High Rankings, Search Volumes & Low CTR
-
I'm hitting a roadblock: I've successfully optimized our company website for 5 keyphrases, 3 of which we're ranking #1 in Google.com for, and for which monthly search volumes in the US are > 10,000. Yet, our CTR for those searches is below 1%!!!
In plain words: people are looking for our industry, find us on as the first result, yet don't click on us! It's the first time I've experienced this in SEO and I'm wondering what is going on - and if anyone has suggestions.
Any help is appreciated...
-
Hi Florent,
For me if Webmaster tools shows me 1600 impressions and I'm on the first page, that means 1600 people searched for the term, I consider that search volume, this doesn't apply to search results where I'm not on he first page.
A 2.5 position can be real even if you are no1 for 6 weeks. The reason being is personalized results, you can be no1 on your results and be no 3,4 on other people results.
Are you sure that 15.000 searches are 'exact match' searches?
-
Hi Cornel,
The Google Webmaster tool indeed looks more accurate - but it doesn't give me an average search volume on Google, moreover it only provides with the impressions of our website for relevant key searches.
Furthermore, the Avg position on there doesn't seem accurate, as it displays 2.5 for one of our keyphrases, even though we've consistently been ranking #1 for the past 6 weeks.
What I don't understand is why the Google adwords tool would give an average search volume of 15,000 in the US for keyword X when the webmaster tool gives me an impression rate of 360 for the same keyword. The two should correlate, shouldn't they?
-
My volume estimates are from the Google Adwords tool - so I guess they could be broad? My rankings aren't personalized, in fact I've done them through the incognito window in Chrome on google.com and even tried through a proxy in the US (we're based in Canada) - still we rank #1 for 3 major keyphrases. I guess it could be that our page title needs work but I'm worried that if I change it might impact our ranking position...
-
Hi Ryan,
-
Yes, agreed
-
It might be that but still it's odd that out of a few thousand searches we only get about a few dozen clicks as #1...
Will dig in further
-
-
What is your website visitor counter like per month? Same as the source you are getting this info from ?
Look at the site above you (adowrds )and below you, if you were looking for your services/products, who would you click on, honestly ?
Probably just an off CTR counter, wherever you are getting the info from.
-
Hi Florent,
To calculate your CTR you shouldn't compare Google estimates with you traffic.
Google Webmaster tools gives you an exact CTR number
Take a look at this http://i.imgur.com/wWZzr.png
Cornel
-
Not knowing your experience level... my guesses are.....
Your search volume estimates are broad match and your rankings are personalized.
If those are both false then this is a very unusual case.
-
That's pretty weird...
-
Perhaps googles estimates for traffic are incorrect and overstated.
-
Maybe your title and meta description needs some work so that searchers are more enticed to click to your site.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Two high ranking pages instantly dropped from index - no manual penalty notification
We are facing an issue where two of our major rankings pages have just completely disappeared from search results. This has happened in the last 24 - 48 hours and there has been no changes made to the site. From what we can tell, it's only impacted two pages (but two very important category pages). I have double and triple checked all standard indexing protocols - Search Console URL inspection says the pages are fine to crawl and index. URLs have been requested to re-index but nothing has worked. This would have me to believe it could be a manual action yet there are no notifications in Search Console and we are listed as 'No issues detected' in all versions of our web property. Can anyone else think what could be the reason?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vuly0 -
New site failing to rank - could this be why?
I have a new client site that is not appearing anywhere in the top 100 for its main keywords. ASSUMING that this is not an issue with optimization or link quality, I am wondering whether it might be the following... The client's company has a parent company whose website has decent authority. This website links to the new (client) website. In addition, the 2 press releases we have done include links to both companies, since one was an outgrowth of the other. This is all 100% natural, so my inclination is that this is not causing the issue. But does anyone have any experience to suggest otherwise? That having website A linking to website B, and 50+ press release websites linking to both, could be causing the algorithm to throttle website Bs ability to rank? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zakkyg0 -
Any tips on how tp get reddit or pinterest posts rank high on google images?
Hello I have noticed that for a keyword that has high competition it has on top image searches not that popular pinterest post & a reddit post, explorergram , youtube etc., the keywork is "24k gold iphone" and I am wondering if I could create somehow myself a pinterest or reddit post or something similar that would have images with my product rank high on that keyword, since my website does not rank well in mage search for some reason... https://www.google.fi/search?q=24k+gold+iphone+6&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMI1f2LkpTxxgIVhI8sCh1SGwjy&biw=978&bih=550#tbm=isch&q=24k+gold+iphone thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bidilover0 -
Drop in rankings
Our keyword rankings have dropped greatly since July'12. Our site used to be in the top 8 rankings for the most competitive keywords on our industry and now rank 30+. Being new to this industry any help would be greatly appreciated. www.fragileremovals.com.au
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Privacy Policy & T&C's SEO related question
With Adwords they request a Privacy Policy and T&C's sometimes for an Ad to be approved. Silly question I know but do you think Google looks out for pages like this to identity websites which are more genuine for organic? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
How many links would you need to rank up in page rank?
White hat **** Can 20 website with page rank of 3 make your site rank higher?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spidersite0 -
Search Spike over the weekend
I own a website, and recently had a HUGE spike in organic search traffic from Google over the weekend. It seems to be going back down. Anyone have any idea why? Anyone have any similar experiences? odd-traffic.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alhallinan1 -
Why did my rankings drop?
Hi all, In July I started to re-energise my link building efforts by getting a proper campaign together to build links. Despite building about 20 new links my traffic has actually fallen. Here a a breakdown of what happen: 1)Late June I noticed my toolbar page rank up at about PR4 which, despite only being a small part of the algo, was nice to see. Early July I started my link building campaign by getting together a massive list of potential link partners by using Open Site Explorer on my competitors sites. 3)Because I'm a bit pressed for time I decided to go for the easier links first. I sorted my link list by Domain Authority and started to list on high DA directories used by my competitors. I listed on about 20 of these directories. I also livened up an old links page I'd previously hidden from the SE's because I was planning to do a bit of Link exchanging too. A few days after I started building links from these directories I noticed my traffic start to drop off gradually. I also noticed the toolbar PR go down to PR3. I decided to stop at 20 submissions because it looked like this was effecting traffic. I also removed the links page I'd livened up which produced a temporary improvement in traffic but it's since gone on to get a bit worse. Traffic is now down by about 10% on when I started buying submissions to directories. I must add that during this period we have also been taking on new clients which, as a a real estate listing site, means we put loads of content on our site for the client. That content is also on the clients website and on other competitors sites. So there would be lot's of a content that appears elsewhere on the net. Not really sure which of the two has caused the problem and not really sure how to progress. Do I remove the links on the directories? Do I wait for this newly added content to bed down so that new fresh can take it's place in our results which we rank from? Any help would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0