Is a New Visits ratio of 39% a really bad thing?
-
I do a lot of work for a large estate agency based almost solely in London. They get a considerable amount of traffc and all other stats, on the whole, are always positive. The only thing that is decreasing regularly is the percentage of new traffic.
My understanding of user behaviour for this market is that no one in their right mind would make an enquiry or arrange a booking without a) looking at the property at least twice themeselves (once to before the enquiry and once before a viewing) and b) more than likely show a partner. Plus the site is well laid out and useful so I believe users are favouring our site over the comparison sites.
So questions:
-
Should I be panicing
-
What is the most efficent way of increasing new visits?
Things to note:
The HTML titles throughout the site are a bit of a mess - key word rich but too long and inconsistent. Could this be a contributing factor to the CTR?
Also in the past month we appeared in over 4k different queries but our non branded impressions are down 22%. Could more concise, less keyword stuffed HTML titles help this? Do I need to look at the page titles to ensure that they contain the exact phrases that are in decline?
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
-
-
Many thanks! I have tried with custom segments in the past but got confused and gave up. In doing this it has helped me clarify how I evaluate the data.
My keyword ranking have dropped and it is the perfect incentive to give them a kick up the behind to right some new content! I will also talk to them about a link building budget as currently their investment is far too low for a site of this size.
Thanks again for your help very much appreciated.
-
I don't think a decreasing new visits ratio is a bad thing. One might be able to spin it as a good thing.
Are you viewing this traffic as a whole? Because if so, it may not be an accurate representation. From the sounds of it, this is a big brand that you're working for. As such, a lot of your traffic is likely to come through branded terms. A decreasing new visits ratio for branded terms is not a bad thing - if anything, an increase in traffic and returning visitors would show that the brand is being trusted. In the real estate industry, this could mean that people are liking the listings on your site and are revisiting on a regular basis.
First thing I would do would be to set up some custom segments in Analytics (if this is what you're using, apologies if not). They're quite simple to do. I would set up 3 segments for organic search: brand, non-brand and not provided.
In your dashboard, click advanced segments and then the new custom segment button. Starting with brand, start with a "Include: Keyword" variable and type in your brand name. I'd add a couple of "OR" variables too, such as mispellings of the brand or nicknames/short names it has. Then insert an "AND" statement and select "medium", typing in organic in the field. You now have a segment of organic traffic purely for brand keywords.
For non-brand, do exactly the same, except for instead of "including" the brand keywords, you "exclude" them. I'd also exclude [not provided], add that as an "OR" variable.
For not provided itself, it's very simple - you just need one "Include:keyword" variable, at which point you type in [not provided].
With these 3 segments, you'll be able to see the new visitor rate of each one. I think this would give a more accurate representation of things. As mentioned earlier, I don't think a decreasing new visitor rate for brand traffic is a bad thing at all. For your non-brand keywords, a decreasing rate may suggest a decrease in your SEO visbility for some keywords. Sounds like you might be suspecting this to be the case. However, again, if traffic was still increasing I wouldn't be too worried. But a decreasing new visitor rate for non-brand search is perhaps more of a worry than brand search, so it's important to segment the traffic (in my opinion).
I think title tags do have a decent part in contributing click through rate, as does the meta description. I think it would be wise to clean these up and optimise them if you think they could be improved. Having said that, if impressions are down by 22%, it's probably your visibility that's affected, not the CTR.
Have you been monitoring your keyword rankings. Watching rankings every day can make you go a bit crazy, but it's a great indication of what your SEO visibility would be, which in turn is one of the best ways of getting new visits to your site. You're always going to rank #1 for your brand, so capturing new visits for people searching for london estate agents and similar search terms is what you can influence most. Optimising titles and meta descriptions is a good start, as well as increasing the rankings for some of the terms that offer the most impressions and are related to the business. Off-page factors are equally a big part in increasing this visibility. Not sure what your marketing/link-building strategy is at the moment, but I'd look to do more of that to increase your rankings in tandem with the on-page factors.
Hope this helps!
-
I don't think 39% is a big issue especially in an industry where repeat views are necessary.
One of our websites sells cheap portable ramps and has a high percentage of new visitors, due to the fact that there is no reason to come back (they either buy or don't buy).
Another of our sites sells expensive vintage furniture and has a very low percentage of new visitors. There is far more time spent on the buying process, there are also many visits from interior designers who always come back.
I always think that it is dangerous to look at percentages (especially on low traffic figures). For example if you increase the amount of your new visitors the amount of repeat viewers should also increase therefore your 39% may well stay the same (despite the obvious traffic improvement). Look to increase traffic not percentages.
PPC is a good way to get people to your site. You can advertise on words that people don't currently type in to get to your site, this could cut down on repeat viewers clicking on your adverts.
As to why your rankings have dropped can't comment until you post the 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
-
Any disadvantages of employing additional images which open in new window? Will it impact bounce rate and rankings?
Hi all, Our website is all about our software product. Generally our website pages are filled with 3 to 6 screenshots of our product features. As Google recently shifting to mobile index and pageload speed is going to be priority, we decided to compress the images on our pages and show the same images of large size in new window when someone clicks on a image. I wonder if this helps or has any disadvantages? Users may click on these clickable images while browsing the pages and may shift to new window to view the image. Will this have any negative impact on bounce rate? Please share your thoughts. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Header tags ratio matters?
