There are many benefits to being at the top of search results.
- It is a way to get a lot of traffic to your site. More traffic results in more trading.
- When your customers search for information and find your content, you engage as a purchase option.
- Companies that rank at the top of search results are also considered authorities in their field.
I’ll ground the issue a bit by addressing what has changed in people’s purchasing decisions.
Search engines and buying behavior
It’s easy to forget how much the world has changed in the last 10 years.
Google is only 15 years old, but it has revolutionized the way of buying, it has revolutionized the way of looking for information.
Why then has the buying process changed so drastically? Thanks to Google, before you could easily search for information about a new product, you could ask your acquaintances and if you received a recommendation, surely it would have greatly influenced your purchase decision. Another option was to go straight to the store and ask the salesperson questions.
Traditionally, a brand is built with television commercials, radio commercials, newspaper advertisements, and roadside advertisements. The idea is this, when a person comes across our company often enough, we will be remembered. When a person then has a need, when making their purchase decision they remember our company, that is, our brand. Building a brand is, therefore, an effort to get into the head (memory) of the customer, still leaving a positive image and idea of the company.
So how does the brand relate to search engines?
When a person is interested in a product or service, they turn to Google. What if, with every search and related question, you find your company, your brand?
What kind of image does the applicant get of your company when the search results consistently show “Fitness”? The applicant writes down any questions that come to mind about the training. The applicant will be left with a very positive image of you when they had a problem that you responded to and fixed.
This is where branding is at its best, a person found your brand on a number of different searches, helped it with some good information-rich content, and remembered it. When you decide to take your training to the next level and want to order a professionally designed gym program and a new gym card, you will remember the Fitness Center Wellness and surely you will be one of the competitors in that store.
Today, a person encounters 5,000 marketing messages a day, there are advertisements everywhere. There is so much that our brains cannot process that amount of information. We have unconsciously learned to exclude advertisements from our thoughts, we ignore them. Think about the pages you browse, how many ads do you remember seeing? However, 98% of sites contain ads.
When your mark is found when they search for you and help you, you really remember it.
What if you can’t find it in the search engines?
Imagine that the Wellness Center Fitness Center is not located right in the center of the city because the large facilities in the center of the city are expensive. When a new resident moves to the area, where are they looking for a new gym? Well, in the Google way of course, if the Wellness Center Wellness isn’t listed in the training vocabulary there, it won’t even be listed as a new training location.
In explaining search engine optimization, I’ve often used the idea of ”that’s how you move your business from there along the highway, right downtown to the pedestrian street” to where the people are.
If you don’t find it at all when you apply, it won’t even be involved as an option when making a purchase decision.
High search results mean quality.
For people, search results also mean quality, if your brand is not found in search results, people may not think that it can be very important. If I can’t find the company I’m looking for on Google, I’ll start imagining that it doesn’t exist.
I have had many interesting conversations with employers about quality and search results. “How is it possible that above us is the search for ‘our main service’ of five absolutely pilipali companies?” The answer is simple, Google thinks they belong there. Even if your business is the best of these (of course!), you have an absolutely superior product and satisfied customers. People have the perception that Google knows what’s best and therefore you don’t.
Google doesn’t really know what a high-quality company is, but that’s the perception applicants have.
In summary
Considering the following:
- Change in the purchase process
- The amount of advertising has been growing all the time.
- A change in people’s search for information
I dare say that one of the best ways to build a brand that really sticks in people’s minds is search engine optimization. I’m not saying it’s the only thing needed for branding, but it’s time to get serious about search engine optimization by thinking about your brand as well.
A brand is a human image of your business.
The world is digitizing, the brand too. Is your brand highly searchable?