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
-
Number or percentage of new visitors impact Google rankings?
Hi all, Does the number/percentage of new visitors (from different IPs and countries) impact the Google rankings? If there are more number of new visitors, will Google favours the website in rankings considering the fact that new visitors are better than returning/same visitors? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Remove new Knowlage graph overlay
Hi Moz, Recently Google started showed new snippets in searches as seen in the attached below (1) but the problem I'm finding is I'm sure its showing me different results to "normal" searches especially when compared to a logged out or alternative account (2). Now I've got a solution to this but wanted to know if anyone else had solutions to removing this or at least gaining a more normal result with it on. Seems to almost personalize the search results which isn't ideal so if anyone knows how to get this to stop I would love to hear it You can also see some more info here - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-pop-up-information-box-18007.html thanks helping me with the mild irritant NNX9J8p.jpg Ntj7WbX.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | GPainter0 -
Will Russia's New Data Protection Law Impact SEOs and SMBs Outside of Russia?
We've all seen the news recently that Google will be closing its engineering offices in Russia due to new data protection laws coming into place in January 2015. The same law has also led to Adobe pulling out of Russia earlier in the year. I was wondering how you think this will impact SEOers and small/medium businesses that market _to _Russia, but are based outside of the country? Personal data has been defined in the new legislation as: Personal data means any information directly or indirectly related to any identified or potentially identifiable person. It includes, among other things, first name and family name, date and place of birth, address, information about family status, education, profession, income Source For those businesses which don't process personal data (affiliates etc), will there be any foreseeable impact? On the flipside, are there any benefits here for affiliate businesses inside of Russia? I'm using affiliates as an example to get the ball rolling, but I'm sure there's numerous more. Personally, I'd be interested to hear if you think this may impact corporate websites which don't process personal data, but operate outside of Russia.
Algorithm Updates | | ecommercebc0 -
Will Google discount new gTLDs?
I have the opportunity now to acquire a very desirable generic domain name with either the .org or .pro TLD. Obviously, the .pro version I can get for a far better price. The .org will probably end up being about 10x the price of the .pro. I feel like the .org would give me instant clout while the .pro might raise eyebrows. Also, I'm concerned that Google might also discount these new gTLDs. What do you guys think? Is the perceived authority of the old-time TLDs something worth investing in? Or will this fizzle away over time as the new gTLDs flood the market? THanks! Ira
Algorithm Updates | | iraweissman0 -
If our link profile is too "blog link" heavy, will that be all that bad?
We own a site that lends itself extremely well to getting boat loads of links, only down side is that those on the boat are all bloggers. We are selling a product that retails for $6.89 per unit. They are for women. Our target market is any woman/girl who is between 14 and 50. Even better, our cost per unit is only about $0.40. So what we've been doing is sending them out by the hundreds to legit fashion blogs all the way down to blogspot mommy bloggers and the reviews have poured in, literally all of them positive. Moral of the story, we have a good product, and no shortage of bloggers that would be willing to write us up a legit, human written (by a red-blooded American none-the-less) on almost exclusively legit blogs. We're not trying to manipulate what they say, how they link to us, what anchor text they use or anything. We're just sending them product, asking that they do a review and give us a link and that's it. Our worry is that given the nature of the site and the product offering, it's going to be easy to get these legit blog links, but more difficult to get links that "aren't on blogs". Is this going to hurt us, or will Big Google be kind and realize this isn't shady manipulation. It's legit part of our ongoing effort to get the word out. Further evidence that our campaign isn't to manipulate (although we all know we're in it for the links) is that so far 75% of our sales have been driven by these reviews. A few of the bigger sites that have done reviews have each directly resulted in 10+ sales from that single review. So what are all ya'll's thoughts? I suspect we'll be OK, but wanted some others to provide their views.
Algorithm Updates | | AarcMediaGroup0 -
Search Engines Traffic for New Site?
Hi, Can anyone tell me please when a new website starts receiving traffic from the search engines? Regards
Algorithm Updates | | kywebsol0 -
Not sure whether to update existing page or create a new one
Hello guys, So far I have found this Q&A to be very helpful. I have a couple of product pages on my website which rank very low in the search results. This was because in the past they were not at all optimized in terms of title, description, etc. I would like to now optimize these pages, get some inbound links to them, etc. I'm not sure whether to do this with the existing product pages or create new ones. I'm afraid that if I optimize the current pages, the low ranking from before will carry over. Would it be better to start fresh? Thank you, Pravin
Algorithm Updates | | goforgreen0 -
Whats the best thing to do after rebuilding a site to get old rankings back ?
A website changed its platform from the old one to magento ecommerce. In webmaster tools google says that yesterday was the last time that crawled the site, but the old rankings for keywords are gone , traffic went down big time and now i'm not sure where to start working in order to bring everything like it was. any advice ?
Algorithm Updates | | footballearnings0