resonates with the target audience.
• Branding content effectively.
• Strategically placing content where your audience is and in the format they prefer.

SEO then condenses a brand’s marketing content for easy understanding by Google. Showing your business because Google is confident your brand is what people want.

Modern SEO is about clear communication with the audience and search engines, turning Google and Microsoft Bing into significant channels for reaching your target market.

Time to do some quick thinking, how is your branding? when was the last time you reviewed it? Does it still speak to your ideal customer?

Address these question first, then look at SEO. We can help with that, reach out any time. Reply to this email or comment in the box below.