I read in MarketingVox that 96 percent of Travelocity’s bookings come from branded keywords. You would think that is too high to be true but I wouldn’t say that it is unrealistic. I would call it the high end of the norm but not unbelievable. It’s a little strange though when they say that the superior performance of the branded keywords “casts the practice of buying non-branded industry or product-related terms in a suspect light.” Branded keywords are so much different from non-branded keywords that it is almost an apple to celery comparison.

The biggest difference between the two is where the customer is at on the sales cycle. How does it go? Something like awareness, acquisition, conversion, and then retention. Well if someone is coming to your site off of a branded keyword then they are definitely past the awareness stage and you are exactly what they are looking for. The may even be a life long customer that makes a purchase every week and simply likes to use a search to navigate to your site rather than going through the agony of typing a .com on the end of your name.

On the other hand, people who come in off of non-branded keywords are just getting familiar with you, or, perhaps you aren’t managing you negative keywords and you are nothing like what they want. Comparing the two is much like saying “that’s strange, people inside my store convert a lot better than those that are hanging out across the streets.” Of course they are going to convert better.

Another big difference is the space your content is taking up on the search results page. If someone types in a branded keyword then you are going to appear in the sponsored listings and you are likely going to have another result high in the organic results. This gives you twice the chances of others to be noticed.

Do non-branded keywords have this advantage? Not for most sites. If you do a Google search for flowers then you will see that the top three sponsored links are also the top three organic sites. After that, though, there is quite a difference. Those that are in the top organic spots aren’t only fortunate in that they get the organic traffic but they are reinforcing their position with the paid links and visa verse. That just means a little more work (more like “a lot”) for everyone else.

So, I guess the idea behind this post is to say that bidding on branded keywords isn’t some genius idea. It is the most obvious and ideal spot to start your bidding. It doesn’t mean that you should stop there but you should definitely invest into branded keywords before any other.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 and is filed under Whatever, Analytics, Pay Per Click. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.