Distortion of SEO data by branded traffic: problem and solution

Evaluating the effectiveness of SEO promotion and analyzing competitors often misses an important aspect - brand traffic. High traffic driven by brand-related queries can give the false impression of a successful SEO strategy. To objectively assess a site’s competitiveness and identify growth areas, it is important to exclude the influence of branded traffic and focus on data not related to the brand.

Branded traffic distorts the real picture of user behavior, as well-known companies often start with an advantage over lesser-known brands.

The importance of excluding branded traffic when analyzing competitors

When conducting a comparative analysis with competitors and assessing their positions in search results, it is necessary to clear the data from the influence of branded traffic. This will help:

Identify real competitors for commercial and informational queries - Data cleared of brand traffic will allow you to identify sites that actually compete with you for commercial and/or informational queries.

Assess the real effectiveness of SEO strategies - By excluding branded traffic, you can objectively compare the effectiveness of your and competitive strategies for attracting new audiences.

Identify true problem areas and growth points - Data analysis without taking into account branded traffic will help identify real shortcomings that are slowing down traffic growth and opportunities to attract new users.

Develop a competent strategy for further development - Using objective information, you can adjust your SEO strategy for effective promotion and overtake your competitors.

Example 1

Let's say two online stores have similar traffic figures. However, upon deep analysis, it turns out that one of them receives 80% of traffic from brand queries, while the second - only 20%. In this case, despite lower overall traffic, the second store demonstrates more successful SEO promotion for non-brand queries, which can be the key to more new customers and sales growth.

Example 2

Let's assume that you are the owner of an online sportswear store. When choosing donors for your link strategy, you have to choose between two types of sites:

A sports blog with high brand traffic is a blog of a famous athlete who attracts the attention of users with his name.

A fitness themed site with predominantly non-branded traffic - a site dedicated to training, nutrition and sportswear reviews.

In this case, a link from a fitness-related site will be more valuable for SEO, since this site attracts a target audience interested in sportswear and is focused on relevant non-brand queries.

Benefits of traffic analysis when selecting donors

Analysis of non-branded traffic of donor sites allows you to:

Get better links - Links from sites that attract the target audience for relevant queries have more weight in search engines and help improve the site's rankings.

Improve referral traffic - Links from related sites can bring new users interested in your product or service to your site.

In fact, the link profile of such resources may not look so strong if you exclude the “noise” from branded links that are attracted due to the company's fame.

By analyzing only the non-branded link profile of competitors, you can:

Identify the real leaders in link building - Sites that rank high for commercial queries, but do not have significant brand traffic, most likely achieved these positions through a competent link strategy.

Identify potential sources for link building - By studying from what resources and in what volume your competitors receive links, you can find platforms for cooperation.

Assess the budget and scale of link campaigns - The number and quality of links will help to assess what resources competitors have for promotion and how much a similar strategy will cost.

But in contextual advertising the opposite is true:

In contextual advertising, branded traffic provides its advantages:

Higher conversions and more sales - Users who search for a specific brand are already familiar with it and are much more likely to make a purchase or take other targeted actions than those who click on general searches. Branded traffic often brings in more sales at a lower cost.

Lower CPC – Branded search ads often have a lower CPC rate than PPC. This is due to less competition, since a limited number of players participate in the auction - the brand itself and several of its competitors.

Higher Conversion Rates – Users who are aware of a brand are much more likely to take targeted actions. This directly affects the high conversion rating when promoting branded queries.

Non-brand traffic analysis is an important tool for developing an effective SEO strategy, including selecting donors for your link strategy. Considering this factor, you will be able to choose the most relevant and authoritative sites to receive quality links, which will increase the effectiveness of your promotion in search engines.

For any question, you can contact the SEO studio "SEO COMPUTER" by email info@seo.computer.

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