News Latest Of Course Branded Keywords Convert Better! | Of Course Branded Keywords Convert Better! |
| Thursday, 26 July 2007 | |
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Every now and then I run across an article that purports to share some snippet of undiscovered wisdom. Sometimes these articles are great, other times they make me want to type *headdesk* over and over. There's an article like this over at MediaPost Publications today. While it does have some great info in it, the author seems surprised to find that A.) More traffic doesn't always mean more conversions and B.) Non-branded keywords don't always convert as well as branded keywords. Really? I'd never have guessed. Tameka Kee writes: Branded keywords routed nearly 15% of all searchers to travel aggregators, with the top three terms--"Travelocity," "Expedia," and "Orbitz"--driving almost half of that traffic. In comparison, the top three generic keywords--"airline tickets," "hotels," and "travel"--combined for only about 3%. Since the top three travel aggregators have a strong on- and offline brand presence, it's no surprise that customers can recall their names to type into a search engine. "Simple brand-awareness remains a critical part of the mix," said Compete.com's blogger, Matt Wainwright. That is not to say that generic terms were ineffective at driving traffic. On the contrary, travel terms accounted for about 70% and 85% of the search visits to Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com, respectively. First, let's break down a few things from this section of the article. On the first read, it sounds like those top three branded terms drive half of search traffic to the top travel aggregators. If you read it closely, you'll notice that those three phrases actually account for half of the BRANDED keywords. That means they combine for about 7.5% of search traffic. Sure, that's a descent amount, but when you consider that generic travel terms account for 70-85% of search traffic, you're talking about pretty small numbers. Moving on... What's interesting is that the increased traffic did not automatically correlate with increased conversions. Well, umm...yeah. That's generally how it works when you shift from branded keyword phrases to generic keywords phrases. Really, you should expect that type of drop. Searchers that come in via a branded phrase like Travelocity or Orbitz are at the end of their buying cycle. They know where they want to buy, they're simply using a search engine as their navigation bar. That means they're already primed to make a purchase. Honestly, if your branded search terms are not converting at the highest rates on your site, you are doing something massively wrong. The problem with branded terms is that they account for such a small percentage of traffic. (If you are also optimized for the appropriate generic phrases of course.) The article goes on to explore conversion rates for branded search traffic verses type in or direct link traffic. When it came to hotel bookings for example, search visitors to Cheaptickets.com were 44% less likely to convert than overall visitors. And searchers who found Orbitz.com were 20% less likely to book a hotel than non-search visitors--posing the question of how effective purchasing a branded keyword like "Orbitz" (which ranked in the top three) was for driving sales. For Travelocity.com it did, as search visitors were 4% more likely to book a room than overall visitors--but Compete.com's analysis seems to point to the quality of specific search words--and how well they draw in a consumer who's ready to buy, as opposed to someone who's "just browsing." Once again, it's essential to remember the difference between traffic referrers in terms of expected engagement. When it comes to type in traffic, you're generally talking about highly motivated visitors that have decided to come to one specific site with a goal in mind. When it comes to traffic from incoming links on non-search sites, we're looking at a low level of competition, a general understanding of what they'll find on the other end of the link and a strong level of motivation to pursue a goal at the destination site. Lastly, we have search traffic. While these visitors are motivated enough to go on a hunt for resources, they're still often in research mode, may visit several of the top search results and may not end up making a purchase until a future visit. This is why detailed analytics and conversion rate analysis are essential to any search engine optimization and paid search marketing campaign. If you don't know what your exact conversion rate and your exact ROI is, how can you possibly run a campaign with a positive bottom line? The idea that it may not be "worthwhile" to purchase paid search ads for generic phrases is faulty logic. The only time it isn't worthwhile to run a paid search ad is when your ROI doesn't allow for it. If you aren't making money off of your ad, your first move shouldn't be to shut the ad down. It should either be to lower your bid price or increase your conversion rate. Comments (0)
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