SEO, SEO, SEO. The importance of search engine optimization for pretty much any brand cannot be overstated. This is the way a brand can increase their exposure online, make sure they’re getting in front of the right audience, and expand their reach on sites like Google and Bing.
In the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry in particular, SEO can be a valuable tool to increase brand awareness and eventually sales. Below is a short list of SEO considerations for CPG brands.
Focus on long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific than traditional keywords. For instance, a short keyword might be something like “granola” while a long-tail keyword would be more like “where to buy organic, gluten-free granola.”
They tend to have lower search volumes; however, consumers using long-tail keywords are closer to a purchase, because their searches are more specifically targeted. Thus, capturing these long-tail keywords can provide a ton of value to your brand.
When you are creating content for your CPG brand’s website, make sure you are looking not only at short keywords, but also at long-tail phrases that could bring the right audience to your site. There are a number of keyword tracking tools available online to help you get started in figuring out which long-tail keywords to work into your content.
Add alt text to images
While images and visuals are an essential part of any good website, they are also not really searchable. The only way to make an image searchable, and thus able to contribute to your SEO efforts, is with alt text. Alt text is the description of an image that will show up before it loads on a page.
Short, descriptive, and accurate alt text can turn photos on your website from just eye-catching visuals into helpful SEO tools. When building or editing your brand’s website, make sure that every single image has alt text.
Recipe content has lots of value
If your CPG brand is related to the food industry at all, you will want to consider adding recipes to your website somehow. Recipes are very commonly searched online. Consumers are constantly looking for ways to use the foods or ingredients they have in new and delicious ways. Recipes and the keywords you can include in them can help drive a ton of new traffic to your website.
Use, but don’t overuse, keywords
A decade ago, when SEO was still a relatively new concept, the sheer number of times a keyword appeared on your website factored heavily into the algorithm. Essentially, if you wanted to rank for “best grocery store” and you included that phrase 100 times on your website, that would really help you. Now, there is a bit more nuance to the way rankings are calculated.
Nowadays, just repeating a key phrase over and over and over on your website is not going to be enough for you to rank highly. In fact, overusing a keyword can even hurt you. So when writing content for your site, it’s still important to keep in mind the key words and phrases you want to rank for. But don’t just repeat them over and over and expect your ranking to jump.
Use tags effectively
A very useful tool in website building is tagging. There are a variety of tags used on websites: title tags, heading tags, meta description tags, and the like.
To start, ensure every page on your site has a short and descriptive title tag. Titles are an important place to not only catch consumers’ attention, but also greatly impact your SEO efforts. Try to use the main keywords that are important to your brand in title tags whenever you can.
Similarly, other tags can be great places to include a variety of keywords that will help your website’s ranking in search engines.
Backlinks are incredibly valuable
Last but certainly not least, backlinks can make a huge difference for CPG brands’ SEO. One of the ways search engines like Google determine the relevance of your site is based on the quantity and quality of other websites that link back to yours.
Getting strong backlinks usually requires a financial investment. Many media outlets and blogs will include your brand in an article and link back to your site for a fee. However, there are also a few ways your brand can try to increase backlinks without using any ad spend.
If you have partnerships or collaborations ongoing with other brands, ask them to link to your website from their own (and you can do the same for them). If your leadership, employees, or company is mentioned in something like a news article or appears on a podcast, you can ask that source to include a link when mentioning you. Many existing relationships you have can be leveraged to increase backlinks to your brand’s website.
By following the tips and tricks above, your CPG brand should be in a good position to optimize SEO efforts.
