SEO is an ever-evolving industry, but lately many are starting to question just how much one area bleeds into another. For example, could a good PPC strategy be used for an SEO strategy and vice versa? We have begun to consider that the age-old ways of thinking about how to do SEO for your website have completely changed.

SEO has been around for a long time, but sadly the industry hasn’t really evolved beyond the primitive thinking of backlinks and content; instead, it focuses on technical elements instead of looking towards the big picture, which is a basic understanding of the concepts of business and how to get your brand name mentioned and trusted by consumers.

Google is one of the top brand names in the world, and they have achieved that by building a search engine that rewards those who have a strong brand within a certain market and also websites that consumers like and trust to do business with. Before the internet, we had things like the Yellow Pages, which was used to build your brand locally or even nationally; this was basically replaced by Google and other online search engines, but even before that, we had things like billboards and newspaper ads.

The only thing that has changed over time is how quickly technology can be leveraged to scale to a million eyeballs and how cheap it has become to reach these eyeballs. Now you can get a PPC campaign up and running within 15 minutes and start to expose consumers to your brand name. The latest version of this is apps like TikTok, which can help you to go viral across the globe very quickly. This may seem like a completely new and novel concept, but the same brand building that worked in the Mad Men era still works today.

The concept that drives real sales is the trust factor. If you don’t have trust, then no one will do business with you. This is a simple fact. People will avoid you unless you have certain trust indicators on your website and have an established brand name online. Google, as a search engine, has evolved over time to weed out smaller businesses that have not taken the time to really market themselves or build up some trust. They can do this algorithmically these days.

The types of things that they can look for are things like how many reviews your business has, how many searches your brand name gets per month, how many backlinks you have, how many mentions you get on social media, how often you have been in business and how many pages your website has. These are just some of the things they could build into the algorithm that would be valuable data to be used by them to decide if you should be trusted or not.

Advertising has been around for a very long time, and before the internet we saw many companies that mastered branding and advertising. When applied to the internet, we can see similar themes, which is that big businesses tend to invest heavily in advertising to keep their brand name at the forefront of marketing and help to keep their business at the top of your mind for a certain product or service. You must have a plan to remind your customers that you exist; it’s incredible how fast you can fall when people forget about you, so brand building and advertising should be a continuous process.

Coming up with great branding and advertising campaigns was the lifeblood of the advertising industry, but digital marketing seems to be just focused on editing title tags or fitting keywords onto a page. We must remember that behind every piece of content is a message, and crafting that message is critical. You need to decide what branding message you want to send and be sure to include it in your SEO strategy.

Many people will simply not understand that SEO is just an extension of branding and advertising. When you rank your website at the top of Google, you are signalling that your brand is trusted by a billion-dollar company. That is an extreme trust signal for consumers to see, and as a result, they trust you by default now. They are now more than willing to do business with you.

One of the most undervalued skills in the SEO industry is copywriting. This is likely due to so many using copy-and-paste strategies that they just forget about the words on a page and instead focus on hitting word count numbers. Being able to accurately communicate a branding message that is simple but effective is critical even on the web. If you are involved in the SEO industry, then it’s a great idea to start collecting words or phrases that connect with you as a consumer and start including those in your articles or even in your title tags.

One tool the SEO industry needs to research is how to create a brand name from scratch; this will give you some insights into how the SEO process works. Modern SEO is all about building relationships, networking and crafting carefully placed branding messages. If you do this and do this over a number of years, you will never have to worry about any Google updates. Google has been rewarding branding efforts for over 10 years now and has been rewarding them for putting out press releases, forming partnerships and using traditional offline marketing efforts.

SEO has evolved since the start of search engines when it was enough to just have a tonne of keywords placed in the META keywords tag and rank for all kinds of terms. Most people doing this had hundreds of keywords in the tag and got some major traffic from implementing it. Since that time, search engines have got smarter and started to understand the relationships between websites and how they link to each other. At the start of Google, the most important factor was just getting backlinks. Since that got abused, we have seen them branch out and figure out multiple ways to determine the value of a website and brand, which allows them to filter out trusted brands from the rest.

These days creating value on your website can be done in all sorts of creative ways; you can do interviews with industry experts, you can write creative new information on existing topics and give your own thoughts, or you can even create video content to be embedded. Either way, you have to find brand new ways of presenting information as well as staying on brand and establishing to Google that you are, in fact, an expert within your market.

Frequently updating your content is one such way that you can signal to Google you are serious about becoming a brand within the industry; you are giving your best every single day to make sure you provide further information to the marketplace and keep your brand name at the forefront. This is a powerful signal to Google that you have committed to growing your website and are going to stick with your idea for many years instead of just giving up on it overnight if it doesn’t succeed early.

