If my keywords aren't driving any traffic to my site, why am I still ranking for them?
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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:
- I am ranking well for the correct keywords?
- 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.
- 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.
-
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.
-
-
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!
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
-
No Ranking Keywords in Moz
I am using the link explorer to search my website https://bestsportsmask.com/ in Moz. But it is showing no ranked keywords but in other tools it's showing some keywords. What could be the issue.
Moz Pro | | DanielMaier0 -
Is pagerank still a ranking factor for Google?
Hello Friends, Just want to confirm that the announcement by Google officials for no more pagerank update (Oct 14) is only for the Google toolbar update but pagerank still exists and still a ranking factor for Google? http://searchengineland.com/google-toolbar-pagerank-finally-officially-dead-205277 Please help. Regards
Moz Pro | | chakraseo0 -
Rogerbot crawls my site and causes error as it uses urls that don't exist
Whenever the rogerbot comes back to my site for a crawl it seems to want to crawl urls that dont exist and thus causes errors to be reported... Example:- The correct url is as follows: /vw-baywindow/cab_door_slide_door_tailgate_engine_lid_parts/cab_door_seals/genuine_vw_brazil_cab_door_rubber_68-79_10330/ But it seems to want to crawl the following: /vw-baywindow/cab_door_slide_door_tailgate_engine_lid_parts/cab_door_seals/genuine_vw_brazil_cab_door_rubber_68-79_10330/?id=10330 This format doesn't exist anywhere and never has so I have no idea where its getting this url format from The user agent details I get are as follows: IP ADDRESS: 107.22.107.114
Moz Pro | | spiralsites
USER AGENT: rogerbot/1.0 (http://moz.com/help/pro/what-is-rogerbot-, rogerbot-crawler+pr1-crawler-17@moz.com)0 -
Warnings, Notices, and Errors- don't know how to correct these
I have been watching my Notices, Warnings and Errors increase since I added a blog to our WordPress site. Is this effecting our SEO? We now have the following: 2 4XX errors. 1 is for a page that we changed the title and nav for in mid March. And one for a page we removed. The nav on the site is working as far as I can see. This seems like a cache issue, but who knows? 20 warnings for “missing meta description tag”. These are all blog archive and author pages. Some have resulted from pagination and are “Part 2, Part 3, Part 4” etc. Others are the first page for authors. And there is one called “new page” that I can’t locate in our Pages admin and have no idea what it is. 5 warnings for “title element too long”. These are also archive pages that have the blog name and so are pages I can’t access through the admin to control page title plus “part 2’s and so on. 71 Notices for “Rel Cononical”. The rel cononicals are all being generated automatically and are for pages of all sorts. Some are for a content pages within the site, a bunch are blog posts, and archive pages for date, blog category and pagination archive pages 6 are 301’s. These are split between blog pagination, author and a couple of site content pages- contact and portfolio. Can’t imagine why these are here. 8 meta-robot nofollow. These are blog articles but only some of the posts. Don’t know why we are generating this for some and not all. And half of them are for the exact same page so there are really only 4 originals on this list. The others are dupes. 8 Blocked my meta-robots. And are also for the same 4 blog posts but duplicated twice each. We use All in One SEO. There is an option to use noindex for archives, categories that I do not have enabled. And also to autogenerate descriptions which I do not have enabled. I wasn’t concerned about these at first, but I read these (below) questions yesterday, and think I'd better do something as these are mounting up. I’m wondering if I should be asking our team for some code changes but not sure what exactly would be best. http://www.seomoz.org/q/pages-i-dont-want-customers-to-see http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html Our site is http://www.fateyes.com Thanks so much for any assistance on this!
Moz Pro | | gfiedel0 -
I can't find any inbound links that I know I have on open site, ahref or majestic. Does anyone know why?
Since the linkscape update before Christmas I have built a couple of links to fairly high quality sites. I can't find them on open site though or the other tools I mentioned. I'm a bit concerned there is an issue with my site. Does anyone have any idea why? I'm stumped. My site: www.emporiumofmanliness.co.uk
Moz Pro | | EmpofMan0 -
Why Doesn't Open Site Explorer show Domain Links from Twitter, WordPress or Feedburner?
I commented on a few blog posts and wanted to see the domain authority of those sites. When I look at our domain links, I notice the links are not there from the blogs (which I now know I have to give it time to show up). But I also noticed that domains with links to our website (regularly) were not showing up either. i .e Twitter, WordPress and Feedburner. I know we have links in these locations, especially Twitter. Why would these domains not show up? Much thanks!
Moz Pro | | SydisNey0 -
How do i add many keywords to rank checker
I want to use the Rank checker for a bunch of keywords, but i don't want to set tracking to them, It's just a one time only check i want to perform, but im not sure how to add many keywords (it's about 150 keywords i want to check). So if anyone knows how to do this, with SEOmoz Rank Checker tool or another tool in SEOmoz, please let me know. Thanks in advance.
Moz Pro | | Petersen110 -
Google UK rankings don't seem to be accurate.
Just a quick question - I am tracking the keyword 'chemistry teaching resources' as part of a campaign and our site comes up at number 4 on a google.co.uk search for this however in the rankings report section of our account, we are ranked at number 50 for this keyword in the 'google UK' column. Does anybody know why this would be different? It is also different for a number of other keywords in the campaign. Any help you could give would be much appreciated. Thanks
Moz Pro | | EdwardUpton610