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
-
One of our top visited page (login page) missing primary keyword, does this makes ranking drop of our homepage for same keyword?
Hi all, So, I have removed the "primary keyword" from login page, which is most visited page on our website to avoid keywords in non related pages. I noticed our homepage ranking dropped for same "primary keyword". Visitors of this login page directly land without searching with "primary keyword". Then how removing it from such page drops our ranking? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
New Google Update In The Past Two Days???
Was there a new Google update in the past couple of days. Traffic on my test site has gone from ~ 1,000 per day to over 4,000 per day for no particular reason. Most of the traffic is still coming from Google and is not the result of any new major links. My keyword rankings also appear to be the same ...
Algorithm Updates | | Humanovation0 -
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 -
What is this new feature on Google?
Hey everyone, I typed "Vancouver Colleges" into Google and this new feature came up which I have never seen. It displays popular schools. Could someone tell me what this is called? And how do I get our college on here? Thank you! 4hnT7bV.png
Algorithm Updates | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Shared Hosting - Bad for SEO? (exp. Godaddy)
There were a lot of questions and data on this a few years back and nothing terribly recent so i wanted to get the discussion going again and see if any new data has been published. Is hosting your website on a shared host like Godaddy or Network Solutions going to hurt your rankings because their holds a chance that you could be on the same IP as spammy websites? My gut feeling is no primarily because almost 90% of the worldwide web is on shared hosting but i do not have a lot of data to back it up. Id love to hear some feedback. Cheers - Kyle
Algorithm Updates | | kchandler0 -
How much is Page Rank really worth?
We are in a position to purchase a domain, made of relevant keywords to our company with a current page ranking of 4 for their home page. However in looking at their analytics and other information they do not do well on significant keywords and have very low site traffic. In fact they do very, very poorly. With their high page ranking would it be relatively easy to conduct a successful SEO campaign on the domain if we were to take it over as our own and attempt to climb in the SERP's? I know Page Rank doesn't mean everything when it comes to your ranking, but 4 is relatively high in our field, so I don't really understand why they do so poorly when it comes to their actual rankings on key words.
Algorithm Updates | | absoauto0 -
How to do SEO for Google places.New trends and tips
How to do SEO for Google places.New trends and tips .Most clients wants their biz in Google places in First page .
Algorithm Updates | | innofidelity0 -
New Blog Post Ranking Fluctuation
I wrote a recent blog post on Friday. It was indexed and ranked on the first page on Monday. On Wednesday, it was nowhere to be found. I noticed that, after a few more recent posts, it was on page two of my blog. So I expanded my results so that it was back on my first page. Today, it is back on the first page - same spot as before. Was that my problem, or could it be something else I am unaware of?
Algorithm Updates | | BMac540