Digital marketing advice to rank despite Google updates & the emergence of AI
Portugal news – Here are 8 tips on how to use SEO to boost your brand, according to the expert advice of Mariana Franco, the founder of BrilliantSEO:
The frequent updates of Google’s algorithm as well as its growing understanding of published content, have made Marketing efforts change the focus of their traditional strategies towards Branding (Brand Boost). This change still raises doubts in most companies: How to change what has worked so well in the last 20 years?
Although there is resistance to this change, the truth is that with the advent of Artificial Intelligence, LLMs (Great Language Models), and learning assistants (such as ChatGPT, Google AIOverview or Bing Copilot), if this change in focus of action is not implemented, the high marks of today will not be there tomorrow.
How to adjust your SEO strategies to keep your brand relevant in the future?
Creating content that serves all stages of the sales funnel is a good first step towards making your company safe for future updates. However, there are other factors that have been occupying space on the podium and that are fundamental for ranking and not only there. On the other hand, some important factors in the past (such as page speed) have started to lose relevance.
1 - Serve all the steps of the sales funnel correctly
The sales funnel in SEO is increasingly important and, although unconsciously, many companies already create content that serves all stages of the funnel, now it is necessary to think about strategies to make the architecture and structure of these pages suitable, for both users and machines.
2 - Keep topics relevant and useful
One of the main focuses of Google has been trying to understand what kind of content is useful and introduces new information. Creating pages with high keyword density no longer guarantees a high ranking on the results page (SERP).
Quite the contrary, a page with only 400 words and with one keyword only in the title and an h-tag may well appear first! How?
- The page responds to the user’s question directly.
- The page justifies the answer in a comprehensible way.
- The page introduces new information.
- By choosing to use artificial intelligence tools to create new pages without human input, companies simply reuse information already present on other pages, creating duplicate content and without originality.
- It is for this reason that many companies have been seeing their traffic decrease drastically after the last updates from Google.
3 - Create strategies for each stage of the funnel
It’s easy to create keyword-based pages with high search volumes. But without a strategy, these pages can become just a weight on the website of companies.
Divide the different steps of the funnel by types of pages:
- If you have a small or relatively new website, start at the top of the funnel, define your company and its services.
- Create case studies and use testimonials to prove the effectiveness of your product/service.
- Answer users' questions on the most basic topics thus creating your audience.
- The idea is to always have at the bottom of the funnel, informative pages like blogs or generalist articles that are relevant to your business but not directly linked to your product/service. By proving useful in the information you give to users, you are creating a stable base audience that you can later convert.
- You can then introduce articles that already refer to your products, explain their advantages over other competitors and how they can meet the needs of potential customers.
- Finally, at the top of the funnel, you should have the pages that help the user to make the decision: these are the pages where the potential customer can check the case studies and learn more about your company, in order to make the conscious decision to override your brand over others.
4 - Make the transition between different steps of the funnel easy
Regardless of whether your service or product has a long or short sales cycle, both human users and Google need to feel that they have constant access to all the information whenever they need it.
While the main navigation should be simple, but complete, you don’t need to put all the pages of the website there. Ensure you have the proper interlinking and navigation so that your potential customers always find answers to what they are looking for.
Important note: Don’t forget that users have found your website because of a certain keyword, and it’s most likely they will start the journey on a page other than the main one. In this way, think about the experience you should give on each page created.
Example: Suppose your company is in the medical industry and that your potential customers are hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. When creating a blog (funnel background) on how to ensure the safety of patients with dementia, you should give human information with advice that can be applied to any institution. However, this does not prevent you from suggesting an electronic tracking bracelet and including a link to your product page.
Now that you have your website organized with all the information properly structured, it’s time to boost your brand.
5 - Boost the Brand off your Website
If we think of Branded keywords (or keywords that contain the brand) and think of various websites as a web of partnerships that support each other, we can realize the importance of extending your influence beyond your website.
Please do not confuse this section with backlinks. With or without blue links, your brand will always benefit from mentions in third parties.
6 - Use Social Networks
Although the use of social networks is already part of most companies' strategies, the truth is that many brands use them wrongly.
Here are the points of reference:
- Start by describing your brand or company in each of your profiles exactly the same way you did on the company page.
- Choose the Social Networks you will use - not all products make sense on all social networks: focus on the social networks that can most boost your business and forget about the rest
- Creating profiles on all kinds of platforms is not the solution. Create only the necessary profiles on the most relevant platforms in your industry. Keep the description true to your website.
- Finally, try to publish useful content: this is the difference between marketing and advertising. Only putting images with few words does not offer value to the consumer. Share articles, blogs, texts with which your audience will identify. Try to become a reference in your environment.
7 - Partnerships with websites of journalistic or specialized articles
Writing about informational topics related to your product/service on external entities, such as news sites or industry-specific ones, gives extra credibility to your company.
More than buying backlinks (which I highly advise against), it’s important to create content on platforms that really give value. It has much more impact creating two excellent articles on external sites than buying 7,000 backlinks on dubious sites.
8 - Keep the consistency on your brand
Already mentioned earlier, but worthy of a section of its own is this point: always keep the message of your brand coherent on all platforms where you are present.
The best way to get Google to understand your brand, services and products is by repeating your main message. Only then will Google be able to gather all the points and clearly understand who it is and what it does.
The above suggestions are the starting point for building a healthy brand online. By applying these strategies, you will have the fundamental basis to apply future measures that are more complicated and demanding, but that are essential and extremely effective for those who want to survive not only the Google updates, but also the emergence of artificial intelligence.
Author: Founder of BrilliantSEO - Mariana Franco