I was talking to a friend who travels much more than I do and he was saying that, despite knowing all the frankenfood that gets served at McDonald’s, it’s reliable. When he’s on the road, he can either take his chances with the local burger joint and get anybody’s guess. Or he can go with the tried-and-true golden arches.
It’s not that he’s never willing to try something new. It’s that sometimes he’s tired and, rather than exerting the mental energy needed to conduct a cost-benefit analysis around taking his chances with the local fare, he just wants to get something to eat and know exactly what he’s getting.
That’s where McDonald’s wins every time.
It doesn’t have to be the best. We all know it’s not the healthiest. But it’s probably the most well known fast food restaurant in the country.
That’s all about consistency and branding.
What does that have to do with your ability to show up when your audience is looking for you?
McDonald’s didn’t earn that reputation overnight. It worked day after day for years (decades!) to become the well-known burger brand it is today. It knows it takes time to build trust with an audience and it was diligent about putting in the work.
The search engines aren’t that different. If they’re going to direct their users to a website, they want to make sure that website is the real deal. They know their users count on them to direct them to the most relevant, most useful information related to their search, so they’re putting their reputation on the line every time they recommend a website.
That means each website needs to prove to the search engines that they’re a safe bet. And just like it takes consistent action over time to earn a person’s trust, earning the trust of the search engines likewise requires consistent action over time.
But a strong brand has other SEO benefits: name recognition.
No one says McDonald’s restaurant, or, “McDonald’s, the burger place.”
All you need to do is say the name and everyone knows what you’re talking about.
The same goes for the search engines, because they’re not just tracking what’s on your website: they’re tracking what’s on everyone else’s website. And if you have a strong brand that tends to get mentioned as a reference on other websites, search engines take note of that, and they’ll use it to improve your search rankings.
A brand reputation is like any other reputation. It’s not just what you say and do, it’s what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.
While that might feel out of your control (and, to an extent, it is) you can exert some control over the conversation by teaching people how to talk about you (including the search engines.) That’s what branding is: controlling the conversation around your company.
With that in mind, let’s talk about what you can do to strengthen your brand, and thereby improve your SEO (search engine rankings.)
If you’d rather watch/listen to me talk about it, that’s what this video is for.
Table of Contents
- Define Your Brand
- Covering the Same Topics
- Maintaining the Same Quality
- Publishing on the Same Schedule
- Targeting the Same Audience
- Let’s Talk About AI
Define Your Brand
You can’t communicate your brand until you’ve defined what it is you’re communicating. That’s where your brand guide comes in to play. And if you’re wondering what’s in a brand guide, this article lays it all out.
Once you have that well in hand, it’s time to start spreading the word about your brand. That requires:
Covering the Same Topics
Obviously you can’t cover the exact same topic in all your content, but the topics you cover all need to be related.
For example, as a marketer I talk about the connection between sales and marketing on a regular basis, but if I were to start providing tips to improve your sales process without even touching on marketing, that would be confusing. You would start wondering if I was shifting my business to focus more on sales training, and the search engines would be similarly confused.
Just like a confused prospect doesn’t convert, a confused search engine doesn’t rank. Instead, it’s likely to bury your website deep in the search results where no one will ever find you.
And when it comes to trying to get the chatbots to mention you when answering their users’ questions, you won’t show up at all.
Maintaining the Same Quality
McDonald’s might not have the best quality, but the quality is always the same. You know you’re not getting the best, but you know exactly what you’re getting, every time.
Restaurants that sometimes serve great burgers and other times serve hockey pucks on a bun won’t see the same success McDonald’s has enjoyed. It doesn’t matter how good your best burgers are if your customers aren’t sure if they’re going to get that or something else entirely the next time they come in for a meal.
The same goes for your content. You can’t spend hours creating one solid, in-depth blog post that covers everything there is to cover on a topic, then coast on roundup posts that rely heavily on content from other websites, but don’t offer a new perspective, much less actionable tips and takeaways.
Your content should always be the highest quality you (or your content marketer) can create, and it should always
- have a unique perspective on the topic
- explain your reasoning for that position
- provide actional tips and takeaways your audience can use right now to improve their lives.
Publishing on the Same Schedule
It’s not that how frequently you publish new content doesn’t matter, but sacrificing quality for quantity won’t get you the results you need.
While the amount of time you have to wait for your McDonald’s order might vary slightly depending on how busy they are, if one visit takes five minutes and the next takes an hour, you’re not likely to go back the next time you need to eat something fast.
The same goes for your publishing schedule. People and robots both like to know when they can expect the next installment of your show. The more regular your publishing schedule, the more reliable and trustworthy they perceive you to be. When it comes to the robots, that leads to higher search rankings. When it comes to the real, live people visiting your website, that means they tend to spend more time on your website and they’re more likely to use you as a resource, which also boosts your brand authority and your SEO.
Targeting the Same Audience
Understanding your ideal client is key so you can create content tailored to their needs and tastes. Then you have to do it again and again so they’ll know they’re getting the same experience every time they come to your website.
The search engines will also notice if you drastically change your tone or topics to gear your content towards a new audience every few months, and that will have a negative impact on your SEO.
That said, there is a caveat to this tip: most of us operate with a few different marketing personas. For example, if you’re a sales trainer who works with sales teams, some of your content might be geared towards salespeople while other pieces might be geared towards sales managers.
You can get away with that as long as you’re strategic about it. That means 1) your audiences can’t be too different from each other, and 2) everything else needs to remain as consistent as possible.
Let’s Talk About AI
For the record, I hate the terms “GEO” (generative engine optimization) and “AISEO” (artificial intelligence search engine optimization) because good, old-fashioned “SEO” (search engine optimization) still covers it all. If people are using Claude as a search engine, it’s still SEO. Just because the search engine has changed doesn’t mean it’s not SEO.
Also, Google has been incorporating AI into their search algorithm since long before ChatGPT came along, so there’s nothing new about AI search.
That said, I’m OK with the term “AEO” (answer engine optimization) because that reflects how search is changing. People are increasingly looking for an answer to a question rather than a website with content they may or may not have to dig through to find the answer.
So, an increasing number of marketers and business owners are focused on getting the chatbots to mention them in their answers.
If you count yourself among that number, I would like you to stop and take a moment to determine whether doing so makes sense for your brand.
First of all, is your ideal client using a chatbot to look for you?
Second, if they are using a chatbot, are they using it to look for you, or are they just looking for an answer so they can stop wondering about it and get on with their day? If the answer is the latter, it doesn’t matter if the chatbot mentions your brand because they’re not going to remember it, and they’re certainly not going to click through to your website.
But if they’re using the chatbot to help them narrow down their options of service providers, that’s a search you want to show up in. Not only are they more likely to click through to your website from the chatbot, but those are the kinds of searches people conduct when they’re getting ready to make a buying decision, making that a highly motivated lead.
And guess what the chatbots use as references? Websites that get referenced by other websites that have a lot of high-quality content and a lot of traffic.
That means you need to play well with others in your industry and related industries and convince them to say nice things about you when they’re talking about you, your services, and your industry at large.
And guess what that requires?
A strong brand.
If you need help creating your brand guide, here’s what that looks like.
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