There are many different channels you can use to build your brand name, but SEO is perhaps one of the oldest, and if done correctly in the long term, you will see great returns and also have an established brand name at the end of it, but it does require an awful lot of work upfront to get into that position, and then you have to be updating your website all the time to stay ahead of the pack. One of the best ways around this is to allow others to post up content on your website, which saves you having to do everything yourself and establishes you as a place to go to get different opinions on an industry.

Google likes to see that you are willing to form partnerships with other brand names, so don’t be afraid of linking out to other authorities who have already established a brand name within the industry; this will really help you to form relationships with people, connect with them via email or on LinkedIn and form some ideas about how you can work together to produce great content for each other, and most importantly, do it so that the consumer benefits from gaining additional knowledge.

Branding is even prominent inside of anchor text; when you do some solid research into large websites, you find some of the same things, which is that the brand name is always the number 1 anchor text, and this is due to the fact that the brand name is a highly searched keyword that Google can recognise as a valuable resource, and as a result, it pushes it to the top of the search results.

Brand building is an art form, but it can also be done digitally. One of the most overlooked ways to get some high-quality links to your site is by promoting your logo. Your logo is a strong branding signal that Google notices. When someone links back to you with an image, this is a strong signal they have used your logo, which is normally done by brand names who want that logo to be at the forefront of a brand-building campaign. After all, what would brands like Coca-Cola be without their famous logo?

There are many different types of SEO strategies, but one critical mistake that many firms make is having a reactive approach to SEO. This is what happens when a firm scrambles to analyse a new Google update and then puts together a strategy to beat it based on what they learned. This is a classic mistake, as it means you are always behind and have to rebuild your entire SEO strategy after each update.

One of the most critical elements to be successful in business is to lead from the front; in order to do this, you must have a good strategy that is a longer-term approach. You ideally should have a 10-year plan that will take time to execute and also set long-term goals. You can’t do this if you are constantly chasing after the latest trend within a marketplace. Google may update every so often, but certain sites always seem to be gaining ground and visibility, which is a good sign that in the long term they have chosen the best strategy.

As with anything in business, you can’t just leave your strategy and not update it; certain elements come and go, and 10 years is a long time in business, but understanding that for the most part the core elements remain the same allows you to stick to the core building blocks that will get you where you need to go. To do this, you should focus on which skills matter the most; in business, we can see that people who invest in their brand name over the long term tend to win big at the end.

Many SEO companies only plan on beating the next update, which is very frustrating for both the firms and the clients. It is based around short-term thinking and is not very effective, as it can take months to reverse engineer any changes that Google makes, and that means the strategy is essentially out of date the next time an update is launched. It’s a constant cat-and-mouse game of chasing each update and having to essentially edit the website’s tag each and every time. That doesn’t even take into account the backlinks.

A much better method than this is to be proactive in your SEO approach; you should take detailed notes on the entire history of Google updates and figure out what changes took place. Once you write these down and start analysing them, you will begin to spot certain patterns emerging over time; this will give you clues as to what Google is trying to phase out and what it is rewarding. Normally Google will not take things out of the algorithm completely overnight; instead, they prefer to make changes slowly so they know they can test that they have created the best results for the consumer.

Consumer satisfaction and the quality of the search results are paramount for Google and its continuing success. Without the consumer, Google would be nothing; they need people to return each and every day to do a search and find out more information. If they don’t do this, then there will be no ad clicks, which means Google makes no money. The primary business model for Google is as an advertising platform, which means that if they show poor-quality results, no one will use their search engine, which means fewer eyeballs viewing ads.

To be effective at SEO you must understand Google, your client, your own business and the consumer. That is an awful lot of work that is needed to be done, but if you can do it and gain a deeper understanding of search, then you will quickly establish your company as the place to be when it comes to getting forward-thinking SEO strategies.

The best way to do this is from analysis; you should know everything there is to know about Google as a company and its algorithm, you should take hours to take a look at any patents that it files, you should scan any publicly available information you can find, follow the Google employees on LinkedIn and X, gather a tonne of information and try to correlate it all together to give you some valuable insights from people who have seen inside Google’s algorithm.

When it comes to your client, you should be doing the exact same thing. You should know the history of their website and how it fared in previous Google updates. You should know how they compare to the top competitor within the market, and that means measuring every possible metric you can think of to compare. You should also understand the client’s business requirements and how they might be changing in the next 10 years.

