More Traffic From Lower Rankings?
-
I have access to analytics for two different sites that rank for the same keyword. Strangely, the site that ranks on page 3 gets three times as much traffic as the site that ranks on page 1 (rankings according to multiple SEO tools as well as my own browser).
How is this possible?
-
I have access to analytics for two different sites that rank for the same keyword. Strangely, the site that ranks on page 3 gets three times as much traffic as the site that ranks on page 1
Obviously then have other sources of traffic than the keyword you are looking at.
Never assume that there is a single source of traffic. Dive deeper into the analytics. You will probably learn something.
Also, it is possible that the rankings that you are looking at have been composed by google "for your eyes only".
-
As Doug mentions I would look at local search in the first instance. If relevant check out the keyword traffic by country of origin in analytics. Rankings can change quite a lot depending on country, might be that the site on page 3 where you are looking is page one in other places. Also depending on the country/audience your first site might have a much higher percentage of 'not provided' which could be hiding the real number of visits for that keyword.
-
Click through in the SERPS can be affected by a number of things, but a site ranking on page 3 getting more traffic for that keyword than a page 1 site? Wow!
If you're sure the ranking are a true reflection of what everyone else is seeing for that particular keyword... (without knowing the keyword/sites then it's impossible to be specific)
What's the difference in the way the two sites are presented in the SERPS? Do they have equally compelling titles/snippets that invite searchers to take action? What about reputation/trust? Is one of the sites a known name? Does the URL or title look spammy? Is one page heavily shared so appears on people's personalised searches? What about author mark-up?
How well does the search snippet answer the "am I going to find what I'm looking for?" question?
What about searching from mobile / local search? Is one of the sites getting a lift because people searching for the keyword in relation to their known or implied location?
How complicated/niche/specific is the keyword and what is the intent? If the keyword is very specific or in a very niche market then people may be willing to dive deeper through the search results to find the answer they're looking for.
What does google webmaster tools tell you about the average position for the search term for the two sites?
Edit: Meant to ask - what traffic volume are we talking about and what's the difference between the numbers for each site?
-
Hi,
Is the bigger traffic organic from google results based on that keyword? Or do you mean traffic overall?
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
-
Angular website and ranking
Hi guys Unfortunately I have to optimize the angular website, but I don't know how google see my website. Seo quacke (seo extension) doesn't get data from this website: https://cafegardesh.com and sitemap generation tools just crawl 1 page of this website. why? How find that google really crawl and index angular website?
Reporting & Analytics | | denakalami0 -
How can I distinguish new visitors from existing (customers) in Google Analytics to attain an avg # of new visitor traffic per day/week?
i do marketing for a business software site where we have hundreds of clients and each account has on avg 100 users. I am having a very challenging time to attempting to figure out the real number of unique traffic that our site receives. **(what's creating the issue is that we have thousands of user accounts where our users log-in via our site to access our app/platform). Would love help with this! Christian
Reporting & Analytics | | Sundance_Kidd0 -
Organic and direct traffic swap
We moved to a CMS (Webhook) and when we did that organic traffic and direct traffic swapped places. Since we moved it organic traffic is down by about 400 visits and direct traffic is up by 400 visits. I went through the list below and confirmed everything is working. The http refer wasn't being passed for a couple of weeks but the issue was resolved and the organic traffic issue is still ongoing. Is there anything else that may cause this issue? I confirmed the issue isn't one of the below problems. during http to https redirect (or vice versa) the referrer may not be passed incorrect subdomain or cross-domain tracking can strip the referrer. 302 redirects sometimes caused the referrer to be dropped problems with cookies being lost/corrupted. javascript missing from certain entry pages (means any further page view looks like a direct)
Reporting & Analytics | | BT20090 -
Increase of direct traffic
Hi everyone, We have a weird issue in our Google Analytics account. We have enormous amount of direct traffic, but not to our homepage, but to blogs that are published and posted to facebook. e.g. yesterday we did a post and it received 3.500 visits of which 2.900 were direct.
Reporting & Analytics | | Loui-60570
I'm unable to figure out how this is possible. 90% of the direct traffic comes from mobile phones Anyone has an idea?0 -
Sudden dramatic drop in "some but not all" keyphrase rankings for client, 3 weeks ago
I noticed recently that 4 of my keyphrases which ranked on page one, and were climbing 3 weeks ago, have suddenly dropped to > 50. What could have happened? I did find an issue with my sitemap (yoast generated), but why would that suddenly change? And even more importantly, how do I fix it?
Reporting & Analytics | | chill9860 -
Direct Traffic Source?
Hi all, Having some trouble figuring out a metric I'm dissecting. We have a large amount of traffic going to deep pages and I'm looking at the traffic source and an alarming amount are coming as Direct traffic. The thing is this can't type in or bookmarked traffic, so what else could it be? We have numbers like 80% and 60% for direct traffic, which judging by our previous efforts, that just can't right. Anyone can figure out what I may be missing out? Deeper pages should usually not get as much Direct traffic, so what can it be?
Reporting & Analytics | | William.Lau0 -
Campaign shows no traffic from Analytics
My campaaigns are connected to GA but traffic is zero for all campaigns
Reporting & Analytics | | berndheyer0 -
A lot of traffic to one page from Google referral
We recently received a lot of traffic to one page from
Reporting & Analytics | | underthesun808
google.com referral. When I look in analytics it reports that the traffic is
coming from /url that’s not real helpful. Is there a way to get more specific
information as to what the referring url was?0