Brand SEO: The low hanging fruit you are missing
Brand is one of the best places for SEO investment
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by North Star Inbound and Scrunch
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Most marketing teams neglect to optimize for branded search terms because it seems too obvious and not attractive enough to chase. Agencies neglect to tell clients to optimize for brand terms because they need to justify their retainers by aiming for something big. This thinking is completely wrong. If your goal is revenue from search rather than rankings, these are the keywords that you should chase. In case this isn’t obvious, your goal should always be revenue from search, not clicks, unless you're paid for visits to your site.
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Many brand terms will have click-through rates above 50%, and if they aren’t clicking your result, they are clicking a competitor who is ranking for your brand terms. You must stop whatever you are doing from a non-brand effort standpoint and start optimizing for brand search.
Brand terms convert
Branded terms will have the highest CTR and conversion rates. The math here is brilliantly simple. When someone searches for your brand by name, they already know who you are. They’ve heard about you from a friend, seen your ad, read about you somewhere, or used your product before. They’re not browsing, they’re hunting for you. These searchers have intent baked into their queries, and that intent converts at rates you would expect from users deep in the funnel.
In essence, you have already paid for this visibility through other marketing efforts. Branded search is the follow-up to those efforts, and you need to capture it.
Unfortunately, most companies take these searches for granted. They assume that ranking first for their own brand name is automatic, that the traffic will come no matter what, and that there’s no real work to be done here. But here’s what actually happens when you ignore branded search: competitors buy ads on your terms, review sites rank above you, old, outdated pages from your own site show up instead of what you want to showcase, and worst of all, you lose customers you already had banked.
I’ve met dozens of companies over my seven years as a consultant, and the SEO plan is always the same. Companies pour resources into ranking for competitive terms with terrible conversion rates while leaving money on the table on their own brand terms. I have been fortunate to have worked with some brands whose brand names themselves were the largest search keyword in their category, but instead of owning that space, they scrapped with their competitors over non-brand terms.
Here are five ways to find the branded terms you should optimize for, and more importantly, how to actually use this information to drive revenue. (Paid subscribers can download this keyword modifier worksheet + some example regex for Search Console to track your brand terms).
Find searched brand keywords
Open Google Search Console and narrow to just the home page. Filter for your brand term. Look for queries that contain the brand but have low impressions. These are focus keywords to either include in content or create new pages for. Low impressions likely mean you are under-optimized for these terms; correct this by optimizing for them through content inclusion.
What you’re looking for here are variations of your brand name that people are searching for, but Google isn’t connecting to your site very often. Maybe it’s your brand plus a product name, or your brand plus a city, or your brand with a common misspelling. These low impression counts tell you that Google isn’t confident that your page answers these queries. The fix is straightforward but requires actual work. You need to create content that explicitly addresses these search terms, either by adding sections to existing pages or building new dedicated pages.
Mismatched brand pages
Next, again open Google Search Console and narrow to just the home page. Filter for your brand term. Look for queries that contain the brand, have high impressions, but low click-through rates. These are focus keywords for which you should improve your title and meta description to increase CTR.
Clickthrough rate is one of the only SEO variables that you can ever control, as you can influence why someone might click when you have good copy in your meta description and title. These titles don’t always show up, but it’s worth the effort for when they do.
Think about what happens when someone searches for your brand. They see your listing among others. What makes them click on yours? Is your description clear about what you do? Does it answer the specific question implied by their search term? Most meta descriptions are garbage, written years ago and never updated. Treat these like ad copy because that’s exactly what they are.
The beauty of working on CTR for branded terms is that you can see results within days. Change your meta description, wait a week, check your CTR in Search Console. Did it improve? Great, keep it. Did it get worse? Revert and try something else. This is one of the few areas in SEO where you can run actual experiments and see clear cause-and-effect.
Create new pages for low CTR
Third, open Search Console again and exclude the home page. Filter for your brand term. Look for queries that contain the brand but have high impressions and low CTR. These are focus keywords for which you might need to create a new page, improve an existing page, or update its metadata. Branded might be a better fit for the homepage, but finding the terms that exist empowers you to put effort into the right ones.
This step captures all branded queries that land on random pages across your site rather than your homepage. Maybe you have a blog post from three years ago that mentions your brand name and a product category, and now it’s the top result for that combination. But the blog post doesn’t actually help someone who wants to buy that product. Or maybe you have a support article ranking for a branded product query, when you should really have a proper product page for that term.
What you’re doing here is auditing your entire site for branded search opportunities beyond just the homepage. Often, you’ll find that you’re ranking for valuable branded terms but sending people to completely wrong pages. The user searches for your brand and a specific product, lands on a generic about page, and bounces because they can’t find what they're looking for. You’re losing sales not because people can’t find you, but because you’re sending them to the wrong place after they do find you.
Find new queries
Fourth, go to Google and search for your brand, but don’t hit Enter. Make sure you optimize for all the suggested queries. You can use tools for this, too, like answerthepublic.com.
The autocomplete suggestions that drop down when you start typing are pure gold. Google is literally telling you what other people search for when they start typing your brand name. These aren’t theoretical keywords or projections; these are actual queries that real users have typed often enough that Google thinks they’re worth suggesting. Every single one of these suggestions should have a page on your site, or at least be addressed in your content.
Some of these will be obvious, like your brand plus product names you already sell. But others will surprise you. You’ll see questions you didn’t know people were asking, or combinations with terms you never thought to target. Pay special attention to those that include locations, pricing terms, or competitor comparisons. These suggest commercial intent and are exactly the kind of branded searches that convert.
Brand “people also ask”
Fifth, go to Google and search for your brand, and make sure you are optimizing for all “people also ask”, including related queries, on that search results page. These are the search terms that actual users are looking for, and terms that the algorithm has determined are closely enough related to your brand.
When you search for your brand and scroll down, you’ll see a section of related questions and searches at the bottom. Google is showing you what people who search for your brand typically want to know next. This is free market research. You’re seeing the questions that repeatedly come up, the concerns people have, and the information gaps around your brand.
Create content that directly answers every single one of these questions. Not vague, general content, but specific answers to the specific questions shown. If people are asking about your pricing, create a clear pricing page. If they’re asking how you compare to a competitor, create a comparison page. If they’re asking about a specific use case, create a page or blog post about that use case.
I have never seen a company that has fully optimized for its brand, so if you follow the steps above, you will almost certainly find low-hanging fruit. The reason is simple: optimizing for branded search requires doing boring, unglamorous work. It’s not exciting to write meta descriptions or create pages for slight variations of your brand name. There’s no thrill in it like there is when you crack a competitive keyword and jump up the rankings.
Drive brand revenue
The best thing about boring work that drives revenue: it compounds. Every branded term you properly optimize for is another door through which customers can enter. Every improved meta description is a small lift in CTR that adds up over thousands of impressions. Every new page targeting a branded variation is another chance to convert someone who already wants what you’re selling.
Start with your brand terms. Get those right before you spend another dollar or another hour chasing non-branded keywords. The reality is, tf you can’t convert people who are literally searching for you by name, you’re not going to convert non-branded traffic either. Fix the foundation first, then build on top of it.
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