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Branded SEO: The Often Overlooked (yet easy) Traffic Opportunity

As SEO’s we often focus on non-branded terms as ‘brand’ is often owned by a different department.

This highlights the importance of a business-wide integrated SEO strategy. 

Branded searches often:

  • Convert MUCH higher
  • Drive a higher average order value
  • Are higher lifetime value customers 
  • Much easier to rank for vs non-branded keywords

And you might be missing out. 

Go take a look at your branded keywords.

Where don’t you rank?

Where does your homepage rank low on page 1 because it’s branded but doesn’t answer the search query?

THESE ARE YOUR OPPORTUNITIES!

They often fall into a few different buckets…

  • Your brand + reviews
  • Your brand + discount code 
  • Your brand + category
  • Your brand vs someone else
  • Your brand alternative

Why it is important to capture this traffic?

  • Own the conversation around your own brand
  • Increase sales from branded queries
  • Reduce customer queries around discount codes not working
  • Reduce affiliate costs and higher commission
  • Higher profits for your brand

How to capture this traffic and drive sales

The best approach to capture this traffic is to create landing pages targeting specifically the keywords that you don’t rank #1 for.

These landing pages can take different forms depending on your brand. Here are a few examples for some inspiration.

Your brand + reviews

This one kicks in earliest in your brand’s growth. 

If you are new, people will be looking for reviews to verify you are a legitimate business and not a scam. 

A lot of Shopify review plugins will be able to easily create a page for you with all of your reviews embedded which is a great place to start.

An even better approach would be to embed video reviews and UGC imagery you may have from different social platforms to showcase a wider variety of reviews to help any potential customer.

Here’s one example of a reviews page that ranks well and has a variety of media.

Your brand + discount code 

If you’ve made an effort to build your brand, the chances are people are searching for discount codes for your site.

It is just what humans do.

Most of the SERPS are littered with coupon code sites that often somehow get hold of an affiliate link and their codes don’t even work. 

So you can save on potential affiliate fees (more profit), reduce customer service issues (reduce stress) and also grow your email list and sales at the same time.

These pages can drive up to a 50% sign-up rate, and easily drive six figures in directly attributed revenue every year as you grow.

Here are a couple of examples of simple discount pages that rank well and drive a lot of email sign-ups and sales.

Your brand + category

If you sell on other retailers online, or Amazon, etc. You will start to face competition for the highly commercial keywords such as the categories you sell in. 

One example below is for ‘roberto cavalli cushions’, a search made in the UK shows the brand’s site is ranking #3 behind two other pages essentially selling the same products.

Whilst you are ‘still getting the sale most likely, getting sales direct means you can own the conversation for your brand, keep the relationship and more likely drive repeat purchases further down the line.

Your brand vs someone else

People love a comparison. 

Comparing people, brands, holiday destinations, everything. 

Targeting these keywords is all about owning the conversation with your potential customers and selling them why your product is superior. 

These types of keywords seem to be more common with comparing software companies but if you offer a similar product to somehow else, the chances are there will be people looking to find out what the differences are.

Your brand alternative

Again, this group is less common in ecommerce compared to software companies but can still exist as you get bigger so it is worth being ready.

When people are searching for this, it’s likely they have some aversion to purchasing and working that out can help you with messaging, offers, etc.

Now what?

Go look in Ahrefs (or your keyword tool of choice) and check out your branded searches.

Build a plan to ensure you capture this traffic.

You may not get ‘credit’ for the branded searches but the business will be much healthier because of it.

You will drive more branded traffic, higher conversion and AOV.

You will lower affiliate costs to higher profit.

You start owning the conversation with your audience.

Integrated SEO wins.

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