Who says being popular doesn’t get you anywhere?

I want to talk to you this week about brand, specifically how it relates to SEO. I did a search for “Search Console” this morning and noticed that we rank number five. We’re coming up as the first result after Google in the search for “search console”, which is fantastic.

Now I must stress that we haven’t tried ranking for that. In fact, I’ve only done one blog post on the topic, so I’m putting this leap down to an increase in our brand awareness.

The other search result that also got a boost was “marketing speaker”. One of my goals at the beginning of this year was to start ranking for that search phrase, as I needed more speaking gigs. I did some technical work and managed to get to number six, where I figured it would run out of steam.

One technical thing I did was to insert structured data around my name so Google would know I’m a person and not just a brand. I think, because of the spike I’ve had in searches over the “.au” domain stuff, the result is that Google has put it at the top of the list for “marketing speaker”.

The question I always get asked is, “how do you build your brand without a massive budget?” I think the key is always to focus on your audience.

Don’t worry about backlinks, or fret too much about SEO, just work on connecting with your audience. Your name should always come up in their minds when they think about your industry, especially with voice search as it gains popularity. Your customer needs to automatically think of your brand when ordering in your industry. Once that happens, it becomes much easier to rank for all sorts of related searches, without having to do any extra SEO work.

This article was originally published on stewartmedia.com.au.

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