A branded keyphrase is a search term that includes the name of a brand, a variation of a brand name, or the name of a specific product. Think, Apple iPhone. They’re practically synonymous.
People are searching for a website or business by using specific brand name keywords. Because your brand name is what makes you you, knowing how many queries or keywords point people towards your page when they perform a search is of great value to you.
They’re called navigational queries because people who search for brands are usually trying to get to a specific company website or page. So these phrases show really high click-through rates.
How is a Branded Keyword Different From SEO Keywords?
Traditional SEO Keywords represent the phrases you’ve chosen to target on your website based on their search volume and competition alone. You’ve chosen traditional queries like “top SUV review” or “best men’s jeans” because your keyword research indicates that you’ll be able to get your website ranked well in the corresponding SERP and that you’ll see an influx of natural search traffic as a result of your optimization efforts.
Branded keywords include search queries that reference your company’s name or other branded elements specifically.
Because Google has recently changed how they rank pages in searches, you’re responsible for including both of these different keyword groups in marketing plans.
Why Is Knowing Your Branded Keywords Important?
People are talking about you, both in social media conversations, and by searching for you in Google. You already know this and are probably regularly monitoring it. You also need to be monitoring what other words people tend to type next to your brand name. You should also be aware of what words people are typing next to the brand names of your competitors.
Having this information can help you to:
- Plan your company’s content strategy to better explain your site features, as well as “own” search results pages for brand-focused keywords.
- See where your competitors are lacking (and how you can better fit into the market).
- Understand which parts of your site are unclear to your customers (and decide how you can better serve your users).
- Identify weak points of your product or service and spot the trend (like a specific product line causing more complaints than others).
50% or more of people who search for brands click on the top ranking webpage, which usually is the brand. People looking for your brand are giving you clues to what they want from you and what they need. So it’s important to find those phrases and address those information needs.
Once you’ve figured out your list of keyword phrases that include your brand name, sort them in a spreadsheet based on what action you want to take. You may want to create a new section on your site that targets that particular keyword or group or launch a new product or service that could cover a need that your competitor hasn’t thought of yet. You’ll definitely want to utilize the keyword in any new content you create.
How To Find Your List of Branded Keyword Searches
To figure this out, you can use your favorite keyword research tool like Serpstat. To get started, type in your brand name, and see what it comes up with. SEOchat’s Bulk Google Suggest Tool will generate auto-suggest results from Google, YouTube, and Amazon. If you use Google Analytics, you can also access the information through your reports.
You can simplify even further by just doing a Google search for your company. Type the business name in and do not hit enter. You’ll see a bunch of suggested words and phrases pop up. Want to see them all in one place? Go to KeywordTool.io. It scrapes all of the suggested phrases out of Google and puts them all on one page.
You can dig even deeper by using the “Searches related to” queries at the bottom of the search results page. If you search for your brand, it’ll look a lot like the suggested phrases you’ve already found. But if you click on one of those suggested phrases, you’ll get much deeper insight.