#seobits SOP To Execute an Brand Depth Audit as An SEO

Brand depth is the accumulated emotional meaning a brand carries across countless touchpoints — and, as Wix’s Mordy Oberstein argued on the Unscripted SEO podcast, it’s something SEOs have long overlooked. This SOP walks through how to run a Brand Depth Audit so your content and campaigns resonate on more than a keyword level.

Objective

Assess how deeply a brand connects with its audience on an emotional level, evaluate whether its existing assets reflect that depth, and produce a strategy that aligns brand, content, and SEO efforts around that meaning. As Mordy put it, “Brand is very much, one, it’s associative, it’s compound over time, which means it’s very latent” — so the audit’s job is to surface that latent meaning and make it actionable.

Key Steps

1. Assess emotional depth. Evaluate the emotional connections the brand is making (or trying to make) with its audience. Mordy distinguishes fleeting emotions from existential ones: “There are things that there are emotions in life. Let’s say I don’t like fun. Okay, if I didn’t have fun today, it’s fine… There are other emotions which are almost existential that are core to the human experience. If I don’t have them, I’m in big trouble. Connection, right? The ability to overcome struggle.” Determine where the brand falls on that spectrum and assign it a “depth score” — how deeply it resonates on an emotional level.
2. Audit brand assets. Review the brand’s existing assets — website content, social media posts, marketing materials — to see how well they align with the depth you uncovered. Ask whether current touchpoints, from blog posts to email newsletters, truly reflect that meaning, or whether there’s a disconnect to address. As Mordy noted, the outcome is “we’re gonna focus on activities that align with your brand positioning, that align with your messaging, that align with your identity.”
3. Develop a brand depth strategy. Based on the emotional assessment and asset audit, build a strategic plan to strengthen depth and align it across all marketing and SEO efforts — from revamping messaging and positioning, to creating content that taps deeper emotional needs, to offline brand-building like events or partnerships. “It really all depends on where the brand is at,” Mordy explained. “If the brand is at point X, let’s say they’ve kind of found that strong identity, but they haven’t been able to manifest it yet… now we need to work on your messaging and now you need to go and create new marketing assets.”

Cautionary Notes

• Don’t reduce brand depth to a single keyword or piece of content — associations are compound and latent, built across many touchpoints over a long time.
• Distinguish surface-level emotions (fun, entertainment) from existential ones (connection, overcoming struggle); scoring a brand too generously inflates its depth score.
• A polished asset audit is meaningless if the assets don’t actually align with the brand’s positioning, messaging, and identity — watch for disconnects.
• Resist defaulting to pure search-engine optimization; a brand-first approach is what drives sustainable, long-term results.

Tips for Efficiency

• Use the “depth score” as a quick heuristic to rank where the brand sits on the emotional spectrum before diving into individual assets.
• Anchor the audit to a clear diagnosis of where the brand is (“point X”) so the strategy step targets the real gap — identity, messaging, or momentum.
• Inventory every touchpoint (blog posts, newsletters, social, offline events) in one place so alignment gaps are visible at a glance.
• Consider offline brand-building activities — events, partnerships — not just on-page content, when momentum is the missing piece.

Sources & Relevant Episodes

• Brand Depth Audit framework via Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Brand at Wix, on the Unscripted SEO podcast.
• More of SEO Arcade’s SOPs
• What is an SEO Audit?
• SEO and Brand Building