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When User Behavior Strays from Query Volume
August 22, 2006
It's important but often overlooked: User behavior is rarely as steady and predictable as keyword research might lead us to believe. Eye-tracking studies, statistics about SERP clicks ("the first result gets X% of all clicks"), etc. are helpful if you understand that they're aggregates and not absolutes.
If you rank in the top slot for two phrases, and one of them is three times more searched-for than the other, you might assume that, all things being equal, the more popular term will deliver three times the traffic.
That's rarely the case, especially when those two queries straddle the border between branded and non-branded.
Following are some examples that we've noticed in multiple industries, for multiple clients. The companies and queries are fictitious; it's the types of queries, however, that matter - [product type] vs. [brand + product type]. The raw numbers - queries per day and monthly traffic - are irrelevant. Instead, it's the ratios we're watching.
Note that in the first example, [conflators] is searched for about 4.5x as often as [merrick conflators] (despite the fact that in the conflator world, Merrick is tops). At Google, Merrick ranks #1 for both terms. Yet [merrick conflators] delivers about twice the traffic of [conflators]:
In our second example, Simonaire is well known in the flot scram industry, but probably not as well known as Merrick is in the conflator biz. Still, Simonaire ranks #1 for both [simonaire flot scrams] as well as [flot scrams]. The non-branded term has about 30 times the query volume, but again, delivers only about half the traffic of the branded term.
Note: The query volume figures were pulled from Keyword Discovery. Wordtracker data varies slightly but is similar.
The conclusions of this non-scientific study aren't so easily drawn, but here are some observations and speculations:
- The point of this analysis is not to dissuade brands from going after single-word product queries. They should, however, realize that the percentage of clicks they receive from a top slot might not be what they expect.
- These results imply that people searching for [conflators] are not very far along the information cycle yet and might actually want to avoid a specific brand at this stage in their research, opting instead for a comparison site, wiki-style information site, consumer-focused FAQ site, etc.
- It's tempting to tweak titles, descriptions, and content to try to appear more cross-brand informational and capture more of the [conflators] traffic. But I don't recommend doing it at the expense of your branded traffic, because click for click, I believe a branded click is more valuable than a non-branded click.
- The traffic from the product-only searches sticks around 50-60% of the duration of the branded visitors, and they view about 75% as many pages in a visit. So we're gaining mind share a few at a time, and we certainly don't mind that their first look at the industry comes from our clients.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at August 22, 2006 4:10 PM
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Comments
Great post... it was something I was thinking about a couple of days ago, actually. Oh, and where can I get me some good flot scrams? ;)
Posted by: Tim L. Walker at August 22, 2006 5:55 PM
KeywordSpy.com a try for a keyword research tool, with results actually reflecting what advertisers are using at the current time.
Posted by: susan at August 30, 2007 10:50 AM
Wonderful to read!
Posted by: SEO How To at July 31, 2010 3:12 AM
Great post!
Posted by: Outrank.com at August 11, 2010 1:13 AM
Excellent job.
Posted by: Outrank.com at August 18, 2010 7:56 AM