Ranking #1 for decent traffic keywords, but not receiving any traffic?
-
A site I work on is ranked number 1 for a few keywords. To see how much a keyword is searched per month I rely on Google Adwords Keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Using this tool I see that the keyword receives 880 local monthly searches and another keyword they rank #1 for receives 1300 local monthly searches. To me these keywords are not the biggest as far as traffic but they are not small by any means.
Now here is the issue. Like mentioned above, the site nmber 1 for multiple keywords. They have been ranked number 1 for these keywords for months. Looking in analytics the other day I notice that on a month to month basis both of these keywords are getting 1, or 2 visits. This past month (October) one of the keywords did not receive ANY visits, and that is being ranked #1 for a 1300 monthly searched keyword. It just doesn’t make sense. I would imagine getting at least 100 or so visits a month from these search terms.
Could someone please help me understand this a little bit better?
-
I'll just add that I wrote a post about this topic recently:
-
Any one else with any information on this?
-
When I originally replied I wrongly assumed the traffic numbers provided were correct. Yannick brought up an excellent point. The exact match searches are 16 and 36 for the two phrases involved. 52 is not a lot of global monthly searches and some of those are likely you or your site owner performing those searches. The bottom line, you have the #1 ranking on two terms without traffic so that is why you are not seeing any traffic.
Even changing the search query from "daytona beach insurance" to "insurance daytona beach" (shows 58 searches which is more then the other two combined) then moves your 1st organic result after all of the Google Places results.
My best recommendation for improvement is to grab a Google Places listing if you do not have one already. If you do have one, optimize it as you are not listed in the results.
-
I had a look, it is 1300 for broad, but only 28 for phrase, and 16 for exact, now to me, the words daytona and insurance, are not words i would expect to see in the same search term unless the were in a phrase or exact. so something does not seem right here.
-
Keyword tool = crap.
1. Did you look at the traffic for phrase match keywords? Or broad match?
2. Second thing you have to consider: the data Google uses in the keyword tool is also from search partners. For instance, in the Netherlands (where I live) google also adds keyword volume from a craigslist type of site. So me searching on the site for daytona insurance will add "a tick" in the keyword tool as well, even though google's results page wasn't shown for that search.
3. Did I mention that the keyword tool is crap?
(With instant search on) Start typing daytona i... and see what starts apearing. Than compare the keywords that appear before insurance to the data you got for daytona insurance. See if that makes any sense.
Good luck! And remember, especially these days, rankings aren't everything. Traffic is!
-
I would highly recommend checking webmaster tools to see real Keyword data if analytics is showing conflicting information.
Additionally, how often are you doing searches for this keyword on your own machine. are you going to an agnostic computer and doing the search. Your search settings may be affecting your personal searches.
-
I agree with John. I took a look at your search results. I was checking to see if your title or other aspects of your search result was particularly bad and might lead people not to want to click on your site, but that was not the case. I also wanted to see if there was an advertisement, or possibly the #2 or 3 result was so compelling (i.e. Insurance for $99/yr!) that searchers would skip your result and click on the others. That was not the case.
It seems more likely you are not reading your traffic reports correctly. Perhaps a filter is set to where you are not viewing all the results?
-
Zgraph, you mentioned you use the Adwords Keyword tool..what other tools do you use? webmastertools or anayltics? You are clearly ranked 1st for "Daytona Beach Insurance" when view serp cloaked...it seems impossible that you would not have any visits.
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
-
A client asked: "Are you guys aware of any recent changes to Google noquery traffic? I am seeing some chatter around this." Is he referring to "not provided" traffic?
I'm not sure what my client means by this question. I assume he's talking about "not provided" traffic. Is there something I'm missing? Thanks for reading!
Algorithm Updates | | DA20130 -
Trying to recover from a ranking crash
My site was well established and I'd built up some good rankings in Google using link building and onsite optimization. Then last year it completely fell out of the rankings except for a few keywords. There were some suspicious links but nothing that seemed too toxic, no warnings from Webmaster Tools. 9 months later I still haven't recovered. The site is well optimized. Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | Infogenix0 -
Staff Dumbfounded by Rankings Drop - Please Help Us Understand!
