Hands up who uses Google Analytics and gets most Organic- or PPC Revenue from branded terms (Brand name that is). All of you? Thought so.
Here we often have discussions around why you should do PPC & SEO on branded terms when you get most of your traffic and possibly revenue from organic branded terms anyway. I guess we need to take a closer look at what’s happening here.
There are two reasons why you get more traffic from branded terms when using the wonderfully free Google Analytics.
Convenience
Many, (many many) users have Google or any other search engine setup as their start page. Rather than typing your URL into the address bar they just type it into the nice and friendly, large text field in the middle of their screen. Ask a random sample of your users if they know what the address bar actually is. Ask your office mates. I swear most won’t know what you’re talking about.
Last click counts
This is the second reason why you get so many “head keywords”. Users come to your site in different stages of the purchase cycle. They most likely start of on a long tail keyword like: “Pink polka dot jumper”. They find a few pages, check them out and might even land on your page if you’ve done your Search Engine Optimisation right. Now they do something else, go back to work; take care of the kids; go out for a coffee and then remember that website where they saw that great Pink Polka Dot Jumper. Most likely they have no idea how they got there or what the product was actually called (I’ll do a post about slang later this month). What they do remember will be your brand name. So instead of going back to Google and using Pink Polka Dot Jumper then click through endless results, they type in your brand name and, shazam, you have a head term conversion.
The problem with Google Analytics is that it only counts the last click from which a user came to your site. So even if they have come from a natural long tail keyword they are likely to convert on an organic head term or even branded PPC term. Analytics will only count this last click, but not the first one or second one or third one. So your stats will be skewed and it might look like only brand terms convert. There is of course and additional problem that many users will use their lunch break to research but convert at home, i.e. switch computers. Forget about these users; it’s going to be a while until we get those tracked.
So should you do SEO and PPC on your own brand name or the other way round: “Should you even bother with this nasty long tail optimisation?” Yes is the short answer. You actually have to do it as otherwise you’ll simply die a virtual death. Always think of the purchase cycle your customers are in. Unless you’re a really really really big brand (Coca-Cola level I’d say) your customers will start of on a long tail keyword search. Most searches are 3 or more keywords long (see: http://image.exct.net/lib/fefc1774726706/d/1/SearchEngines_Jan09.pdf) so it is fair to assume that is the same for your customers. Brand names tend to be a bit shorter. If they don’t find you for Pink Polka Dot Jumper they won’t remember your brand name as they won’t get in contact with it. Not doing PPC or SEO for your own brand terms (PPC even for the sake of getting cheap clicks and preventing competitors to bid on it) will lead to them, if they do find you on the long tail search, not finding you on a branded search.
Now that it is clear that you must do SEO for both, long tail and head keywords what should you attribute the traffic to?
I guess the only way to find out is to launch a PPC campaign on your own brand name and see how far organic traffic drops. The difference should be your convenience clickers, the rest probably very engaged customers.
Discussion more than welcome!
P.S. Yes there are ways to hack 1st touch into GA, check this out: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-get-past-last-touch-attribution-with-google-analytic
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