Your own business should also get some analysis. The vast majority of business owners or heads of SEO never really do any analysis on how to improve the company they work for. When you perform this level of in-depth analysis, you can see how your company stacks up against your local competition but also how your competition could beat you. Finding and probing for weaknesses in your own business is critical to forming long-lasting strategies because you will then see how you could be beaten by someone else who may move into your market. You need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business.

The last part to analyse is the consumer, and this one is perhaps one of the most overlooked areas by SEO companies. They may have a great understanding of Google and the updates that take place within search; they can tell you all kinds of technical information about title tags and H1s but still fail to perform the basic market research, which includes understanding the customer and realising that behind every search is a person with a problem they want to solve.

The basics of all advertising and marketing are to build trust in your brand name, and you simply can’t do that unless you have done some analysis on them. Building a profile of who you are selling to should be one of the first things that you do before you even begin to change any of the on-page elements. If you don’t understand your audience, then how are you going to reach them with your website copy, AdWords ads or social media posts?

When it comes to your target audience, you should know things like how old the audience is, what kind of words they use in conversation, who they already do business with, what the primary problem that they are having is, how much they are willing to spend, and so forth. In short, you should have built enough information to put together a detailed profile of your customer, which you will then target with your SEO strategy.

One of the best places to start when it comes to being more proactive in your SEO approach is to read the information that Google publishes regarding how your website should perform from a technical perspective. Things like the page quality rating guidelines are information that should be printed out, analysed and absorbed by your entire SEO team. This is critical information that requires you to have a deep understanding of; this will show you the kind of elements that Google wants to see from your website.

When you read over the documents that Google releases, you may find out that there are certain core elements that Google wants to see, which are things like expertise, authority, and trust. You can establish these by creating great content, keeping your site up to date, having lots of pages on your site, and also having an older site that gets great backlinks from already trusted sources that Google already knows.

Creating content is one of the best SEO strategies since it builds an audience, and you can also get rankings from Google. You want to plan your content in advance, and by doing this, you can take charge and be proactive when it comes to building out a longer-term strategy. To do this, you should do some research on things like forums, social networks and even your own surveys. Make sure you get plenty of information from your potential customers and target audience. You should never turn up and churn out content; instead, plan in advance and get feedback from your target audience on what content they want to see.

A similar strategy can be taken with your existing content. While adding more pages of content to their website is a good strategy, you should also cultivate your old content. Updating it with new insights you found or new market discoveries that would now fit into the page is a great idea. This means you are being proactive and seeking out opportunities to improve your website rather than letting Google algorithms hit some pages and reacting to that.

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when it comes to SEO is building a valuable website and then not telling bloggers or other influencers within the space. You should be actively cultivating and networking with people in your market before you ever launch your website. This will give you a boost when it comes to launch time, as you may find they help you to market your site to their own audience, which gives you some instant traffic while you work on your long-term strategy.

Online reviews are one of the most important ways to increase both your SEO efforts and to also build out a strong online brand name. Branding is critical when it comes to SEO, as you have to think about the long-term process of building trust with both Google and consumers within your marketplace. The best thing to do is to turn your online reviews into an asset that can help you with both SEO and building a brand.

Figuring out a process to both capture online reviews and harness them is tricky, with many companies simply not following up on orders or just leaving it up to the customer. This is a flawed strategy, but you will see that big brands are the ones who are really benefiting from online reviews, and they all have one thing in common, which is that they have built a systematic way of getting customers to leave a review without needing to beg.

The first step to consider in winning the online review game is to actually go out and be proactive to collect reviews from existing customers. Instead of waiting for customers to leave you a review, why not reach out to your previous customers and ask them to leave some feedback for you? According to a leading study by BrightLocal, 70% of previous customers would be willing to leave your company a review if you asked them to do so.

Another stat of interest is that 30% of customers who have had a negative experience with your business will leave a review afterwards. This means that online reviews can be heavily skewed to a negative perception, as more people are willing to leave negative feedback than positive. This is vastly important to remember when dealing with feedback from online reviews; for every negative comment and complaint, you may have had hundreds of customers who had a positive experience.

To gain some ideas, why not take a look at your emails and find some post-purchase emails that you have received from a big brand name? You will find plenty of ideas and strategies that you could implement, but some of the basics are following up with an email a few days after purchase and always leaving the consumer enough time to actually use the product they have purchased so they can leave an accurate review. You should also ask them to leave a review of both the product they purchased and your business.

One of the fastest ways to build your review database is by asking for both a review of the product and your shop. The consumer will likely have to sign in to your shop or an external site to leave a review, so why not get them to do both at the same time? This will allow you to collect more data but also find out mistakes in the process that you can correct going forward.

