By Moses Alausa, CEO and SEO Director at Egnetix Digital
When brands are born, it usually starts with big, exciting creative conversations. The business or brand name, the colours you’d want to be associated with, the logo that’s designed to stand out, the tone of voice, all the things that really will make the business feel alive. These are occasions, the sessions filled with exciting creative brainstorming moments, mood boards, ideas scribbled on whiteboards, debates about whether the brand should feel bold, elegant or playful.
But there’s someone who is often missing from that room. The SEO specialist.
Too many branding projects treat SEO as something to be dealt with later, once the visuals and messaging are locked in. By then, the big creative decisions have already been made and the brand has been set on a path that might look beautiful but is harder to find in search. And in a world where visibility is as important as visual appeal, that’s a risk worth avoiding.
Why should search be part of brand development from day one?
Branding and SEO might seem like different worlds. One is all about creative expression, the other about search engine algorithms and optimisation of websites to align with the algorithms. But in reality, both share the same goal, which is to connect with the right people, your target audience in the right way at the right time. The difference is that SEO makes sure that connection can actually happen by ensuring people can find you in the first place.
When SEO is involved early, the brand can be shaped with both visual beauty and discoverability in mind from the off. That might mean choosing a brand name (a business name) that won’t get lost in a sea of unrelated search results or developing messaging that uses the same language your audience is actually typing into Google. It might mean structuring a new website so search engines understand it from the start, instead of having to rebuild it later.
This is not about stifling creativity and having SEO lead the way. It’s about making sure the creative decisions help the brand compete in search, not fight against it so it can maximise its potential.
Common problems when SEO is left out
Without SEO in the early brand stages, businesses often run into issues later:
- A brand name that’s impossible to rank for because it’s too generic or already dominated by another industry.
- A website structure that hides the most important pages so neither users nor search engines can find them easily enough.
- Content that misses the mark and isn’t quite relevant enough or misses best practice because it’s written in a way that sounds great but doesn’t match the language customers actually use.
- Expensive rework months after launch to fix technical or content issues that could have been avoided.
By bringing SEO in early, and we mean very early, you avoid common and avoidable pitfalls creating a brand that works both for people and for search engines from the start.
How branding and SEO can work together?
Think of branding and SEO as two sides of the same coin. Branding is designed to capture your target audience’s attention and creates an emotional connection. SEO ensures that attention actually happens at the point of where the user is in-market, by putting the brand in front of people when they’re actively looking but don’t know the brand they’re looking for. They just know at this point they’re after a service or product.
Here’s how they can complement each other during development:
- Naming decisions: SEO can test potential brand or product names for search demand, competition levels and clarity.
- Messaging and tone of voice: Keyword research can reveal the words and phrases your audience already uses, so you can weave them naturally into your brand voice.
- Website architecture: Early SEO input can help shape site navigation and content structure so it’s both user-friendly and search-friendly.
- Content planning: Branding sets the story, SEO maps out how that story will be told online in ways that drive traffic.
When these conversations happen in parallel, the end result is a brand that is as competitive in Google as it is compelling in a pitch deck.
Strategy before aesthetics
It’s easy to get drawn straight into the creative work, finalising logos, colours, taglines. Those things matter, but if they’re not built on a clear understanding of your audience and how they search, they risk missing the mark.
An SEO specialist’s role in early brand strategy is to bring insight into the market and audience behaviour. What terms do people use when searching for your type of business? How competitive are those terms? Are there gaps in the market your brand could own? This isn’t just “SEO research”, it’s market intelligence that can influence positioning, messaging and even product naming.
When you see the first round of creative ideas, they shouldn’t just look good. They should reflect what we know about your customers and how they search for solutions. That’s how you build something that resonates and gets found.
The risk of retrofitting SEO later
Some teams think they can bring in SEO after the brand is launched and “optimise it then”. In practice, this often leads to compromises. Copy has to be rewritten. Navigation has to be changed. Campaign slogans have to be rethought because they don’t connect with any relevant search terms.
It’s a bit like building a beautiful shop in a hidden alleyway and then trying to put up signs afterwards. You might get some visitors, but you’ve made it harder than it needed to be.
By integrating SEO from the start, you build the shop on the high street from day one.
Setting shared goals between branding and SEO teams
When branding and SEO work together, it helps to define shared objectives. This avoids the risk of each team pulling in different directions. Examples could include:
- Achieving a balance between brand personality and keyword visibility.
- Designing a website structure that supports both the user journey and SEO growth.
- Creating content guidelines that are consistent with brand tone and search optimisation needs.
With shared goals, it’s easier to make decisions that support both creative ambition and search performance.
Long-term benefits of giving SEO a seat at the table
When SEO is part of brand building from the start, you don’t just get a nice-looking brand, you get one that is visible, scalable and built to grow. Over time, this leads to:
- More qualified organic traffic without relying solely on paid ads.
- A brand voice and identity that naturally align with how your audience searches.
- Stronger domain authority because the site structure and content strategy were right from launch.
It also means less time spent fixing issues later, and more time building on a strong foundation.
The takeaway
Branding and SEO are often treated as separate projects, but the most successful businesses see them as deeply connected. Interestingly they very much are connected from the visuals, to the messaging, the positioning, they set the stage. SEO makes sure your target audience has an opportunity to actually consider your business, consider the brand.
So next time you’re developing a brand whether from scratch or updating an existing brand, don’t save SEO for the post-launch checklist. Invite it into the room from the very first conversation. When design, messaging and search work together, you create a brand that’s not only beautiful but also discoverable so your audiences can find you, so you can be competitive in your market, having built a brand and business that is truly built to last.
