Guide to building a branded search strategy
People looking specifically for your brand online is the most concrete proof that your effort to raise brand awareness is successful. They are already familiar with your brand, as evidenced by the fact that they have typed it into the search box, and they are eager to move on to the next step with you. However, just because prospective buyers conduct a search for your brand name does not ensure that they will see your branded keyword at the top of Google, Bing, or any other search engine results page. Therefore, you can’t simply let it rest there, can you? You need to optimize your brand keywords (that is unless you are Apple, Coca-Cola, or another high-profile brand). This is why building a branded search strategy is important.
At its core, a branded search strategy may be summed up as the process of anticipating and preparing steps that ultimately lead to brand optimization. You need to take a methodical approach to branded search in order to stop important leads from falling through the cracks in your sales funnel. This way, you can take advantage of the potential for twice the conversion rate of non-branded search terms. Of course, you can always hire one of the SEO companies NYC to help you with this. Or, you can continue reading as we’re going to teach you how to do this.
Essential components of building a branded search strategy
Branded search is designed to be integrated into your SEO strategy, despite the fact that it is typically defined as one side of the competition. Your visibility will be improved across the board, from search and map results to shopping results and listings in online marketplaces, thanks to this feature’s innovative design. Here are two main components of branded search:
- Organic searchÂ
- Paid search
Organic search
You should claim and optimize your brand keywords from the begging because that’s the only way to get them at the top of the search engine results pages. This way, you’ll be attracting customers that are already in the thinking, deciding, and doing stages. People in these stages are ready to buy – they have done their research and looked around enough. Now, they are willing to spend money on the right thing.
You can do this by using branded keywords in your SEO content strategy and letting them build up toward your goal. You can use organic brand optimization for your homepage, products page, meta tags, and descriptions of your branded keyword-based pages.
Paid search
When it comes to paid search or pay-per-click marketing (also known as PPC), what exactly are branded keywords? They are the same as your organic keywords, including those addressing your products, services, and representatives such as your CEO or CFO.
But building a brand search strategy includes bidding for and owning them. That is to say, when people in your target audience search for your branded keywords, you have the option to have relevant advertisements displayed above organic search results. Using this strategy, you will be able to increase the number of click-throughs as well as conversions. To really make the most of it, consider hiring a reputable PPC agency NYC.
You can increase the performance of your ads in addition to winning bids by employing sponsored brand mention services such as Google extensions. Because of these extensions, you are able to add specifics that further attract the interest of your potential customers. For example, hyperlinks to external sites, address and contact information, and costs of products or services.
Before you can accomplish any of this, you need to build a branded keyword-based SEO strategy to guide your efforts. This approach will help you rank higher in search results for your target keywords and we’ll teach you how to do it in the following section.
Building a branded search strategy: a step-by-step guide
A strategy gives you a plan for putting the tactics above into action. Let’s get right into the steps you need to take to build and use your brand search strategy.
Performa a brand search audit
Whether you’ve done this task before or had an SEO agency do it for you, it’s important to do it thoroughly. Here are the steps you need to take:
- Find out how many of your keywords are branded and how many are not. You can use your Google Search Console account to do this by analyzing your quartal report. Once you’re on the report page, click the + sign and choose Query to filter the branded and non-branded keywords your site visitors use. You can use a pie chart to compare the numbers and see what percentages they make up. Don’t forget to include misspelled versions of your brand name as well as the names of your products and services.
- Using the same tool, find the brand mentions or searches that brought in the most traffic.
- Think about how people got to pages on your site through brand searches and clicks. Find the top site pages that come up in this way.
- You can also find out where in the world searches for your brand came from.
Strengthen your keywords research
After you’ve reviewed and analyzed your site, it’s time to thoroughly research keywords. This task should help you figure out which brand-related keywords will work best for your SEO content strategy or SEO marketing strategy.
- Make rich content, like product demos and prices, based on what you find when you search for your brand name.
- Don’t make a distinction between branded keywords and non-branded keywords. Instead, look for ways to use both types of keywords in the same relevant content.
- Keep an eye out for brand searches that use negative words like scam, slow, difficult, and similar.
- You can also look beyond your own brand keywords to find holes and weak spots in the SEO content strategy of your competitors. A good idea is to can use brand mention services to find out what your competitors are doing that is working.
Track your brand mentions
Let’s say you’re new to SEO marketing and don’t have enough data from Search Console yet. Or, your previous SEO company might not have offered branded search services. But you’ve been in business for years and have built up a reputation for your brand across digital platforms. Good for you, because there are other ways to keep an eye on what people say about a brand:
- Social media, especially popular ones like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, is one of the easiest places to find brand mentions.
- If you have done digital PR or link building, you may also have a portfolio of branded anchor text and links from blogs, online magazines, newsletters, and news sites.
- You can also check local directories like Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp, and Yahoo Local to see if your brand is mentioned there.
- Rating and review sites are also a great place to start if you want to find out what people think about a brand and where they talk about it.
Final thoughts on building a branded search strategy
We hope our article helped you understand the importance of building a branded search strategy and how to implement it. However, keep in mind that the costs can easily add up over time if you do all of this by yourself. Therefore, do yourself a favor, and hire a digital marketing agency New York. In a very short time, you’ll notice the benefits and wonder how did you ever work without them!