A great example of this split strategy is using data to figure out if the product or the process is the issue. For example, a consumer might buy a new TV from your website and love every technical aspect and highly recommend it; however, they might leave some negative feedback for your business because delivery was slow or cost too much or they had to wait for the item to come back in stock.

Understanding which area is the weakest point in your business will give you some much-needed feedback into what needs to be improved; you either need to purchase better products, or you need to make improvements in how your business executes the final mile, which is delivering the product to the customer.

While many business owners hate to see negative feedback, they fail to see that this data is gold and extremely profitable. Your customers are actively giving you free business ideas and telling you how to increase your business’s value. All of this should be noted down, and you should start a large-scale spreadsheet which tracks your online reviews and divides them into positive and negative so you can correct any problems you have and double down on the things that consumers like about your business.

Another thing to consider is setting up a template that will yield higher-quality reviews. You don’t want people to just leave a star rating and bounce off your website or a review website; instead, you want them to really give you some insights into what you did right or wrong. This can be tricky when consumers only leave a one-sentence review; instead, you should build a template and have them fill it in to try and gain some vital insights into how you can improve your business process.

Additional follow-ups are another critical element that should form part of your strategy. You never want to annoy your customers with requests, but you should also realise that some people will receive your follow-up email and simply get busy and forget to leave a review for you. To capture more of the market, you should send another email follow-up a week later. This should get more people to take action and gives them a friendly nudge.

Responding to a review is a tricky game. The web has seen many business owners who get defensive and fly off the handle, make accusations and even threaten legal action against those who leave a negative comment. Before you collect reviews, you must have a system in place to respond to them. The first step should be giving the review some time to sit and digest. Never respond to a negative review straight away, as you may lash out in anger and try to be defensive; you should wait until your emotions are in control before you respond.

Your frame of mind as a business owner should be to remain calm and take a look at what the customer is upset about; you may then realise a solution on how to fix this problem. You should also realise that it is never a personal attack but just a reality of doing business; certain people will just not like the way you conduct business, and no business of any size has no negative reviews.

One of the best ways to deal with a negative review is to be able to see things from the buyer’s perspective. Perhaps you made a single mistake that led to a negative response, and that mistake could be undone. You could apologise and get the relationship back on track. You should always apologise and take responsibility for anything that was under the control of your business. This will show other people who look at your online reviews that you are willing to make things right should they have any problems. This can save your entire reputation.

When you receive a positive review you should really take the time to respond and provide some positive feedback for the person that left the review. You should thank them for taking time out of their day to give your business some positive words so that others can see. You should also find their name and invite them to come back. Use a positive review to build a relationship with the customer and turn them into repeat customers. This is not only a profitable strategy but may also lead to them inviting friends to check out your website.

There are many websites that allow you to sign up and submit your business to be open for reviews. Google Reviews is a main one that will show up when someone searches for your business or brand name; however, you should also look at sites like Trustpilot and even Yell. These sites are established with consumers and often do a really great job filtering out fake reviews, which are a huge problem within all industries.

Another way to leverage reviews into your SEO strategy is to take a look at the positive and negative words that your customers use. You can take these words and start including them in your website copy. This will help to build trust with the customer, and you can even use them to form a unique selling point for your business based around a specific situation that you have discovered is disliked by customers.

SEO in the modern world is all about branding, and at the core of branding is building trust with customers. You can no longer just have a website that ranks well because before placing an order with your business, customers will check out your online reviews and reputation to see what kind of business you operate. If they don’t like what they see, then they will click over to your competition very quickly, so make sure you make a good first impression.

Another way to boost your SEO rankings is by including links or badges to any online review sites; this helps you by boosting your external link count but also by showing Google that you really care about your reputation and can also be trusted since poorly run businesses will often try to hide negative reviews.

In the online world people want to do business with businesses that are established and trusted; they like businesses that are older and have many customers over businesses that are brand new. By embedding reviews on your website, you are showing Google that your business is established enough to have multiple reviews; this can provide a boost to your SEO by showing Google that you are serious about building your brand.

The last thing to consider is taking a look at how people type your business or brand name when leaving a review. You will often find many different variations of your name, which is a surprise to most business owners who assume people will know and spell the name correctly. This is a complex problem in the SEO field, as it may lead to brand hijacking or lost business from people who spell or type in a different name.

One of the strategies to combat different names is to collect the data from both Analytics and online reviews and then get backlinks with those alternative names; this will help you avoid lost business and make it easier for someone searching to find you.