Driving visitors to your site is about much more than just rankings. Branding is playing a larger and larger role in acquisition.
In this article we look at the importance of branded searches and provide guidelines to help you understand, keyword by keyword, what you need to do to maximize your branded traffic. All you’ll need is Google Search Console and as many days of data as possible.
Firstly let’s go over why this is important.
It’s your company’s traffic
Branded traffic is very rarely traffic you’d be happy to have leak through to another site. Aside from reviews and similar searches, you’d hope that 100% of branded searches land on your site. Unfortunately we see that this is not always the case. Between the floorboards of SEO and PPC there are cracks that rob you of valuable visits, sometimes deliberately, often by simple chance — regardless, we want to help you reclaim that lost traffic.
In a recent talk at BrightonSEO[1], Rand Fishkin of SparkToro (and previously Moz) suggested that the future of SEO is in the SERPs[2] and less “on the site.” While there is a growing trend in enhanced search results, data cards and featured snippets, there will always be an place at the table for digital (organic) brand reputation.
Who cares about your brand’s reputation?
This isn’t just about traffic or revenue. Your reputation can affect a number of crucial potential relationships both with individuals and other companies or institutions. Some of the more important potentially affected parties are listed below:
- Consumers
- Business partners
- Stockholders
- Marketers
- Journalists
- Prospective employers and employees
- Co-workers
- Personal contacts