CyberBrand - SEO's Best Friend

When a great cyberbrand combines with effective search engine optimization, the result is a very successful Web site. A strong online brand image can give the copy tremendous persuasive powers and achieve the Web site's marketing and business goals.

Your company's online brand image and the customer's experience and comfort with it is your cyberbrand.

Maybe the word cyberbrand sounds cultish or too trendy to fit into most business vocabularies, but it is very important to search engine marketing efforts. A strong brand informs, entertains, interacts with, and focuses the visitor's mind. When the cyberbrand is expressed in graphics and interactive elements on the site, it takes pressure off of the copy to convince and interact with the visitor. A strong brand supports the copy giving it authenticity and visual strength and allows the copy to say something mundane or even boring. Even though we need it, most of us consider information rather dull so having a "fun buddy" bring some color to your interactive site is a saving grace.

This gives your site credibility as the visitor senses the synchronicity of your content. That relaxes their mind and keeps them in their comfort zone.

Rather than standing naked alone, your keyword-rich copy can mesh with the graphics and animation thus supporting the focused brand experience that keeps customers loyal and happy.

The SEO Companies best friend is a good Web designer who knows where visitors are coming from and is glad to welcome them by complementing the copy. The graphics for instance can help communicate complex messages better than mere words alone, especially when those words interfere with SEO needs. When the copy can focus on search engine optimization needs it is going to be more effective.

What is Your Brand's Relationship to the Customer?

Many cyberbrands can alienate and cripple the promotional and welcoming effect when they try to be something they're not. A brand should aspire, but the average customer isn't as appreciative of whimsical communication. Common keywords keep the brand's feet on the ground and they also tell your visitor where your brand is headed. It's all relative to your own customer's vocabulary, perspective and needs.

Your cyberbrand is more than a name and a logo. It's a relationship with the visitor. The relationship often begins at Google or Yahoo, and it often is kept via those search engines too. Customer loyalty is difficult to maintain online with the level of competition present.

A cyberbrand is difficult to differentiate with a few graphics on a Web site. Customers are always searching around for better value, but that doesn't mean you can't successfully differentiate and position your brand in the search engines.

It's Not the Same as the Offline Brand

To fuse optimized keyword focused copy into the brand voice is not a simple matter. It's further complicated at times by the tendency of marketers to try to use the brick and mortar offline brand descriptions. Since the search engines are so central to Internet use, you have to take that into account, or it will force the visiting prospect to make a mental leap and most don't bother doing it. They'll just click back to the search results and find something that's consistent with their search mentality and vocabulary.

Offline brands should be adapted to online needs because the online experience is very different to offline. Offline brands can last years without modification, or they only have a few other brands as a reference to compete with.

On the Web, brands can and should be more immediate, interactive and informational. A strong brand not only generates credibility, it makes the visitor a little more forgiving of keyword loaded copy.

Brand Identity Guru provides innovative branding and web design helping clients to achieve significant gains in marketing reach and sales conversion. Branding is a critical element of the marketing mix and your Web site needs to be a cut above the competition.

Elements of Strong Online Branding

Deirdre Breakenridge, in her book Cyberbranding, Brand Building in the Digital Age, offers some tips on building a strong Cyberbrand.

Here are her criteria:

1. Permission - Do people accept that you're online or do they think your site has no real purpose?

2. One-on-one Interaction - Does your site feel like it is customized, or focused on the individual that's visiting?

3. Personal Experience - Can your visitor relate personally to the content?

4. Immediate Rewards - Can they access what they need right away and gain a sense of satisfaction?

5. Content is more than a Static Brochure - Content should be dynamic, interactive and fresh.

6. Service and responsiveness - Is there a real person to contact and are your FAQ pages really effective?

7. Relationship Marketing - Does your site make your company a point of reference in the customer's life?

Breakenridge also states that the brand should develop in a way that allows brand value to accrue (brand equity) and not be left behind. Some experts call that consistency. It means those parts of the brand that carry the core value of the brand must remain or the value gets lost.

Are your keywords part of that core value that should be retained over time? Those words represent customers needs and if they don't change then your site should retain the keywords they use. Your keywords should be a core part of your cyberbrand.

One last point about the cyberbrand is that when your customers tire of it, or feel a need to compare solutions and therefore use the search engines again, you want to be found in a new way that allows them to rediscover your company. The best way to achieve that is to have new content designed for that purpose. Many Web sites leave this to chance with a "there's lots of new content and I'm sure they'll find it" attitude.

Google has an outstanding relationship with its customers and it continues to grow and evolve. They are a model of how to build customer loyalty through good service.

Don't trust your corporate branding or brand communication or optimization to unethical black hat SEO placement firms. Your site's continued success really demands the guidance of productivity of an ethical SEO company. Get the top Toronto Search Engine Optimization firm helping you multiply your Web site traffic with qualified customer prospects.