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As a business owner or marketer, you’ve probably heard the term search engine optimization (SEO) kicked around a lot.
SEO is an area of digital marketing that is about the steps you need to take to improve website ranking. These steps include researching target keywords and creating high-quality content that will help you to rank well on relevant search engine results pages (SERPs) and boost your organic traffic.
There are lots of ways you can go about this, and different strategies will work for different businesses. But it’s well worth taking inspiration for small companies who are already doing a great job of standing out online.
Let’s look at five examples of brands that are getting SEO right, and how you can replicate some of their methods to get great results.
Freshbooks attracts their ideal audience with free resources
Our first example is FreshBooks, an online invoice and accounting software company
built specifically with freelancers and small businesses in mind.
Some of their services include expense tracking, time clock tracking, and payment facilitation. In addition to their paid services, they offer free invoice templates to reel in new customers.
This page on their website currently ranks on the first page of Google for keywords with a collective monthly search volume of 323,660, according to data from SEMrush. One of the phrases it ranks for — “invoice template” — receives 110,000 monthly searches alone. So, offering these free tools has been a great move for claiming a space on relevant SERPs.
This isn’t just a great SEO tactic, either. By offering free products that are relevant to your niche, you can attract your ideal audience to your website and start a relationship with them. If someone likes your free products, they’ll begin to trust you, and they’ll be far more likely to pay for your services down the line.
With your own business, think about what free products you could offer customers. These could be eBooks, templates, or calculators. Social Marketing Writing uses this technique well by providing a free social media visual template package.
Looka has earned a strong backlink profile
Looka is an AI-powered logo and brand designing business. Customers can let the company know what kinds of colors, fonts, and designs they like, and Looka does all of the hard work for them.
Perhaps the biggest draw is that people can start the process for free, and see what kinds of ideas the software comes up with before spending anything. This is a very attractive prospect for a lot of business owners who aren’t yet sure if they want to invest in professional branding.
The fact that Looka’s tool is initially free makes it very linkable, too, as publications and bloggers can share it with their readerships, without worrying that they’ll complain about the cost. Unsurprisingly, this tactic has worked wonders for the company’s backlink profile.
You want other reputable sites to link back to your business, because Google will take this as a vote of confidence in your authority and trustworthiness. This typically means that the more high-quality links your site gets, the better your rankings will be.
Here’s what Looka’s high quality backlink profile looks like, according to Ahrefs:
As you can see, the site has 133,523 backlinks, which come from 4,456 different sites. This is very impressive, and is sure to be one of the reasons why the company performs so well on the SERPs. You can do a similar backlink analysis both manually or with the use of tools such as a backlinks API or Ahrefs and it will give you a better understanding of your link building campaign.
So, how can you build a strong backlink profile like this? The most important thing is that you create high-quality tools and content that others will want to share and link back to. You could create infographics, conduct original research, build helpful calculators, exchange backlinks, write comprehensive guides, and more.
Hasbrook & Hasbrook nails local SEO
Hasbrook & Hasbrook is a personal injury law firm based out of Oklahoma City, which absolutely nails the local SEO game.
Local SEO comes into play if you have a business with physical locations, or you primarily serve people in a specific area. If someone nearby is searching for businesses like yours, you’ll want to pop up on the SERPs — but you need to work for it.
Hasbrook & Hasbrook make it incredibly clear where they’re based. They have their location in most of their webpage titles, a lot of their content is inspired by the laws relevant to local citizens, and they even have Oklahoma in their website URL.
This might all seem quite simple, but it has a huge effect on a business’ search engine rankings. The law firm currently ranks on the first page of Google for “Oklahoma” keywords that have a collective monthly search volume of 9,130. This means there are a lot of people out there who are interested in the services Hasbrook & Hasbrook offer, and they’re very likely to be introduced to the company when they’re doing their research.
