Most small businesses only consider content marketing in the later stage of their business.
Not only does Google say this is wrong, but they miss out on high business growth – especially necessary in the earlier stages of their business.
More than that, they throw away a golden opportunity to make an impression on their prospective customers.
Here’s the thing.
The best brands in the world use ultra-specific messages to build a cult-like following for their services.
A unique brand makes all the difference to potential customers.
Your brand does not only differentiate you from your competitors but also saves the business marketing budget that you can invest in perfecting your product or service.
Why brand building is important for your small business
Brand recognition is a powerful thing.
The same reasons you prefer coca-cola over generic soft drinks at your local store is the same way online users click on brands that they can spot.
Human beings are pattern-recognizing creatures. It’s in our genetic make-up.
Your potential customers are mostly interested in what feels familiar.
Studies show that customers are keener to buy new products from recognized brands than trying out unrecognized businesses.
For example, customers will rather click on the Nike store website to inquire about buying new sports shoes than on a generic website.
More than this, Google seems to prioritize websites with a congruent branding on its search engine over generic websites.
As we’ve seen so far, a brand commands more attention from web users as well as the search engine.
A brand communicates a business’s values and message. While the products or services which the business provides may change, a brand stays the same forever. Think about all the big brands in different you know – Coca-cola, Pepsi, Nike, Amazon, Neil Patel, Backlinko Etc. These brands have established a name for the particular service they provide. And have built a massive cult-like following.
As a small business, there’s no better time than now to invest in a strong brand to attract customers.
And SEO content marketing plays a huge role in brand branding.
Here’s why.
SEO for Brand building
SEO is about creating the best user experience for your customers.
Simple.
This means optimizing your website for blistering speed, heavily investing in web design, churning out high-quality content, mobile-friendliness, etc.
Why?
Because Google is only interested in showcasing websites that they know their users will love.
As much as you’ll need to pander to Google’s search engines for high rankings, more importantly, you’ll need to solve problems or even entertain your potential customers.
This is where content marketing comes in.
Content marketing and brand building go hand-in-hand. Both SEO and brand building are design to drive traffic to your website. But SEO content marketing goes further than that.
SEO content marketing helps your brand:
- Build awareness for your product or service
- Communicate your message and values to your customers
- Build a community through contact engagement
- Provide value for your customer through valuable and useful content
- Educate your customers about your product and services.
Don’t get me wrong. Implementing the best SEO strategy doesn’t simply catapult your website to the top of search rankings. It helps you build trust with potential customers. And with a limited marketing budget, this is where your small business brand can really outshine its competitor.
How to use SEO content marketing to Build a small business Brand
SEO is a practice to improve your website’s Google ranking.
Content marketing is a marketing strategy of providing useful, valuable, and reliable information for your customers.
Combing a robust SEO practice with high-quality content for your website is a no-brainer to driving traffic and increasing your sales in today’s marketplace.
Here are a few of the most popular SEO for optimizing your website:
Keyword research
Before creating your high-quality content, you need to know what your target audience is searching for. With SEO content marketing, you are looking to answer the search queries in your niche.
And keyword research helps you find out what queries you should provide answers to.
Before carrying out keyword research, you must answer a few questions;
1) Who are our target audience?
2) Who are your ideal customers?
3) What your target audience is searching for?
This helps you establish expertise and authority in your niche. Google encourages this. So take time to carry out comprehensive keyword research.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO involves the things you do on your web pages to reach your audience such as creating content and optimizing your website.
When it comes to creating content, the key is to create the best content for a particular keyword.
Here’s one thing you can do; Research your competitor’s website and find on which topics (they’ve crafted) you can provide better or more comprehensive answers.
Creating quality content is (by far) the best way to retain web visitors.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO ensures that search engine bots understand your web content. The underlying code and technical language of the website are understood by the search engines.
Here are the most important Technical factors to focus on;
- Connect your website to the Google search console to monitor and measure your website’s performance.
- Improve your website’s loading speed.
- Optimize your website for mobile.
- Setup Google Tag Manager to manage your tags.
Providing a sitemap makes it easy for search engine bots to crawl your website. With a sitemap, you display your website’s content structure.
User experience(UX)
Website design and UX goes together with SEO. The fact is to scan your website first before going on to read the content. A shabby looking website will encourage a high bounce rate from web visitors.
The goal of SEO is to provide web visitors with the best user experience.
And UX stands for user experience. In the case of your website, this includes; website structure and navigation, page speed, website responsivity, content structure, title tags, and meta descriptions, real-time customer support, smooth workflow, etc
Your goals for gaining great search engine rankings is to constantly improve your website to provide users with the best possible user experience.
Measuring/ Analytics
Marketing on the internet has become easier. With the barrage of SEO monitoring tools, you can find out how your SEO strategy is performing.
With accurate data, you can always improve your website’s performance. However, remember to keep your goals of content marketing in mind when analyzing your website performance.
Here are a few metrics to measure your website’s SEO practice;
Conversion rate, Pages per visit, Time on page, Bounce rate, Click-through rate, search traffic, Traffic source, Domain authority, and page authority, etc.
Tracking and analyzing your website’s performance is a fantastic way to always improve your website’s performance and increase your web rankings.
Craft high-quality content
Implementing the best SEO practice is all void if you don’t provide web visitors with high-quality, useful, and valuable answers to their search queries.
The most important question to answer before setting out to create your content strategy is;
How do you want customers to perceive your brand?
Remembering that your goal with content marketing is to build a strong brand.
Your SEO content strategy should include your brand voice and tone. Your brand voice should be cohesive throughout your content marketing efforts. Whether through your blog, social media platform, or email newsletter.
High-quality content keeps your customers coming back to your website to find possible answers to questions. So make sure to always create the best content.
Conclusion
A brand communicates a business’s values to its customers. Once established, your customers know what to expect from your business and therefore trust your business to deliver what it says it will.
However, bear in mind that building a strong brand takes time. But with consistent action in implementing your SEO strategy, you’ll reap the benefits in increased traffic and sales.