We are completely dumbfounded by the amount of organic traffic we lost virtually instantly back on Aug 22 2012. We are spending much more money advertising as of late but took another massive plunge since rolling out our newer site redesign this past sat 04/13/13. The newer and more updated version of our site seems to all of a sudden have us dropping like a rock again! Our developers and in house SEO guy that is in house here seems to think our content is ok and that our PR and page authority is ok as well. However they have told me it isn't good per-say, but not the reason in their opinion for our sites drop in rankings instantly. We've seen tons of keywords drop 22-40+ positions in google. We've been online since 2001 and I've never seen anything even remotely close to this. Didn't seem to see such an impact with bing or yahoo though. Due to our rankings being slaughtered we decided to hired WebIMAX to come in and figure out what happened. They informed us that we must have been hit with the panda filter they collectively guessed. Said our content was fair lol. They done allot of tests without anything really indicated the real root cause of the problem and most every major change they requested we made. However we've changed the site design and layout now and changed much of the content and overall structure to be better we believe and we for the life of us cannot understand the massive unexplained penalty. I attached an image which illustrates our dramatic drop in traffic. Bare in mind that as traffic drops we spend more $$$ advertising so mere traffic numbers don't even really say it all. Our organic results are really down maybe 60-70%. We really thought WebIMAX would be a big help and give great assistance and insight. I didn't see any of that and I think our IT staff agrees. We paid big bucks for nothing in return it seems. However we are desperate and are actually considering staying with them even though they've produced zero results or maybe negative results. In fact with all that was done over weeks and weeks with WebIMAX we continued to DROP in organic results. We don't know if we should go back to them, choose another SEO company or just go on trying to fix this issue ourselves. Website is http://www.cruizinconceptswholesale.com/ We just want someone that knows what they are looking at to say hey I see something Major Right Here. If we could get that then we would simply fix it. Thanks in advance for anyone willing to help us out with their expert knowledge and I think I would trust the community here more than WebIMAX easily! David. cruizin-traffic-image.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | David_C0 -
Why do in-site search result pages rank better than my product pages?
Maybe this is a common SERP for a generic product type but I'm seeing it a lot more often. Here is an example SERP "rolling stools". The top 4 results are dynamic in-site search pages from Sears, ebay and Amazon (among others). I understand their influence and authority but why would a search return a dynamic in-site SERP instead of a solid product page. A better question would be - How do I get my in-site SERPs to rank or how do I get my client's page to rise above the #5 spot is currently ranks at? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BenRWoodard0 -
Traffic dropping after blog was added...
We have a major client that gets over a thousand organic visits per day. They also self manage an adwords campaign that generates a few thousand clicks a day. Lat summer they got a new website with a blog. The blog has a couple of teaser paragraphs on the home page with the new blog posts, in addition to lots of static text about the items sold on the site. What has happened is, our organic traffic has changed form the main keywords of what the site sells, to things talked about in the blog. Traffic hasn’t dropped dramatically, but we have lost all our big keywords, for example, a keyword that was generating 40 organic clicks per day a year ago we receive no traffic for now, and much more obscure keyword combinations from the blog are being picked up. Is it the addition of the blog that is causing this problem, or the blog teasers that are on the home page of the site? We like the traffic from the blog terms, but we would like our former main keyword traffic back as well, how can we accomplish this, and what do you think has occurred here? Thanks for your help.
Algorithm Updates | | WhiteHat120 -
Another Domain ranking instead of my Domain
Hi My Domain name is Replicahause.net, 2 weeks ago my server had an outage for 3 days and my rankings dissappeared in google entirely, however i also noticed that when i typed in my domain name "replicahause" or "replicahause.net" , i would see abhishekyadav.com appearing on #1 in google which does a 301 into Replicahause.net I was able to convince the owner of Abhishekyadav to remove the 301 but my site Replicahause.net's Rankings still does not appear to have come back to google, is there something i'm missing here ? We were ranked #1 to #10 for at least 40 keywords, they've just seemed to dissappeard after the server downtime we had and the 301 from AbhishekYadav.com Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jansimon0 -
Has Panda update made you lose your ranks but put them back again?
I noticed recently that one of the main sites I run dropped ranks quite heavily across the board. I then noticed that with very link building during the time that the ranks were down (about 1 month) that my ranks went back up again really quickly. All this with very little link building effort, and its the same link building campaign I've been running for a while. So I'm wondering has any been experiencing ranking flux between jan and feb? I know that people reckon if you fix some things your ranks can improve again, but I barley fixed anything on the site and yet it dropped some keywords from 1st page to 3rd page and then back to 3rd page; some keywords went back to original position some were lower but non were higher.
Algorithm Updates | | upick-1623910 -
Ranking problem
One of our clients sites rankings has been jumping around like crazy and I have never experienced this before. The site - http://www.tshirtsubway.com Was 2nd for Music T shirts on Google.co.uk Plus top of the 2nd page for T shirts. Then all of a sudden the ranking for T Shirts disappered. Do you think the site could be subject to a spam link attack from a rival ? What is the best way forward with resubmission to Google webmaster tools. The strange this is the site is now 4th for Music T Shirts so still ranking ? But for that word it has disappeared... Head scratching as I type...
Algorithm Updates | | onlinemediadirect0