Branded terms include a company or product name; non-branded terms describe a need without one.
What the split actually means
The dividing line is simply whether a query contains a brand name. A branded keyword names a company, product, or trademark the searcher already has in mind — Nike running shoes, Notion templates, Semrush pricing. A non-branded keyword describes the need without naming a provider — running shoes for flat feet, project management app, cheapest keyword research tool. The brand can be your own or a competitor's; what matters is that a recognisable name is doing some of the work in the phrase.
That small distinction reshapes how you read a term. Branded queries usually come from people who are already aware of the brand and are partway, or all the way, down the funnel — they want a specific homepage, login, product, or price. Non-branded queries come from people describing a problem before they've settled on who solves it, which makes them the contested top of the funnel where new audiences are actually won. One captures demand you have largely already created; the other creates it.
Why the distinction matters in keyword research
Separating the two stops you from misreading your own performance. It's easy to feel good about traffic that is really just people typing your name into Google as a faster address bar — that demand would arrive with or without your SEO work. Non-branded rankings are the honest measure of whether your content is reaching people who didn't know you existed yet. When you audit a keyword list, tagging each term branded or non-branded is one of the first cuts worth making, right alongside checking volume and search intent.
The two groups also behave differently on every metric you care about. Branded terms tend to be lower volume but very high converting and cheap to win — you almost always own the top result, and in paid search the cost per click on your own brand is typically a fraction of what a competitive generic term costs. Non-branded terms carry the volume and the growth, but they're harder to rank for, more expensive to bid on, and demand content that genuinely answers the underlying question. Treating both as one undifferentiated pile hides all of that.
A worked example
Imagine a small company called BrightBrew that sells cold-brew coffee kits. Their keyword research turns up a mix like this:
| Keyword | Type | Likely intent | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| brightbrew cold brew kit | Branded | Transactional / navigational | Existing awareness; defend the #1 spot |
| brightbrew vs cold brew bags | Branded (comparison) | Commercial | People weighing you up; answer objections |
| how to make cold brew at home | Non-branded | Informational | New audience; a guide can pull them in |
| best cold brew coffee maker | Non-branded | Commercial | Buyers comparing options; win a listing |
The branded rows are cheap insurance: rank for them, run a low-cost brand ad if competitors are bidding on your name, and move on. The real growth work lives in the non-branded rows, where BrightBrew is competing against everyone and has to earn the click with a genuinely useful page. A healthy plan funds both — but it grows on the second group. This is exactly the kind of sorting our guide to how to do keyword research walks through step by step.
A common mistake
The trap is letting branded queries flatter your reports. A dashboard showing rising "organic traffic" can look like content success when it's really just brand searches climbing on the back of an ad campaign or a press mention — growth you'd get even with no SEO. Always segment branded out before you judge whether your non-branded efforts are working; most analytics and search-console setups let you filter by a brand term to do exactly that. The nuance worth holding onto: branded keywords are a moat to defend, not a frontier to expand. If your visibility is overwhelmingly branded, you're harvesting demand you already have rather than building any new — and that's the signal to pour more effort into the non-branded terms that bring strangers through the door.