If your business has brick-and-mortar stores or a lot of your customers are based in one area, it’s worth coming up with your own local SEO strategy. Start by optimizing your Google My Business listing, incorporating your location into your website copy, and creating content locals will be interested in. It won’t be long before you start to see a lot more footfall.
Venngage creates great content that attracts the right audience
Venngage is an infographic design company, which ranks well on the SERPs thanks to its high-quality content.
Creating content should be a huge part of any SEO strategy, as it gives search engines more context about what you do, it gives your ideal audience more opportunities to find you, and it allows you to demonstrate your expertise, which Google pays a lot of attention to.
Venngage has a guide called “What is an infographic?”, which is a great example of high ranking content. In fact, it can be found in the top spot for a wide range of relevant Google searches, including when you type in “infographics” (84,079 searches per month), “infographic examples” (7,977 searches per month), and “infographic definition” (1,548), according to Moz Keyword Explorer.
Of course, people who first come across this content might not need Venngage’s services immediately, because they probably don’t understand them. But, if they read this guide and decide that they do want to start incorporating infographics into their online content, they’ll be far more likely to make them with Venngage’s help now that a relationship has been forged.
Find out what kinds of content your target customers are looking for by listening closely to client queries and carrying out some keyword research. You can also check out Social Marketing Writing’s guide to evergreen vs topical content to learn more about what types of subjects you could cover.
Lawsuit Legal creates content to boost its E-A-T
Finally, Lawsuit Legal is a personal injury law firm, which does a great job of boosting its E-A-T with in-depth guides about the areas of law the company covers.
E-A-T stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, which are three factors search engines like Google take into account when they’re deciding how to rank sites for a particular query. Essentially, search engines only want to send their users to websites that are going to provide knowledgeable and accurate advice. So, to improve your search engine rankings, you should be creating content with this in mind.
Ultimate guides are ideal for this. They aim to answer anything and everything about a particular subject. For instance, Lawsuit Legal has a guide to whistleblower laws, which includes all of the information someone might need about them. It covers what they are, why they exist, the rights whistleblowers have, and what you should do if you’re sitting on information that you think needs to be reported.
This is a simple but effective way they have positioned themselves as an authority in their field, and it’s something most businesses can replicate. Consider what questions or pain points your target customers have, and answer them with a comprehensive guide that shows you’re an expert in your niche.
For example, if you are a specialist in class action settlements, then you can share how you can help your clients with unclaimed money class action settlements.
You should always use a specialty-driven SEO approach, in which marketing and promotion activities are focused on a certain market sector or niche rather than the whole customer base. With niche-driven SEO, you may rank for your target keywords fast and easily. This will help to build trust with search engines too.
One of the best ways to come up with ideas for ultimate guides is to look for question keywords you can target. Loganix has a great guide to finding and targeting questions keywords, which will walk you through the process and help you to get the best results.
And, if you would like to see another ultimate guide for inspiration, check out Social Marketing Writing’s article about social media automation. Again, it covers everything about the topic, showing that the website is a knowledgeable source of information, which will appeal to both internet users and search engines like Google.
Hope you found this guide on SEO examples for brands useful
SEO can seem like a minefield, so there’s nothing wrong with taking strategy inspiration from companies that are already getting it right.
Consider how you could implement similar tactics in your own marketing strategies. Could you create free tools to attract your ideal audience, focus on building your backlink profile, and boost your E-A-T with ultimate guides? Once you get started, you should see your rankings improve quite quickly.
Ready for the next step? See how you can combine your SEO and social media marketing efforts to build relationships, earn backlinks, establish brand authority, and more.
About Alex Ratynski
Alex Ratynski is the founder of Ratynski Digital, an online marketing consultancy that focuses on helping small and medium-sized businesses achieve their goals. He set up his company after working as a local SEO director for a dental marketing agency, where he helped to turn clients’ ventures into thriving multi-million dollar businesses. He spends most hours strategizing SEO for his clients.
