Posted by on January 9th, 2012 View Comments
Posted in SEO - Search Engine Optimization |
If you base your major decisions solely on the aggregate organic traffic your website gets from search engines, then what you’re doing can be likened to groping around in a dark room; you may get to where you want to go but you’ll do it at a slower pace. Similarly, you’ll be better able to ensure success if you get more details about the overall search traffic of your site before making major decisions. Among the first things you need to do for this purpose is to segregate branded from non-branded traffic.
However, before you actually do that, you may want to get a clearer picture of exactly why branded traffic needs to be segregated from non-branded traffic. Take note that by doing so, you’ll be gaining a much better understanding of the two most important indicators of online success, which are: the way site visitors normally interact with your business and brand, and how these visitors find your site using generic and non-branded keywords. The information you get as a result can be used to target the most valuable keywords and phrases. Segregating your traffic also gives you a clearer vision of your brand’s overall visibility and pervasiveness.
What useful pieces of information can you get by segregating your site’s traffic? Well, for one thing, you should remember that branded keywords typically show up towards the end of what’s known as the conversion funnel. They’re used by site visitors who are already aware of your brand and interested in what you have to offer. These keywords are more specific and are often based on your business name, key products, and domain names, as well as on misspellings or variations of those names. Branded keywords aren’t subjected to the kind of fluctuations experienced by non-branded keywords due to search algorithms. These are therefore very useful indicators of your site’s long-term popularity and strength. For this reason, you should strive to get more traffic from branded keywords than what you may currently be getting.
Brand Rules Features
The good news is that it’s now much easier for you to track branded traffic with the on-site tools and proprietary software offered by some companies. One such company is SEOmoz and one of the latest tools they have developed is called Brand Rules. This new tool has made it so much easier to uncover any problems that have branded keywords ranking lower than expected. And when you remove your branded traffic from your website’s overall search traffic and concentrate instead on non-branded traffic, that’s when things really get interesting. Among other things, you’ll now get a clearer view of those generic keywords that work best for your business. This, in turn, should tell you which particular keywords you should target and which types of content are most effective.
Brand Rules can be added to your existing SEO campaigns simply by clicking on the Overview tab of your SEOmoz campaign and then going to Manage Brand Rules. You should then specify the brand-related terms you want to check and then the system will filter all keywords containing the terms you typed in. Another notable feature of brand rules is that it can be added to new campaigns at the time of set up. As soon as your set up is completed, the rules will automatically apply to any other keywords you may add in the future. Furthermore, even when your rules have already been set up, you may still remove or add any keywords you choose. You also have the freedom to label the keywords as branded as well as to remove them from your branded filter.
If the campaign you’re running is hooked up with Google Analytics, then you’ll also see your website’s historical traffic data segregated into non-branded and branded metrics. Another advantage to be gained from brand rules is that you’ll gain better insight into the manner in which people land on your site, with the use of in-depth metrics that focus on the top ten landing pages and search sources as well as non-paid keywords, bounce rate, PPV, and time on site, among others. And when you filter your branded keywords in the ranking report, you should be able to see pertinent traffic data on your brand-related keywords.
There are several other options on how you can manage your keywords and these options include the ability to see all of the keywords on your list, improved list filters, and new label filters every time you add keywords. The best news is that more features are set to be added to this tool when 2012 arrives. By then, you can expect to see .CSV and .PDF reports for traffic data. You should also start seeing the top keywords that drive traffic to your site, which gives you the option of tracking them. Of course, there are other companies offering similar or complementary tools and you’d do well to check them out as well to get optimum results from your SEO campaigns.
