Best Practices with Brand Keywords
Whether you’re optimizing your landing pages or bidding on keywords for paid search, it’s important to understand each keyword’s function and how it relates to your business. Brand keywords are among the most important options to consider, but many business leaders misunderstand them.
What Are Brand Keywords?
Simply put, a brand keyword is a keyword or phrase that incorporates all or part of your brand’s name. For instance, let’s say that you’re a washing machine manufacturer called ABC Washers. Your brand keywords could include:
- ABC Washers
- ABC Washers washing machines
- ABC washing machines
- ABC washers Los Angeles
As you can see, you have plenty of options when it comes to brand keywords. You can add a geo (such as Los Angeles) if you’re targeting location-based searches, or you can add your product or service after the brand name to make it more specific. This is particularly useful if you operate across several different verticals or industries.
Why Are Brand Keywords Relevant?
Brand keywords don’t function the same way as their non-brand counterparts. When a consumer searches for “washing machines,” for instance, they’re not necessarily looking for a particular brand. In fact, they might not know any brand names, or perhaps they’re open to multiple options.
However, if another consumer searches for “ABC Washers washing machines,” he or she already has a manufacturer in mind. That person has heard of the brand and sees it as a compelling choice.
These two consumers will have very different search patterns and they will probably sit at separate stages of the buying cycle.
If you don’t use or bid on brand keywords, you risk losing those customers to the competition. Someone searches for “ABC Washers,” but finds “XYZ Machines” instead because the latter bid on your brand keyword.
Bidding on Brand Keywords
While brand keywords can serve a valuable purpose, you don’t want to throw good money after bad. If a brand keyword doesn’t attract clicks, it’s not worth your bid.
Business2Community advises businesses to conduct keyword research and to analyze brand keywords aggressively over time. You’ll want to know what consumers searched for and whether or not they converted upon clicking your ad. Otherwise, you won’t know whether or not that particular brand keyword is effective in practice.
However, it’s important to analyze brand keywords in the context of your overall ad campaign. For instance, how well do you rank in the SERPs organically? If you type your business’s name (or partial name) into Google’s search box, does your website pop up first? If not, you need to make brand keywords a priority in paid search.
However, you don’t want your brand keywords to trigger ads in irrelevant verticals. For instance, if “ABC Washers” triggers your ad to appear when people search for hardware washers, you’ll waste money and target the wrong consumers.
Preparing and executing a paid advertising campaign takes considerable research and analysis, whether you’ve been in business 10 months or 10 years. Learn more about our paid search services if you want expert guidance and support.
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