Do You Own Your Branded Organic Traffic?

You can build your brand from the ground up, give it a dedicated website, and have all rights to it. However, when your brand gains popularity, don’t be surprised if competitors start trying to rank for your branded terms organically or even bidding on your branded terms with Google Ads to get better ad placement.

The world of internet marketing is highly competitive, and you do have to keep your defenses up. If you don’t defend your brand, you stand to lose a substantial level of brand traffic as well as sales.

But how do you know if you don’t own your own branded organic traffic? And what should you do if you find out your competitors are taking organic traffic that, by all rights, should be yours? Let’s take a closer look…

Signs You’re Losing Your Branded Organic Traffic to a Competitor

Have you ever done a Google search for your own brand? If so, what do you see? Do you dominate the list? Are your ads on top? Or, does someone else have those coveted top spots for your own brand name? The first five listings on a search engine results page (SERP) get almost 70 percent of clicks. Even scarier, if you’re pushed to the second SERP page or further, click rates go down to only 5 percent.

For example, say your brand name is CannabisXYZ. You do a quick search for your brand on Google but the first results you see are landing pages and blog posts owned by the brand Weed123. This is a good sign your branded organic traffic is likely going to Weed123 instead of your own website. Because your CannabisXYZ website and pages are showing up further down the list, you stand to lose a lot of traffic.

Also, organic website traffic naturally ebbs and flows no matter the industry. However, if you see a sudden and drastic dip in your traffic numbers, there is a good chance your branded website is slipping in the ranks. This could be due to a competitor taking your branded traffic because they have a better strategy.

Why Someone Else May Be Dominating the Ranks with Your Own Brand

Owning your branded traffic comes down to having the best possible search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to get those coveted ranks. However, some brands are not so good at the SEO process, and SEO is not a once-and-done kind of thing.

As noted earlier, you have to keep your defenses up at all times, which means if you get to the top, you have to continually monitor what your competitors are doing to make sure they don’t take your placement.

A few key aways to make sure you own your own branded organic traffic include:

• Optimizing your metadata, website, and more with brand-related keywords
• Continually monitoring what keywords people are using when searching for your brand
• Keeping close tabs on your site traffic
• Watching out for competitors bidding on your branded terms on Google Ads
• Making sure nothing about your website like functionality or slow load times are hurting your ranks

Need help building a strategy to get a handle on your branded traffic? CannaPlanners can deploy a strategy that makes it happen. Ready to talk?