Your job is analogous to that of a poet trying to create a sonnet when it comes to balancing a compelling brand message with SEO best practices.
You must study and remember the structure and rules while keeping committed to your style and message.
If you run a family business with a nostalgic, feel-good brand, for example, you won't want to fill your text with terms that make the content sound like it was written by a robot—that won't match with your message. However, you can't just leave those key terms out entirely, which is why it's critical to establish a balance between SEO and your brand.
It's critical to give your brand some TLC before diving into some of the more basic SEO best practices and how to balance them with your brand message.
Define And Develop Your Brand
It's challenging to strike a balance between SEO best practices and a compelling brand message, but it's even more difficult when you don't have one to begin with. Creating brand guidelines is the most effective strategy to identify and build your brand.
From the colors and whitespace used in the logo to how material is delivered on the site, these standards will define every part of your brand. Some businesses will even publish their brand standards directly on their website so that partners and the general public can follow them. On its website, UCLA provides a comprehensive collection of brand standards and information, including details on copy tone, positioning and personality, and images.
Get Familiar With The (Current) SEO Rules
Before any poet can begin writing a sonnet, they must first understand the structure's details and guidelines. As a marketer, your first step should be to familiarize yourself with current SEO guidelines and best practices.
Because the internet and technology are always evolving and changing, search engines must change as well. As a result, search engines are able to measure ranks more accurately thanks to increasingly complex algorithms and artificial intelligence. It's critical to stay current with the latest SEO best practices.
Yes, playing the game is challenging when the regulations are continually changing, but there are a few basic guidelines to follow. Let's go over the most recent and basic SEO best practices and see how they can be balanced with a powerful brand message.
Improve The User Experience
It's critical to have skilled user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) designers working on your site at this point. User experience statistics, such as click through and bounce rates, are taken into account when ranking a site, according to SEO methods. Your UX and UI teams can assist you in ensuring that these figures continue to rise.
They can not only ensure that the entire user experience is satisfactory, but they can also do so in a manner that is consistent with branding plans and guidelines. This will prevent the brand's message from becoming muddled.
Optimize For Mobile
And, while we're on the subject of optimizing the user experience, having a mobile-optimized site is a no-brainer in today's mobile-first environment. Regardless of your company's branding, you must have a mobile site that is easy to navigate and loads quickly. Google is putting a lot of emphasis on mobile optimization and is transitioning to a mobile-first future. If you don't have a mobile-first design or if your present mobile site has a bad user experience, it will hurt your rating.
In this scenario, the only option to strike a balance between SEO and branding is to ensure that you're building a mobile version of your site that follows your brand's rules. This site should provide the same high-quality, on-brand material as the desktop site.
Add Some Authority
The link profile of your website is taken into account by Google when determining the site's authority. Quality links woven across quality content across your site are required if you want to earn some authority. You'll also want to make sure you're not always sending out the same links, topics, and copy. This is yet another reason why having a strong brand message is critical.
The type of material and links you provide on your site will be determined by your brand. This material has to be relevant to the brand. A health food company's page, for example, might focus on authoritative material about healthy foods and linking to publications in that vertical. This company's brand image—and SEO rankings—could be harmed if it began linking to irrelevant sites and writing blog posts on issues unrelated to the business.
Use Related Keywords
One of the most well-known SEO techniques is keyword utilization, but it's also one of the most misused. Here, a sense of equilibrium is crucial.
If you wish to integrate a key term in a blog post or another website page, the idea is to make it sound like it belongs there. If it sounds forced, you risk A) making your brand sound inauthentic and robotic, and B) having your SEO results suffer as a result.
This balancing act can be accomplished with ease by a strong content team or copywriter, who can make keywords a natural part of the brand's messaging. However, there are also more considerations to make. Additionally, you can:
At the bottom of each main category page, use keyword-rich text.
Keywords should be included in the alt tags of photographs.
Fill in the important words in the meta descriptions.
As part of the URL, include the keyword (where it makes sense)
Bringing things to a close
Both form and function can coexist peacefully. While staying on brand is key, adhering to Google's best practices is just as important. Ascertain that your brand is well-defined, that you are aware of the most recent SEO best practices, and that you are applying them to your brand's message in a manner that makes sense. It may take some effort, but you'll finally find a lovely balance that will increase traffic to your site.
*Please note that this is not a complete list of current SEO best practices. For the sake of this essay, we'll go over some of the most basic and popular tactics, as well as how and why you should balance them with your branding. If you want to learn more about SEO, there is a wealth of information available.