For many people, search engine optimisation (SEO) is nothing more than creating relevant content and selecting keywords. However, this is not the case. SEO is not just about content and keywords; many other factors come into play to help your site rank higher on the search engine result page (SERP).
One of those factors is the logo of your website. Yes, it might not look as important to you because of its small screen space, but if used properly, your company’s logo can help increase your website’s search visibility by many folds.
The logo is a very crucial part of any business. From Nike’s swoosh sign to the blue-bird of Twitter, the universe of the brand logo is filled with diversity. This diversity sometimes makes it challenging to create the right imagery to represent your brand. However, once you pass this challenging step and have your logo ready, it is essential to stick to it and use it to increase your brand’s visibility. When you stay with one logo, people can immediately recognise your business just by looking at it.
But to get to the point where people are very familiar with your logo, you need to ensure that your logo’s visibility is high in the online environment (social media, website, search engines, and so on).
Before we step into how you can use logo SEO for better search visibility, let’s start with the basics and know why it is necessary to have a logo for your business.
Source: iStock
Why a Logo Is Essential for Your Business
In most cases, the company’s logo does not get the kind of priority it deserves. Having a decent logo is an integral part of a successful business, as having high-quality products and positive referrals. Let’s look at the points that make a logo essential for the growth of any business:
It Grabs Attention
The attention span of the consumers is awfully short. A study by Microsoft shows that the average attention span of humans is not more than eight seconds. Even goldfishes have an attention span of 9 seconds. This is where your company’s logo comes into the picture.
The logo can grab the attention of the viewers quickly and represent the core values of the company in a very interesting manner. The short attention period, the one that forces customers to judge a business by its appearance- can be beneficial for you, considering you have a robust logo that speaks for your company.
Makes a Strong First Impression
You only have one shot at getting this right. The first introduction of a company to its customers is through the logo. If the logo is designed well, it can pique the interest of the potential customers to know more about the company, its services and products. And if you don’t put the required efforts into the logo, you would alienate your potential consumer base and basically would end up tanking your business.
By making an excellent first impression, you can ensure that the ownership of your product(s) and the niche you dominate is communicated effectively. Right from the get-go, a logo has the power to introduce your company as an authority in your professional space.
It’s Memorable
A logo has the potential to lead the horse (customer) to the water (company). They are mainly a point of identification that a customer uses to recognise your business. In ideal cases, when your customers see your logo, you would want them to connect with the memory of what your company does and, more importantly, how your business makes them feel.
A good logo is always aesthetically and visually pleasing because of which it can easily trigger a positive recall about your business. Your company name alone would not be able to generate such effective results. In some cases, customers often forget the name of the business, but they immediately associate the logo with the memory they have of your business.
The Foundation of Brand’s Identity
If we have to sum up the definition of successful branding, it would be telling the story that influences the emotions and decisions of the potential customers, plain and simple. While it is true that a logo is a part of a company’s branding, it also acts as a base for the entire narrative on which a business is set up.
Everything from colour, tones, and fonts is determined on the basis of the story that you aim to convey to your customer. The logo is supposed to act as a stage for this story. These elements later translate from your logo to all the materials that you use for branding like websites, cards, letterheads, you name it. It helps in creating a marketable and robust brand identity.
Makes You Different From Your Competition
You should shy away from being different with your logo because it’s going to represent why your business is unique. Sure, there might be hundred other cafes in your locality, but yours is the only one that stands for sustainability, and you can drive this message by making your logo green and earthy.
Your logo should be based on what your brand stands for or any background of the company. This will be able to convey your values in a more efficient manner, and, more importantly, tell your customers that you’re better than your competitors.
Importance of Logo on Your Website
Now that we know why it is absolutely necessary to have a good quality logo let’s shift towards its online presence. This tiny piece of art is also one of the most recognisable parts of your company’s website. This means it’ll have a significant influence on the website design and overall online marketing campaign. Here are three ways in which a logo can affect the website:
Logo can dictate the look of the website
Logos, most of the time, contain the microcosm of the branding of your product which is why it can be responsible for determining the colour palette used in your website. Your website design should always complement the logo to make it more effective.
When redesigning your website, you can also tweak your logo. Many companies in the market have benefited and increased revenue just by redesigning the logo. However, updating a logo is a tricky task, and you should do it with proper research.
Logo can work as a link
Talking about conventions, customers tend to click on the logo or header to reach the homepage; it acts as a giant “home” link button. This means you get a motive to put the logo on every page of the website, and it becomes a central element of your website design. It makes the navigation on the website simple by allowing visitors to return to the homepage with a single click.
