SEO As A Branding Tool

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Typically, when you hear marketers talking about SEO and branding, they’re not connected. Sure, you can brand yourself online. You also need to SEO your website. But did you know that you can use your SEO as a branding tool?

It’s true. The most effective elements for using SEO as a branding tool include:

• Your domain name
• Anchor text
• Alt tags
• H2 and H3 tags
• Trademarked keyword terms

I’ve talked about each one of these before, except for the last one. Just to review, a keyword-rich domain name can brand you. It also gives you a tiny edge over the competition. Of course, anchor text is always useful for SEO, but for branding? If your brand is keyword-rich to begin with, yes. H2 and H3 tags with keyword terms in them make your content stand out more. Add a color that becomes a part of every tag and you’ve got instant branding. Alt tags – same deal. Use your keywords.

Consider Google’s PageRank algorithm. It’s trademarked. Any idea why? Because it’s a branding term. Now, page rank isn’t trademarked because it represents an idea behind the PageRank trademark. That’s what makes the trademark such a powerful branding item for Google. It’s based on a popular keyword.

Of course, you can’t trademark a keyword. But you can trademark a branding version of a keyword. Let’s say, for instance, that you are a salad chef. Your most popular keyword phrase is salad chef. You can’t trademark the keyword, but you can trademark SaladChef as a variant of the keyword and use it as a branding item. Doing this prevents anyone else from taking the same variation and using it to capitalize on. It’s a powerful branding technique. Try it!