Whether you work in a small or large business, whether B2B or retail, having a brand strategy that is effective will provide you with a big edge in the competitive market, especially when it comes to SEO.

Business branding is roughly the overall image your company presents to the public. It springs from how you want people to perceive your business and includes such elements as color, shape, imagery and logo. Good business branding helps people remember who you are and separates you from your competition.

Below are 4 business branding tips to help with both your branding and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.

1. Make Your Brand Accessible

Making your business branding accessible starts with allowing visitors to comment at your site and send you emails. Also, adding social network sharing buttons to your site promotes sharing and helps leverage your site’s exposure. Be sure to add statements at the end of any blog posts or articles that ask your visitors to leave a comment or share their experience.

If people comment privately, you’ll want to encourage them to re-post their comment at your site, so that everyone can see it. This too promotes your visibility.

2. Visual Components

In addition to the standard logo attributes like shape and color, using consistent visual components (like backgrounds, photography and illustration) on your website and in your printed marketing materials will help create your brand and help you gain traction.

How people understand your brand will, in many ways, determine how they interact with you. A logo may convey different meanings to different people since each country has its own cultural views. Be sure to complement your brand with colors and fonts that people in your target market can identify with and grasp.

3. Backlinking

A backlink is a link of yours that appears on someone else’s website. Though this technique has been around since around 1995, and it’s kind of a pain getting people to share links with you, it still merits some consideration. Backlinking builds credibility and trust with search engines too, was well as helping to build your brand. To put this into effect, create backlinks from websites that use brand keywords that are appropriate for your company, then use these same keywords in your own web text. Backlinks from social media sites are also a great way to build brand awareness and help gain increased exposure.

4. Long-Term Versus Short-Term SEO Business Branding

Business branding is about expanding your business’s web presence and getting noticed as a leader in your niche. With this goal in mind, you stand to benefit from combining both goals, long and short-term. When thinking in terms of your business goals, you have to decide if your main objective is to build long-term brand stability or make money selling products and services right away. If you are simply looking for quick profits, there is no reason to focus all your energy on building traffic for brand keywords. Instead, you’ll want to target buyer-oriented key phrases that customers will be searching for online.

Staying active on social networking sites as well as industry websites where you regularly contribute and comment can also help increase your SEO ranking. Also, while working on your SEO branding strategies, you might want to include some of the more generic keywords as well, at least until your brand keyword traffic begins to increase, and recognition grows.

For more information on business branding, corporate identity and other services that can help to grow your business, please feel free to contact The Sherwood Group.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to check out these others:

5 Ways Your Business Can Benefit by Using LinkedIn
How To Amp Up Your Business Exposure With Facebook
How To Spark Conversation About Your Business
4 Essential Tips for Growing Your Business with Pinterest
3 Tips for Social Media Marketing Brilliance
How To Build Your Brand Online Using a Smart Social Media Strategy
How To Get More Business Using LinkedIn

This article is published by Will Sherwood | The Sherwood Group |Website Design | Graphic Design | Marketing Communications: The Sherwood Group has over 30 years of experience working with all sorts of companies, small and large. Our clients range from entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 firms, in nearly every business sector, from across the street to around the world (and yes, even Europe, China, and South America). Our goal is to create advertising,  graphic design, website design, and marketing communication that still looks fresh and relevant 10-15 years later. Our mission is to stir your imagination and leave your competition shaken and wondering,  Now what do we do?”  We are located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

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