How Big is Your Name? Online Branding Assessment with Google Analytics

As an internet marketing company we take search engines and the keywords that draw visitors to your site very seriously. Given the marvelous free analytics tool provided by Google, there's good reason to break down your traffic into segments beyond the defaults that Google Analytics provides us.

 

Everyone is familiar with the default Google breakdowns of referral, direct and search traffic. Google further breaks search traffic into the major categories of paid and non-paid. These are certainly useful, but why not analyze a step or two further? Knowledge, especially demographics about your visitors, is never a bad thing.

 

Last month I suggested a number of useful advanced segments you can create to analyze visitation to a site. This month I'd like to further examine one of my favorite advanced segment uses, branded vs. non-branded organic search traffic.

 

Why segment branded keywords?

 

From a marketing professional’s standpoint, it’s must-know material. A brand represents  your company’s image to the world and knowing how many people visit your site as a result of branded search reveals how well your company is reaching its target audience. Where your visitors are coming from, what computers they use and whether they’re mobile or not, is valuable information that can be tied directly to people that know your brand. This kind of information can take your online marketing effort to another level.

 

So, how do you create a branded advanced segment?

 

For the purpose of this blog, let’s assume our company is called Huckleberry Finn’s Riverboat Cruises. Our goal is to create an advanced segment for search terms that include Huckleberry or Finn.

 

From almost any screen in Google Analytics, select the Advanced segment button at the top left area of the main screen.

Next select the new New Custom Segment button.

The next screen is where you actually create the segment by determining your parameters.  In this instance we include keywords that contain the character "Huckleberry".

Now add another statement to include keywords that contain the characters "Finn". Please note that we’re "ADDING" the statement. It’s not an "or" statement.

Finally, expand the "More Options" section, pick the Analytics profiles you want to store it under, and click "Save Segment".  You can also test it or preview it.

Pretty easy, right? Now, let’s check out our work.

 

I’d like to compare the number of branded keyword related visits to the all traffic visits at the site. You’ll need to choose both of the advanced segments from the menus so that they will be displayed. Select their boxes and "Apply" as the following screenshot shows.

 

Once you’ve applied the segments, go to Traffic Sources>Search>Organic and the resulting chart will look similar to this.

From this graph you can easily see that branded keywords run about 70 percent of total visits to the site, and mirrors overall traffic patterns very closely.

 

There are many other metrics that can be applied to your segments related to geography, language, behavior and engagement. In fact they’re almost endless.

 

If you haven’t already, go make your own branded advanced segment and apply different metrics to it. You’re sure to find a lot of interesting and useful things about your website visitors.