Do we have anything like header tags ratio as of now in favour to search engines? Of course no multiple H1 tags. What if h2 or h3 tags are more than each others? We have top navigation links and one more navigation links which are h2 tags across all pages of website. Does this hurt?
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What is the new / current google algorithm update targeting and how to adapt / fix SEO approach accordingly ?
Over the past c. 3 weeks our average Google SERP rankings for a site have been as follows : week 1 : average 3rd in SERP week 2 : average 1st in SERP week 3 : average 7th in SERP Reading on sites including Moz, SEO Roundtable and looking at Moz's mozcast tool it seems there is allot of change going on with Google's algorithm at the moment. Is there a general consensus as to what the new algorithm update is targeting so that we can adapt our site / marketing accordingly ? Or is it too early to adapt ? When Google rolls out an update like this is it common to see fluctuations as they try out things or if we are currently down in the rankings should we take action now. I know there a tools that look at your google analytics data an overlay a list of major google updates such a penguin and panda, but from what ive read this is a generic algorithm change rather than a defined named update.
Algorithm Updates | | jpeg800 -
Lost over 65% of organic visits since Sept - Please help
Hi all, I'm fairly new to SEOmoz, i am here because i dont seem to be getting any actuall help from my SEO company, so am trying to figure this out myself. I have done a quick analysis using google analytics and have gone from 13441 google organic visitors in Sept to 4527 google organic visitors in March. (see attached image GA Sept - March) Visitor numbers seems be to fairly stable in sept, oct, nov, and perhaps a slight decline in Dec, but then on Jan17th seems a big drop, and i have never recovered... (See images GA - Oct, GA - Nov, GA - Dec and GA - Jan ) I am at a bit of a loss, i have heard about google penalties, but there are no warnings in my webmaster tools about this, the only warning i ever got was a message on Dec 24th which read : http://XXX.co.uk/: Big traffic change for top URL Search results clicks for (my site) have decreased significantly. The number of clicks that your site receives from Google can change from day to day for a variety of factors, including automatic algorithm updates. However, if you have recently made significant changes to the content or configuration of your site, this change may be an indication that there are problems. This is not a penalty notice is it? its simply google telling me i have lost a lot of traffic? Strange thing is December's traffic was pretty much fine, so do not understand why i got this message, when the drop in traffic happened a month later. I've been racking my brain for months trying to fix every little possible issue i can find with my site (its not nice, when you do not actually know what google has decided it doesn't like about your site!) but nothing seems to be helping, i've been hiring content writter's as i found loads of websites have copied a lot of content, i also decided maybe the product descriptions are being classed as duplicate so again have got in content writter's to re-write hundreds of product descriptions (all this is costing me an arm and a leg)... Nada! Then today, when doing this google analysis (see image GA Sept - March) i noticed two sites, i have renamed them on the image to: XXX-1.co.uk & XXX-2.ecomm-search.com XXX-1.co.uk was a test server where i could play around with code on my website before i actually implement changes, usually i delete all the files after i use it... but it looks like i forgot to do that.... the site is a complete copy of my website (but obviously a version where you can not actually process an order) but all the pages still have canonical links back to the proper website... Just in case this was causing issues, i have 301 redirected the site back to my main site... Is this wise? or should i just delete the site? XXX-2.ecomm-search.com is a search company i was trialing as i wanted to improve the search functionality on my own site, however the search features are hosted on their site... I was told it has no bearing on SEO as its not indexed... however if google is seeing refferalls coming from that site, which is basically a duplicate of my search pages but with better functionality, could they be considering this a duplicate content issue? If anybody can give me any advice at all about above questions, or in general about what happened on Jan 17th (as i see from web search's many people were affected but i can not seem to find people who actually know what google did) i would be very grateful. Thanks James iNiKRDq jd6FJ3l RzaqTEy 8KCtykz 2m2OGvG
Algorithm Updates | | isntworkdull0 -
SEO ANALYSIS ON A NEW SITE
Hi just would like if anyone could help me in provide some seo analysis on a new website http://www.ppilegalservices.co.uk/ main keyword is mis-sold ppi Its a very competitive keyword but not being able to come on google result in long tail keywords as well, Just got ranked on brand keywords like PPI LEGAL Services. Also running out of ideas as to how to create quality content any tips please? many thanks
Algorithm Updates | | conversiontactics0 -
How will SEO be impacted by Google's new Knowledge Graph?
With the recent announcement of Googles new Knowledge Graph, the SERP will be different. Will this present a new set of SEO best practices?
Algorithm Updates | | PerriCline0 -
New Brand Tlds
Hi, So ICANN is going to be coming out with new custom brand TLD. Essentialy if I have got it right you can register something like .ibm .amazon instead of .com or .org My problem is I can't seem to find a creative way to leverage this. I can understand ibm having one for its brand but me ? What do you think? how can we can make use of this for seo and linkbuilding ? Cheers, Vishal
Algorithm Updates | | vishalkhialani0 -
New Blog Post Ranking Fluctuation
I wrote a recent blog post on Friday. It was indexed and ranked on the first page on Monday. On Wednesday, it was nowhere to be found. I noticed that, after a few more recent posts, it was on page two of my blog. So I expanded my results so that it was back on my first page. Today, it is back on the first page - same spot as before. Was that my problem, or could it be something else I am unaware of?
Algorithm Updates | | BMac540