Tough rankings, high competition: Why brand building in SEO is worth more than ever

In the past, you only need to know a few cunning tricks and use them to make a website on Google rankings. A few years ago a well-known SEO expert whispered in my ear, for example: "Hey, bookmarks still work, I tell you...". He giggled to himself. He had just bought a few hundred links at a social bookmark registration service to give his affiliate marketing project the finishing touches in the rankings. And that worked really well.

Just a few months later, the Google update Penguin was in a storm. The sales declined to zero. The side of my acquaintance was relatively severely affected. Other representatives in his niche "caught" it less bad-although with a brief look at the backlink profile it became apparent that these competitors had just as tricked and manipulated the Google index. Huge difference: Some websites in the affected market had managed to be more than just traffic-taker by means of Google-index. They had grown to brands, hosted large Internet forums or now offered their own shops instead of earning money only with partner links. The affected brands still exist today. These companies have managed to become an obviously indispensable part of the network with their websites. And thus become a fixed part of the Google index. But what exactly does it mean to build a brand online?

No matter why the user clicks on this request, he does not select any search result. Not just because it's ranked 1 or 2. He knows immediately, at the latest after reading meta title, URL and description, where he wants to click. Only then will it be possible to return to another search result-or to travel with a new, perhaps more specific term. But it is a fixed: the brand decides with the click, depending on what the user wants and what he connects with the brand.

→ Notepad: When people know their name, their content is clicked more often, even if they may not be at the forefront of search queries. Therefore, a contemporary mix of classic SEO and marketing should target brand awareness.

Brand awareness is more than an end in itself in all marketing campaigns it must be clear what your company stands for. The credo is: to build awareness purposefully. For illustration, an example from the T: Advertising, which consists only of colorful, cheerful commercials, which perhaps transports a certain lifestyle and buzzes over the screen, does not create a purposeful notoriety for a long time. When the spot is over, a black hole often remains in the viewer's memory. The advertising leaves a positive, emotionally addressed audience, but the question remains: for what has just been readvertised? The bond between the message and the brand is missing in bad spots completely. However, in order to build up your brand to a brand size, the binding must not be missing in any case. 

A concrete practical example – this time from the online world – is the Wortliga text analysis. For a long time, the company was only known for its free text analysis tool, which investigates content for comprehensibility, conciseness, and aesthetics. However, the reference to the actual service of the agency was lacking. Conversions in the sense of leads were scarce, even though the tool was very popular for a short time after its release and, according to popular SEO dictations, was a magnet for links, mentions, and social signals.

Much worse still: the brand "Wortliga" suddenly stood for a tool. The blame was the excessive PR success of the free product. So it happened again and again that people – actually potential customers – said: "Wortliga, I know [...] Oh, you write lyrics too? " A similar picture was found on Google: when the term "Wortliga" was searched for at that time, the bottom page appeared at the top with the text Analysis tool. Not a nice sight for the owners-but the public imprint of the brand. Today Google knows that behind the name is a company-but still dominates in public perception the text Analysis tool.

What search terms are uniquely assigned to your brand or domain and how often they are searched for will tell you about the popularity of your brand. That means: The more people search for your brand on Google, the more obvious the signals for the search engine are that they are a known address. If the seekers combine their brand names with performance, topic or product-related terms, Google will learn more precisely what their brand stands for.

In addition, the relationship between the number of searches for your brand and the clicks on your Web page is relevant as a search result. This means: increasing search volume to your brand name and a high CTR, also to semantically related terms, evaluates Google as a sign of notoriety and popularity.

How does one manage to not only become known as a brand but also to stay in conversation with its themes and products? Of course, a brand should not merely create an emotional bond, but stand for a promise: Ideally, it stands for the customer, for example, for quality to which it can rely. 

From the point of view of online marketing, it is important that you build with your fire authority in your subject area. Reputation is the key. They have to be part-by-piece from the expert to authority and finally to the brand. What you need to look out for when building your status as an authority, I will show you below five points: 

The Google index, together with Google AdWords, plays an important role in your brand building as it is for your eventual reach. In addition, there are other Google services that you can use in one way or another as strategic branding tools: