If my keywords aren't driving any traffic to my site, why am I still ranking for them?

[MackenzieFogelson]

In several of our campaigns we have watched our keywords steadily climb the rankings without ever registering so much as a blip in the traffic data column.

If these keywords aren't driving any traffic to our site, how are we still ranking for them?

[KeriMorgret]

Adobe has a huge #1 ranking that I doubt gets them any traffic, other than SEOs using it to prove a point. Same with Apple Quicktime, Yahoo Maps, and almost anyone else who ranks highly for "Click Here". An extreme example, but one that's useful to show that traffic and rankings aren't the same.

[MackenzieFogelson]

Thanks (everybody) for answering. I think the problem we're running into is #1 here. I think we do a decent job with the on-page things and with using keywords that do describe the actual pages they're linked to...

Now I just need to reassess our actual research.

Thanks again.

[EssEEmily]

You've gotten some great responses here. I just wanted to add my gut reaction to your question.

If a keyword ranks #1 but no one is around to click on it does it really matter?

My advice would be to take a look at the keywords again and determine if they are the most valuable words you should be ranking for.

Sometimes the best targeted words don't bring the traffic and the best trafficked words don't bring the qualified visits.

[gfiorelli1]

Without more infos about your site is not that easy to answer.

For instance it could be so because your site have a very good links' profile both at page level and domain level, so that you PA and DA are better than your competitors.

Anyway, there is no official information - from what I know - between traffic and rankings, therefore a site can rank high and not receiving the traffic expected.

Honestly, the no-traffic issue is what I would look to solve first of all.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. I am ranking well for the correct keywords?
2. That keyword is the correct one? For instance you are ranking for a query that is used for a totally different kind of Search than the one you have "assigned" to the KW itself.
3. If I am ranking and keyword correctly target my public, are the meta description and the landing pages well done... I remind you that now, with instant even more fast, many sites risk to be checked just using the instant preview function.

[RyanKent]

If these keywords aren't driving any traffic to our site, how are we still ranking for them?

Ranking and traffic are two completely separate items. You can receive tremendous traffic for a page that is not even indexed. Likewise you can receive no traffic for a page where you have the #1 ranking.

There are numerous other factors to consider:

• What is the title for the page? Certain titles will have a significantly higher or lower appear to users, and therefore yield a higher or lower CTR.

• What is the meta description for the page? The same CTR factors apply to the meta description as to the title.

• What is the page's URL? Users may decide to visit a page or not based solely on it's URL. If a URL seems spammy, or long some uses will choose another result.

When I earn a first page ranking for a term, but not the #1 spot, my next thought is what change can I make to the title or meta description to cause users to select my results over the listings from other sites.

Another consideration is the traffic for the term. I can make up a word, write an article and receive the #1 ranking for that word. But since the traffic volume will be zero, that ranking isn't helpful. On the other hand, having the #15 ranking for the term "insurance" and receiving 1% of the millions of searches for that term would be a lot of traffic.

[STPseo]

What rank are you achieving? I don't have a lot of my own data but it is my understanding that visitors only go up dramatically when reaching the very top. There is this one article I have bookmarked has an interesting graph measuring click-through rate by Google rank.

Here is the entire article. The graph is on page 2. I may have to run my own data now!

googleserp4.jpg