Small brands need to begin investing their time in brand building to obtain an edge over their competition. Google offers preferential treatment to the brands. SEO cannot help you get better rankings just with the use of a few links. Rather, if you have not done it correctly, then you might get “penalized” for not following the right conduct. This can again resurface a few weeks later.

And for small brands, there are a few things you need to do. It may not be possible for you to get the benefit of the doubt. Small businesses need to earn quality links so that they do not resurface for penalty.

But, this just accelerates the process giving a more pronounced impact. You need not take care of other things but focus on building your brand in the coming time. This is because big brands tend to get showcased in the SERPs. It’s not just about the best brand design services, rather it is also about the way you integrate your SEO with branding which matters to small companies. If they do not consider this, they will bite the dust. Here are several reasons for this.

SERPs Will Change Dramatically

Google also frequently piques itself, and this can occur thousands of times a year. Business owners not just need to pay attention to the algorithm updates but also to the cause and effect of adjustment layouts which will again change the user behavior. There are zero ranks and featured snippets and answers featuring on Google questions which are on the rise.

However, there is recent and very fast change or decrease in featured snippets. So, how did it happen? In place of featured snippets, Google is giving an exclusive space to knowledge panels or teh news which are of most relevance. This is what gives a boost in visibility to the starters. For search terms such as “Graphic Design,” which had featured snippets at one time, now have become a full knowledge panel.

Knowledge panels feature an increase of 30 % in SERPs, which didn’t have a featured snippet in the first place. So, we need to understand things which are happening. Google may try to answer the query using content from other people. You don’t even need to click on the same to view the source.

For example, in generic searches for “travel,” we have all the latest news related to travel coming to the fore. Google pulls this data directly into SERPs. Also, you will have content narrowed down to just a few big players. People need not click on their organic listing to get information. Rather, it’s just the most useful information in this post-COVID era they are interested in. 

So, we have fewer people clicking on the actual search engine listings as of now. At present, we have a 60/40 split. Just 60 percent of Google searches result in a click. Forty percent of the searches do not get any clicks. Smart people can expect to hit 50 percent at the earliest.

When small fish go past the reef, it’s not a good thing.

You may be experienced or a newbie, but SEO can be a great challenge. SEMRush gives you the all-in-one solution! Google has also implemented the Knowledge Graph to solve user problems without even a click. Typically, you need to go for the biggest brand ranking in the knowledge panels. They give you less traffic, fewer clicks and get organically-driven sales to a lesser extent.

Brand Recognition is Important to Getting Clicks

You need to get the basic test right on Google. Go for an obscure and long-tail search for your industry keywords to analyze your SERPs. You can see the big brands sticking out instantly with certain long search phrases.

When you post or feature your link on the best blog hypothetically named as bestmarketingblogger.com, it will rank on #1, they like to go past the same over to your familiar site. It’s just as you go for choosing Coca-Cola over the generic version of the drink in a local grocery store. Brand recognition is something powerful which skips on Google’s top-ranking post. It is highly powerful to drive a highly expensive sale.

Everyone wants to do things that are more comfortable and something they can trust. This Nielsen study shows that global consumers are highly likely to go for new products from brands that are highly familiar. On the other hand, 60% of the consumers need to buy the latest products from familiar brands which are present in their memory. Switching to another one is not what they want to do. See the image below. In these results, what shoes do you want to buy?

Most probably Nike.

This is because Nike is a familiar brand that produces high-quality basketball shoes. Inferno is another brand. You will count Champion shoes as a low-quality result. You are likely to click on Nike. Trust is a vital factor to help you make a purchase decision when it comes to organic search results. You want to click on things you trust. This is what is meant by branding. As you check the Google SERP for [small business SEO], You find an almost similar kind of content. It means that clicks come to you from just one thing, which is brand recognition. For example, if Forbes stands out in your mind as an important source of information, you will click on the Forbes link. And the bad thing is that this may not have anything to do with content quality.

Search Engine Land research again proves the same. They surveyed more than 400 consumers on a specific question: What is highly important is deciding which results they want to click on in their search engine search? The data showed that about 70 percent of U.S. consumers wanted to go for a “known retailer” to decide on the search results they wanted to click on. Higher brand recognition is related to higher odds of generating clicks. It increases your chances of getting the clicks.

SERP CTR Is Beginning to Outperform Rankings

Ranking on the number one isn’t pertaining to things it used to at an earlier time. You understand the SERP CTR, which said ranking first on Google gave you more than 30+percent clicks from your unbranded search.

Being unknown means nobody clicks on you. And this means that you won’t be generating more than 30 percent of organic clicks even if the content is amazing. Unless you don’t build a brand and stand out, nobody will give you a chance.

SERP CTR is much more important than your traditional rankings. SERP CTR is quite likely to impact your rankings. Links and content are two guaranteed ranking factors. SERP CTR is an indirect factor. Brand aware users are twice as likely to purchase from you.

A/B testing or simply changing a button color isn’t helpful. On the flip side, you need large-scale changes to give you better SEO results.

Branding is a great way to do the same. It also offers you a practical SEO strategy for your market. As you focus on branding, it helps you to drive higher click-through rates in your organic SERPs, and this directly correlates with higher conversion rates.

Conclusion

Google gives brands a highly preferential treatment which is going to increase with every small and big update. And if brands overpower you while decreasing your organic traffic, you would think of investing in branding design and SEO sooner. Branding offers you a great hope to conduct SEO in a better way.

A lot of consumers go for brand recognition to drive sales and clicks. Brand recall also leads to more clicks and sales than your position. Google SERPs are moving to favor big brands. Smaller brands also like to invest more in their SEO budget and brand designing strategy strategy to build a recognized brand. It’s no longer about looking for services for logo design in London to make a strong impression. Learn more about how SEO and branding design can go together reaching out to the team of designing and SEO experts at Passionate Marketing.