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When it comes to getting more customers, businesses should know better than to overlook their reputation. After all, people nowadays are more informed than ever. They sniff out information about a brand before making their decision to purchase. With this in mind, it will be very difficult for your brand to convert customers if you lack a compelling online reputation. Here comes this Guide to using SEO. SEO has become the backbone of many website and businesses online.
Indeed, an article from Forbes points out how over 97% of businesses are taking their reputation seriously. That's like saying the sky is blue! If you want your business to compete, it has to maintain a positive presence online. What more way than to use Search Engine Optimization in establishing a great authority brand and reputation.
So, how can brands make themselves reputable using SEO? Use the guide below to get started:
1. Come up with an engaging brand profile
Building an effective brand means creating an identity that attracts the right audience. After all, you can't develop a good reputation if there's nothing you can share about your brand.
A brand profile is an important part of making your business stand out. And it's not just because it conveys a story. It also increases your brand's online searchability, allowing people to find and engage you.
So, whether you are starting your business from the ground up or thinking of rebranding, it's always important to create a brand story that captures the essence of your business based on these important factors:
a. Your Goal: What is your vision for your business? What gives you a reason to get up in the morning? What motivates you to go further?
b. Your Product: What makes you special in your market? How can you make people's lives easier? Why should people bother about your offers considering that other companies are selling the very same thing?
c. Your Audience: Who are you selling to? What expectations do they have for your brand? What can they get when they decide to accept an offer?
With these questions in mind, you can draft out a consistent brand story. This will also help you develop an effective SEO strategy that can further benefit your online reputation.
2. Use your brand name in social media posts
Social media is a significant channel for maintaining your brand's identity when it comes to reputation management. People nowadays use Facebook and Twitter to engage brands directly. From an SEO perspective, your social media activities can also benefit your website's performance in the long run.
Indeed, every post you make and every piece of content you share that links back to your website can help build authority, allowing your business to rank higher in the search engine results pages (or SERPS).
That said, you have to simultaneously do two things: increase your website's traffic and build your business's reputation on social media.
One way you can solve this is to create posts that mention the name of your brand. This will generate a lot of interest and ensure that your business gets a lot of attention.
You can amplify your reach by using the right hashtags for your brand. You can use tools such as Hashtagify or Tweetreach to find relevant hashtags with the most mentions.
It's also important to include valuable keywords in every post. Whether you are creating an article on LinkedIn or posting a Tweet, using keywords related to your business helps associate your brand name with the type of product or service your audience is looking for.
If you do this right, it will be easier for people to find you online and learn more about your offers.
3. Optimize your video marketing campaign
Using videos as promotional tools is nothing new in the world of brand-building. But for videos to influence their intended audience, visibility is highly important.
When running a video marketing campaign, it's crucial to have your content indexed so your videos can be visible when people look for them.
Here are a few ways you can make full use of videos for brand-building and SEO:
Choose the right platform
YouTube seems like an obvious choice, but you can also explore other platforms like Vimeo. At any rate, your main goal for developing a video marketing campaign is to generate interest, so focus your efforts on these two sites.
Craft compelling titles and copy
Before you upload any video content, make sure that the title and description can grab the attention of your target audience. You can use cliffhangers like "You won't believe what we did to this dusty carpet" or "What they don't teach in Harvard Business School." Write them in a way that hooks people, but make sure the copy is still related to the content of the video itself.
Feature your video on-site
If there's one thing that Google likes, it's a website that's rich with a diverse range of content. In other words, the search engine may give your website a higher rank if it contains rich media. So, be sure to feature an introductory video about your business on your Home or About page.
While videos can help make your business more visible online, you still need to ensure that your videos are well-produced. For this, use only the information you need for your videos. In place of real people, you can use animation to tell your brand story.
A video adds credibility and draws in more people. You just have to create compelling content that's designed to stir the curiosity of your audience and encourage them to know more about your brand.
4. Revise or redo your keyword strategy
The success of your SEO efforts lies mostly in your keyword strategy. If your website is not generating organic traffic, you may want to revise or recalibrate your strategy.
Here's how to do it:
Assess your website
Conducting an SEO audit is the first step towards making any important adjustments to your keyword strategy. Using the Google Analytics platform, you can get a clear overview of your website's performance. More importantly, an audit can also help you identify high-value keywords that can give your website a better position in the SERPs.
Resolve technical issues
You may have to determine the pages users visit and how much time they stay in each one. For instance, if your About Page has an alarming drop out rate, you might want to consider changing the design of the page and revising the content itself. You may also need to fix broken links and ensure that the content of your webpages is properly structured.
Double down on local keywords
If your business is still in its formative state, you may want to build a local reputation. This means you will need to create content that's highly specific to the community and includes keywords that people in that community search for.
Search terms such as "green cleaning service Dallas" are highly specific because there are people who are actively searching for this type of service. Sure enough, you will have to come up with a Local SEO Checklist of activities that can increase your business's local prominence.
An effective keyword strategy is difficult enough, but using the right search terms in your content can create greater brand awareness.
5. Protect your brand from bad press
Negative reviews are a fact of life for businesses. However, when a brand becomes a target for a flood of negative content in the form of bad reviews and blogs meant to destroy a well-guarded reputation, then taking immediate action is the only thing to do.
You want to protect your brand from negative reviews or trolls and for that you need experts. SEO is not a job for amateurs and there are many reasons why you should outsource search engine optimization.
One way you can counter content detrimental to your brand’s reputation is to create new material using the brand’s name as a primary keyword. This should help you water down the search results, so positive content gets ranked higher.
This may take time, but improving your reputation requires consistent effort. You should be able to publish high-quality content, including articles, infographics, videos, and slide presentations.
You can also encourage other people to write guest posts about your brand. Doing so should help push down bad press as fresh content slowly (but surely) climbs to the top of the SERPs.
Final thoughts on SEO for Reputation Management
Once you are able to apply everything you need to improve your brand's reputation and searchability, it's always important to keep track of crucial metrics pertaining to other aspects of SEO.
For sure, your brand’s reputation is closely tied to the number of people entering your site. That’s because when people trust your brand, they are more likely to visit your website. If all goes well, they may also trust you enough to make a purchase.
You can tell based on the time they spend on each webpage they visit. You may want to check on the bounce rate as well. If people leave your site seconds after entering it, there are definitely issues you may have to address.
While optimizing your site has no direct impact on your SEO performance, it can still affect your site’s quality score and, in turn, boost your brand’s reputation.
SEO has a direct influence on brand reputation. It can get too technical to handle, but SEO gives you an opportunity to build a loyal following of brand advocates.
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