Part of an SEO strategy is to build up traffic using various keywords and paid for search terms in the form of PPC. Keywords hold vital clues as to how people find your site or information and all to often many marketers just merely skim over their keyword reports, occasionally reporting any unusual keywords or to see if the top 10 keywords have changed since last month.

It all gets a bit too boring for me to be honest. Segment to add some pazzaz into your data!!

So here is how you can use Advanced Segments to measure your brand awareness by segementing those who find your site via your brand name and then stick to your site (measuring engagment).

1) Open up Advanced Segments

2) In the first ciretria select the dimension Keyword and choose condition as ‘Contains’ and enter your brand name. (Note: You can also choose ‘Exact’ as a condition)

3) In the second criteria select the metric Time on Site and choose condition as ‘Greater to than or equal to’ and enter 120 seconds (two minutes on my site is actually quite long)

4) In the final criteria select the metric Pageviews and choose condition as ‘Greater to than or equal to’ and enter 4 pages (4 pages is quite high for my site)

5) Finally name your segment and press Test Segment and you are done!

TIP: You may wanto to check your average pageviews and average time on page/site first before setting your bar and adjust your limits accordingly.

Your report should now look something like this (click to make bigger):

As you can see, out of a total of 30,724 visits came to my site and of those 6,575 visits arrived to my site via a brand keyword. Now, for my site, I have many products which include the brand name so that is why I set the condition as ‘Contains’.

We then move onto Time on Site and of those 30,724 visits nearly 33% (11,483) spent equal to or more than 2 minutes on my site. Is that good or bad? What can I now do to increase that 33% to 40% or even 50%??

I can segment further and look at what pages those 33% of looked at for more than 2 minutes. I can then make adjusments to copy or call to action buttons or include more links or inlcude videos to make them spend longer on my site.

Finally we have Pageviews. Out of 30,724 visitors 13,432 visitos viewed more than 4 pages. So what? Well I can segment those visitors and see if they converted into any of my GOALS after viewing so many pages.

What actions can I take to increase conversions of those that viewed 4 or more pages? They must be engaged right?

And then the crucial number at the bottom…………….

How many of my 30,724 visitors came to my site via a brand keyword, spent 2 minutes or more on my site and also viewed more than 4 or more pages? (Came, Spent and Viewed)

Answer: 2,672 brand power visitors!! Which equates to 8.69% of my overall traffic.

Now is that good or bad? Well that’s for you to decide and have a play with your own data. Use this data as a benchmark and set yourself KPI’s and Objectives around improving your brand awareness.

How much of your precious ££ have you spent raising your brand profile online and offline? How much time have you spent creating content for people to find? How do you know your brand is raising more of a profile within your own market sectors?

TIP: This report won’t give you answers. It is merely giving you actionable insights into further questions to ask.

“How can I increase the number of brand power users to my site?”
“How can I increase the time spent on my site for those who come to my site via a brand keyword?” (They already know of you right?)
“What type of content does my brand power users want to read or view?”
“What do I need to do to keep my brand power users coming back for more?”

Now go play……….