Brand authority and credibility are generalized terms that refer to the level of trust your company has gained among consumers and the degree to which they find you an expert in the market. These lie in the heart of client acquisition and retention processes.
Long story short – the more trustworthy people see you, the more likely they will choose to work with you than with your competitors. And if you manage to keep up with your image of a go-to industry expert, your customers will be more likely to stay loyal to your brand.
In the era of digitization and massive competition, credibility isn’t an option but rather a vital element for every growing business. It lets you create a positive brand image and earn a reputation that will help you grow further. And search engine optimization can help.
As many of you must know, it’s the process of optimizing your site and content to appear high in search engine result pages (SERPs) for the sake of getting in front of your audience and earning traffic. Handling site optimization is an ongoing commitment that takes a wealth of time and effort. It can be made easier with the help of the right tools though. You can find all the software you need on independent review sites. For example, sites like Top 10 SEO Software specialize in reviewing and comparing popular tools to help every business find an effective solution. And the benefits you will get from ongoing efforts will go far beyond attracting more traffic. Namely, SEO can even assist you with building brand credibility. Read on to learn how!
SEO Brand Building: How Optimization Fundamentals Help Establish Your Authority
The benefits of SEO for business spread far. Some of the biggest perks include increased visibility and a larger amount of potential customers that come from organic (unpaid) traffic.
But how does it work in terms of creating brand authority? Let’s start from the basics.
Keyword Optimization
As the backbone of your optimization strategy, keywords have a massive impact on your visibility. These are the specific search words and terms that people use to find what they are looking for on the web. By conducting thorough keyword research and optimizing your site for target queries, you can ensure that your pages pop up in SERPs for relevant searches and, respectively, your prospects find you.
By targeting the right keywords in your content marketing strategy, you can achieve multiple goals:
- Emphasize your belonging to a particular niche;
- Ensure you speak to the right audience;
- Make sure your target audience finds you while exploring content in your subject matter.
Once accomplished, these goals can give you a chance to showcase your credibility and build trust.
To conduct effective keyword research, you can use specialized SEO software. It will help you detect which queries aligned with your niche are used and assess their core performance indicators like search volume and competition. If you still don’t have a suitable keyword research tool at hand, you can find the top SEO tools by checking objective comparisons of available options.
Authority Content Creation
After you help your target audience find you in SERPs with the help of relevant keywords, your next big task is to capture their attention and make them want to stay. That’s where the real magic happens – by answering your audience’s search queries with high-quality content that offers unique perspectives on the topic, you can gain their trust and establish yourself as a credible expert in your field.
To create brand authority, you need a solid SEO content marketing tactic. Here are a few tips that should help:
- Bring actual value – Produce content that gives something worthy to your readers. It must be well-researched and informative. Ensure a high level of accuracy by using valid sources of information and up-to-date facts. Most importantly, it has to answer your audience’s questions and help them gain value.
- Add unique touches – To stand out from the crowd, you must show how you are different from your competitors. To do this, use fresh perspectives, experiences, and numbers that demonstrate your unique expertise in the field.
- Keep it transparent – When sharing any information about your operations, products, services, or business in general, get as open and transparent as you can. Let people look behind the scenes and develop a sense of deeper connection with your brand and trust.
- Update your content regularly – Sometimes, you have older pieces of content that continue working and bringing new traffic. You should keep such pieces fresh to continue building trust and show your authority.
- Deliver evergreen content – Evergreen articles that provide valuable information work great for establishing your company as an expert in the field. Invest time and resources into creating such content and updating it as regularly as necessary.
Use these tips in your SEO content marketing strategy to create authority content that gets crawled and ranked high in SERPs.
User Engagement
Although Google doesn’t formally report user engagement as a direct ranking factor, it explicitly prioritizes sites that keep users engaged and happy by taking them higher in SERPs. Needless to say, if your website delivers high-quality experiences, it can build up your brand authority, making you look more trustworthy to prospects.
In order to use this to your benefit, first, start tracking user engagement with Google Analytics to see how visitors engage with your site.
Then, conduct a thorough audit of your website to see what issues may cause users to navigate away from your site and fix them. For example, this may mean improving your site’s mobile version or increasing page loading time, etc.
Continuously monitor your user engagement to keep your customers and prospects happy. And they will pay you back with conversions and loyalty in their turn.
Leverage Off-Page SEO for Brand Visibility and Credibility
Apart from conducting keyword research and delivering outstanding content on your site, you can also build your brand authority through off-page optimization tactics.
There are two core pathways that you should get on:
Build a Solid Backlink Profile
Quality backlinks are among the most important SEO basics. They are highly valued by Google and generously rewarded by it. And they are valued by regular users, too.
When a high-quality and reputable site features a link to yours, it’s a good indicator of expertise in the field, the quality of your content, and the overall trustworthiness of your site. Hence, if building brand credibility is one of your goals, you should make link-building your top priority.
Here are a few tips to use:
- Research potential link donors using search engines, social media, and other resources. Assess all opportunities based on quality and trustworthiness.
- Reach out to potential donors using personalized messages and emphasize how you can contribute to their platform with your content.
- Create top-notch content that donors will want to post on their sites.
- Nurture relationships with acquired partners to create lasting relationships.
- Create share-worthy blogs, white papers, case studies, infographics, and other content types that other sites will want to link to.
- Consistently track the quality of your backlinks to ensure they contribute to building brand credibility.
Benefit From SEO Reputation Management
SEO reputation management is also an aspect of off-page optimization. It implies managing mentions about your brand to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction and, at the same time, earn social proof that will also emphasize your authority.
Managing your online reputation involves tracking customer testimonials and responding to them timely and effective. It’s important to answer both positive and negative feedback to show your clients that you care and improve their satisfaction.
Also, reputation management can involve measuring your social media interactions, such as likes and shares, and answering them as well. This will help you show prospects that people choose your brand and talk about it, which is great for your credibility and trustworthiness.
Conclusion
Building brand credibility and authority is pivotal for earning the trust and loyalty of your prospects and existing customers. In today’s competitive world, it’s also pivotal for surviving the competition and ensuring scalable growth for your business.
Luckily, after reading this article, you know how to use SEO for brand visibility and establishing credibility too. Use this knowledge in practice to earn high positions in SERPs, while also demonstrating your company as an industry expert.