Researching search volume drop
-
I am seeing a pretty precipitous drop in search volume traffic (see link). My keyword rankings don't seem to have suffered too much over this period. In fact, my #1 keyword have actually increased slightly in this timeframe.
Two questions...
- Is there some way to assess overall search volume across my tracked keywords (to see if this is just a case of overall searches dropping)?
- Is there a recommended plan of attack for investigating drops like this - beyond overall search volume, what other data might be important in identifying the cause of this. In short, I'm looking for some logic/structure for how I investigate this, using Moz tools and reports.
Thanks.
Mark
-
Awesome responses everyone - really appreciate this. It seems I have my work cut out across the various tools to try to identify root cause. At first, quick glance I don't see anything obvious popping up (for example to organic vs. direct) but I have more to check, based on the excellent input from the three of you. Thank you again!
Mark
-
Have you checked on WMT's? For Impressions for those keywords and CTR? That is the starting point in my view. If you CTR is steady and your impressions have dropped significantly you have to work out what pages you have dropped off - it may not necessarily be the main keyword.
I would start on WMT's..
-
If you wanted to look at relative search volume, you can look at Google Trends https://www.google.com/trends/ I would also see if you notice any trends in Google Search Console under Search Traffic > Search Analytics > Impressions
What your graph has me wondering is if this is an attribution issue with GA? On the grey line, Moz is simply taking your GA traffic that is tagged as organic and showing it in the graph. If you have an attribution issue in GA, organic traffic may be showing up as direct traffic. If there is anything wonky in the traffic attribution, GA will put it as Direct. You have this classic article by Groupon that was a good example of how organic can be attributed incorrectly. http://searchengineland.com/60-direct-traffic-actually-seo-195415
Look at your overall traffic in GA and then add a segment for organic traffic and then direct traffic. If your overall traffic is constant and you see organic going down while direct traffic is going up, you have your answer. As I understand it, this phenomenon is due to browser issues, so see if you have had more traffic recently from a given browser and that may give you another clue.
Another thing to check, you should be able to look at your organic traffic in GA and see if it is the same as Moz, or not. If not, ping the Moz folks to make sure your data from GA is coming in properly. May be some data import issues there.
My other guess here is that your ranking is ok, but your click rate has been jacked. Google Search console will show you CTR over time, and that may help. Look and see, did you change meta descriptions? Did you change up your schema markup so previously you had rich snippets in the SERP, but now you do not. You could potentially keep ranking, but loose CTR.
These are all things I would look at, but at this point, your guess is as good as mine. Looking through the above will probably prompt you to check other things that might give you an answer.
Good luck!
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
-
High or low volume keyword
Does it take longer to rank on high volume versus a low volume keyword ? if so why Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Search console, duplicate content and Moz
Hi, Working on a site that has duplicate content in the following manner: http://domain.com/content
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | paulneuteboom
http://www.domain.com/content Question: would telling search console to treat one of them as the primary site also stop Moz from seeing this as duplicate content? Thanks in advance, Best, Paul. http0 -
Problem with description on Google search results.
A few months ago I changed the description of one of the pages on my site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
And I noticed that Google does not display the entire description of his search results. Description page is: "Get yourself a personalized name necklace, we offer a huge range of silver, gold and gold plated name necklaces." And Google only shows this line: "Get yourself a personalized name necklace, we offer a huge ... " Did someone have an idea why is that? 2EPSLGX.png0 -
Bing steady, Yahoo dropped
For weeks, Yahoo consistently contributed just over 80% of what I got from Bing. Suddenly for the last two weeks the Yahoo and Bing graphs diverged, with Yahoo traffic dropping to 50% of Bing's. Any ideas? Did Yahoo make any deals with companies to give them better ranking? Have they suddenly started adding more ads above the fold? Any thoughts? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GilReich0 -
Places Listing in Search Results
Hi everyone, We have a company that hired us to set-up their Google Places listing for their 2nd location. The listing for the 1st location is very strong. Lots of reviews, Zagat rating, Knowledge graph, etc. In the search results the Google Places listing for the 1st location has merged with the website listing. You can see the link to the main site w/ a small grey google places listing directly below it. The client would like BOTH Google places listing to show up in the search results. They both show up on the map listing but not in the search results. Each location has its own listing in Google Places. We have also created different pages on the website for each location. Is there a way to get the search results to display places listings? I have noticed a few other business have done it by naming each of their multiple locations something slightly different. Then the search results seem to realize there are multiple locations and display the places listing in the search results. Anyone run into this? Any ideas? Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeattleJoe0 -
Sudden Index drop, but traffic increased?
Here are the numbers- Pages submitted on sitemap- About 18k Total Pages indexed on 12/30- About 250k Total Pages indexed on 1/6- About 81k We made no site changes in that week, why the sudden drop? Also why is total pages indexed so much higher than sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Is linking to search results bad for SEO?
If we have pages on our site that link to search results is that a bad thing? Should we set the links to "nofollow"?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Ranking & Traffic drops in last month
Over the last month, our rankings have been in a slow slide - that is until this week, when they absolutely crashed. Here are some example phrases: Phrase 11-Mar 5-Mar bug shields 24 9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShawnHerrick
floor mats 25 14
nerf bars 23 12
running boards 61 14
snow plows 25 18 For the life of me, I can't see what would have caused such drastic changes. Our site is almost completely unique content. Some things, like Warranty & Install instructions, are from the manufacturer to protect us from liabilities. We come up with our own feature text, and we have custom written articles, blog posts, research guides, etc. We also appear to be the only one of our competitors being affected in this fashion. Any thoughts would be helpful. Domain is realtruck.com.0