There are two types of search engine consumers in this world: those who look for you by name and those who are looking for what you do. Unless your name is Nike, Coke or any other super well known brand burned into our collective psyche, I can confidently say that there are more people in this world who are looking for your products/services than there are who know you by name.

There are some nice studies about the power of branded search traffic. Yes, it does tend to have much higher conversion rates and return on investment (ROI), but obviously that’s because there is much less competition out there for your own brand name. In the organic search world the major search engines will usually know exactly who you are. In the paid search realm there aren’t going to be as many marketers bidding on your brand name which of course means lower cost per click (CPC).

Need proof? Start by segmenting out search traffic based on your brand name appearing anywhere in the incoming search query. You will most likely notice variances in some of the raw metrics such as average time on site that point to higher levels of engagement. In my experience, branded visitors tend to stay longer on sites and tend to view more pages during their visits. This could be one of the reasons that branded search visitors usually have higher conversion rates. But don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. Now it’s time to analyze the opposite: visitors who have come to your site as a result of searching for what you do instead of who you are.

Non-branded search visitors usually tend to be less engaged with your site. Remember, they may not be familiar with your brand name at all. If they don’t like what they see they know that they can always hit the back button and look to the next search result listed. There is much more at stake with these visitors. With organic search, non-branded search terms can be far more competitive so it may be tougher to elbow your way to the top of the rankings via search engine optimization (SEO). In the pay per click (PPC) world, the more competitive a search term is, the higher the CPC will be.

In the end it all comes down to the ability of your Web analytics tool to properly segment out these two types of visitors. Once you have, then you can boast to your marketing department about how efficient your branded traffic is doing and at the same time start understanding the behavior of the tougher crowd to convince - which you will most likely find you are paying more for either in money or in time spent.

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