How to track branded traffic

Branded traffic is the flow of visitors who come to a website through queries containing the company name. When carrying out promotion work, it should be monitored, thereby evaluating the effectiveness of the promotion strategy. This measure is especially important for companies with leading market positions. The fact is that a significant share of traffic comes from branded queries that contain the name of the company itself. This article explains how to track them and why.

What counts as branded queries

This term refers to phrases that are used to search online for a particular company. First and foremost, these are queries that contain a company name. However, there is a nuance that is important to consider when going to track branded traffic: users can use Latin and Cyrillic. Users will not always bother searching the Internet for the official website to see exactly how to spell the name. So they may as well write the name in Cyrillic, even if it's originally in Latin (Nokia=Nokia);

• errors. When writing the name of a brand, users may make them accidentally or unintentionally and be unaware that they forgot a letter, replaced it with another or added an extra one. Example: Gilette, which can be written as Gilete or Gilet;
• other spelling variations of the name. Let's take Nokia as an example. It is quite possible that users spell the brand name as Nokiya or Нокия;
• abbreviations. It's not uncommon for users to type the company name abbreviated to capital letters into the query bar when searching, which is more commonplace;
• misspelling. This is possible if the user forgot to switch from Russian to English when entering the query. In such cases, instead of the same Nokia, he writes «тщлшф»;
• the legal name of the brand. Rarely, but sometimes, a company may have a different name from the one it uses in the general public;
• website name phrases. There are times when a domain name does not include the company name, but users don't pay attention to it. On the contrary, someone who is tracking branded traffic should take this nuance into account;
• phone number or email address. It happens, that some users search for a company according to details;
• personal information of the employees. For example, when entering a query, they may write the surname of the manager. Such a branded query is rare. However, if someone is looking for a specific person, they may also write the name of the brand with which that person is associated.

As you can see, branded search terms can be written in many different ways. It is important to take them all into account when forming the list of keys that will be used to track traffic.

We also recommend reading:

“Case on the promotion of an online shop of seeds, fertilizers”

Why do you need to analyze branded queries?

This activity is carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing tools that are used to promote. Branded search queries are also analyzed for such purposes:

• determining the real impact of SEO;
• to find out the media activity of promotion methods: SMM (we recommend reading about brand promotion in social networks), crowd-marketing, banner advertising.

In addition, analysis helps you better understand your target audience: gender and interests. This data will help in setting up effective contextual advertising for further promotion.

Step-by-step instructions for tracking branded traffic in Google Analytics

There is a specific algorithm to investigate queries. To analyze branded traffic, there are 4 basic steps to follow:

1. Open "reports" in your advertising account. On the left, click on "Traffic Source" → "Optimization" → "Requests".

       2. Separate non-branded and branded queries. You can do this under "Filter" by clicking on "More" next to the input field.

      3. Set: "include-query-search-regular-expression". The main phrase is the company name, the brand name, which is written with "|".

        4. the masks are opened. They should be inserted in the search bar and click on the magnifying glass, then the system generates a list showing the % of users who have navigated to the website using the branded queries.

For a clean result, it is important not to forget to exclude non-branded phrases. To set the separation of branded traffic, click on "exclude" → "apply" in the settings and they will be separated. Next, the system will sort out the desired phrases.

In this article we have explained what branded traffic is and why it is needed. However, it is difficult to perform this task competently without experience. To get the right result, it is better to entrust the analysis to experienced performers. Here are the arguments in favor of this decision.

Professional help is the key to success

In fact, analytics in the promotion is of great importance. Without it, it is impossible to assess the correctness of the construction of promotion work, the results and make the necessary adjustments. Therefore, ideally, it is better to entrust such tasks to professionals.

Elit-Web employees know how to track brand traffic and get reliable results. If you are in need of such services, contact and enlist the help of experts.