Dominates online ads
When you’re creating effective links and ads, you need to ensure that your logo is completely visible. Sometimes, a logo alone does the job if your company is well recognised among your target audience. The logo then becomes a valuable marketing tool in itself. A good web design or an advertisement landing page will always have a dedicated space for the logo.
Use Logo SEO for Better Search Visibility
Local businesses are often looking for some clever technical tricks to beef up their SEO game through partnering with expert agencies. For instance, if a business is from the Philippines, they can incorporate local SEO Philippines strategies that help to optimize text and image content for improved rankings and visibility. But if you need a quick in-house fix, one of the most elegant and simplest tricks is to optimise the logo of the website. Since many businesses are not aware of it, using this strategy will give you an advantage over your competitors. By implementing this often-underestimated tactic, you can gain a competitive edge over your rivals and enhance your online visibility. The best part? It won’t significantly impact your SEO cost. Leveraging SEO services like SeoHero can also further streamline your SEO efforts, making the process more efficient and effective. After all this build-up, here are four tips using which you can improve your search visibility.
File Format
If, by any chance, your website is hosted on WordPress, you are most likely using DIV/CSS image replacements. They speed up the loading time of the page. However, the difference is not very significant. But if you can reduce the loading time by even a second, it will definitely boost your page ranking. Google gives more priority to a website that loads faster.
The ALT attribute and the use of Schema.org markup are not included in these encodings. Because in these formats, there’s a lack of optimized image code, therefore, it’s better to use IMG. This recommendation is especially for the start-ups that are just launching a website. No matter what type of website it is, be it an e-commerce store or just a landing page, optimising the logo will always contribute to the ranking of the webpage.
ALT Attribute
One of the most important ways to link text to an image is by using the ALT attribute. Search engines are constantly improving; they are now able to interpret the content of the page in a much better way. However, the ALT attribute feature is still producing great results by giving the right signals to the crawlers. With the help of this attribute, the understanding of an image is strengthened, and they get the keywords that are not yet displayed by the algorithms.
Things you should know about ALT attribute for logo:
- Having the name of the company, even the official one, is much better than having no information at all.
- When you add a unique name of the brand to the ALT attribute, the chances of rank improvement increase.
- Add information in a moderate amount. If not done properly, the search engine will fail to match the attribute description with the image.
- The best thing to put in the ALT text is the keywords relevant to your business. The more precise you are with the keywords, the higher your ranking will be. There is no shortage of tools available in the market to do this. But, the one that gives the most reliable and accurate solution is SE Ranking. This tool will not only help you in finding the right keywords but will also allow you to do website auditing, which also analyzes the pictures on the website and can suggest what actions to take to optimize the logo on the website.
The File Name
A difference between a website designer and an SEO specialist is that one will upload your logo under the name “logo.png/jpg” while the other will ensure that there is a brand name or keyword in the file name of the logo.
Using brand names or keywords in the file name might not look like a big deal, but according to the experts, it is essential to use the appropriate name in order to convey the content of the image to the search engine. The file name ties the logo with the company which further improves the value of SEO and helps your page rank even higher.
Link and Title Attribute
For logo optimisation to generate desired results, it is essential to link the logo to the homepage of the site. For this, you’ll have to make a canonical link to the homepage. You can do additional optimization by adding a title attribute to it which can also be specified in the IMG tag. However, if the ALT attribute is already there in the IMG tag, it’ll be better to add the title attribute to the link. Ensure that the title is identical to the ALT content.
Some Additional Tips for Logo Optimization
- There are some logos that only consist of white and transparent areas. These logos need coloured backgrounds to be visible, posing a challenge to Google, since its site design has white backgrounds. When you try to tag a white and transparent image as your logo, Google doesn’t use it in the knowledge graph because of the invisibility of the image. Use some colours in your logo to avoid this.
- Google and various other search engines are focusing on reading the metadata elements out of the EXIF data of the images. So you can improve your search ranking by optimizing the EXIF data of the image and adding geolocation to the image for the search engine.
- Be consistent and use the same image across all your social media sites. Doing this will further reinforce the image that you use to represent your company in the search.
The Wrap Up
After you spend an adequate amount of time designing the logo and incorporating these strategies, you need to make sure that your site provides a satisfactory user experience to those who find it. While site appearance and easy navigation are essential for user experience, the most important thing is to ensure that your site is always up and running. Couple logo optimisation with a strong SEO strategy and you’ll witness great results in terms of visibility.
Written by DesignCrowd on Wednesday, September 1, 2021
DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.