The Guide to Share of Search: How to Calculate and Improve Your Website's Visibility
Brand managers today have one new metric to watch: Share of Search. This important metric defines how easily your stakeholders can find your brand online via organic search. It is one of the most important criteria that can help you increase your Share of Voice—and, by that, boost your market share.
But what exactly is it, and why is it so important? Let's begin with a clear definition of what share of search is, and how search data can impact brand visibility.
What is Share of Search?
Chances are that people are searching for your brand multiple times a day. And every time your brand name is typed into Google's search engine, you have a chance to improve (or ruin) your brand reputation.
Imagine Anne, a potential customer who wants to buy your product. Before doing that, she is likely to do some research of her own, checking out your brand online for product reviews or any red flags. The first page of any search engine – from Google to YouTube or TikTok – will help her form an opinion about your brand. The more visible you are on the first page of all the brand-related keywords, the more likely Anne is going to form a positive opinion and eventually buy the product.
Share of Search is a metric that measures the percentage of total organic search your brand received during a specific period of time for a given keyword. In other words, it tells you how visible your website is in search results for a specific keyword – and can help you understand your position among your competitors.
The total number of searches related to your brand—from your exact brand name to product titles or other related keywords—has to be measured and tracked if you want to have the full picture, calculate the brand's share of searches, and better understand the share of the market.
Why is Share of Search important?
Back in 2014, Wired founder John Battelle warned all content creators not to build their brand "home" on rented land. This means that your brand has to have a strong and highly ranked website. According to him and multiple other content creators, you don't want to depend on Google, Meta, or other platforms to grow your business.
The advice is still true today – a website with a strong domain authority is your biggest asset online. However, today is a time of forgetfulness, and people outsource their memory to the search bar. So, if your website is your "house", the first pages of every search page are like your front yard. People will form opinions about you from what they see – and you better learn how to take care of it.
For communication experts and brand managers, good brand discoverability helps increase brand awareness, improve reputation, and ensure good brand hygiene. Before investing in advertising and bringing people to your metaphoric yard, make sure that you have done some spring cleaning.
Why should you track and calculate Share of Search? The Share of Search is important because it provides valuable insights into how well your website is performing in search engine results pages (SERPs). By tracking your Share of Search over time, you can see whether your SEO efforts are paying off and identify areas for improvement. Teams that measure their share of search get a chance to directly impact their brand's market share.
In addition, Share of Search can be used to benchmark your website's performance against your competitors. If your share of search is higher than your competitors, it's a good indication that you're doing something right and can help inform your overall digital strategy.
Share of Search vs. Share of Voice
Share of Search is not an alternative to Share of Voice. So, what is the relationship between the two? Share of Search and Share of Voice are both essential for tracking a brand's presence and reputation. They compare the brand's market share and position in the industry.
While Share of Search refers to the proportion of organic online searches, Share of Voice refers to the ratio of paid brand mentions from advertising, marketing, and communication campaigns.
A high Share of Search indicates that a brand is top-of-mind for consumers, while a high Share of Voice shows that a brand has enough exposure to stay competitive in the market.
However, it is essential to note that SoS and SoV should be used while combined with other metrics, such as customer engagement and loyalty, to build a more comprehensive understanding of a brand's reputation and impact in the marketplace.
How to measure Share of Search with clear metrics
If you are searching for some practical advice, we can dive into some details. How can you improve your Share of Search? Here are a few tips:
Gather keywords. Conduct keyword research to identify high-volume, low-competition keywords that you can target. You can utilize SEO tools for this, and get ideas using Google trends, existing popular searches that mention your brand, or your social media accounts. In this stage, you're searching for ways to collect all the different ways your customers describe your brand online. If you sell more than one product, don't limit yourself by listing keywords for just one product or service – make sure you cover everything you offer.
Review the website. You might want to run technical, on-page, off-page, and local SEO audits to make sure all your assets are in place. Then, optimize your website's on-page SEO elements, such as title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags.
Update and develop content. Create high-quality, informative content that targets your desired keywords. Seek to address every question your customers, partners, and other stakeholders have about your brand. This increases your chance of improving your brand reputation every time your brand's name is typed into the search bar.
Start building backlinks. Build high-quality backlinks to your website from authoritative sources. Good quality content will help – but it might take at least a couple of months until the domain rating increases – and with it, the search metrics.
Track your progress. As more people search for your brand online, you will need to review the volume of search queries, the position of each content piece on SERP, and the best-performing (Hero) content. All this data helps to inform experts like you of the next steps and the overall communications strategy.
How to calculate Share of Search with Repsense
As you can see, in today's digital landscape, Share of Search is a crucial metric to track and improve. By understanding what it is, why it's important, and how to track and improve it, you'll be well on your way to increasing your website's visibility and driving more traffic and leads. Tracking your Share of Search today will make sure you're staying ahead of the competition.
One of the ways to measure your Share of Search is using Repsense. Here's how to do it:
Log in to your Repsense account and navigate to the Share of Search report in the Interest category.
A pie diagram will show your Share of Search compared to your chosen competitors and peers for your select target country or region.
With the Ctrl + click function, you can change data representation to analyze data between two or more selected competitors.
The interest dashboard will give you an estimate of the monthly search volume for your company compared to the industry average.
Ready to start tracking? Book a demo and start tracking today:
