Going after GWMT queries - Smart or Risky???
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Hi,
I wanted to know if finding queries (using the GWMT) that are under-performing (not maximizing their potential) either due to
A. good position but low CTR
B. low to medium positionand change on-page items (titles and meta description for low CTR, add content to low position) is a good strategy or risky and may harm me further (but what do I have to lose...)?
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Yes this is a solid strategy.
Optimize your titles and descriptions for keywords that have good position & low CTR. You can also try adding Google authorship (if it's a content page) and semantic markup for reviews (for product pages) to get rich snippets displaying in the SERPs.
Targeting keywords that are ranking in the 5-15 range is also a good idea. Organize those by search volume, and do some onpage optimization. A few tweaks could boost their rankings and give you more traffic for a little bit of work.
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Hey Betty,
I think using the data in a Google Webmaster Tools account is a great place to start and that you are on the right track. In fact, this is usually one of the first things I look into for clients after some easy wins. Here is the workflow process that I usually use:
- Visit: Webmaster Tools --> Search Traffic --> Search Queries
- Expand the date range in the upper right hand corner to the maximum available date range
- Click the "Download This Table" link directly above the query column
- Delete all keywords with low volume (for example <100 impressions)
- Filter "Avg. Position" to show queries with average ranking of 10.1 to 30
- Dump the keywords into Keyword difficulty tool to determine the keywords with the least competition
- Determine if you have content adequately targeting the keyword. If so, add the url to the spreadsheet. If not, denote the need for content.
- Finally use the on-page grader to make sure your content is fully optimized to an A grade with the moz on-site optimization tool
I have found that keywords that have an average rank between 11-30 and have an on-page (moz tool) grade of C or less normally reach the first page with a spot of 10 or higher when the above process is applied.
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Hi Betty!
I will try to give you a couple of hints with my honest experience, but I believe you have answered your one question!
What do you have to lose?
A) Low CTR with high ranking?
Take a look on Title and description; maybe they are great for seo but not so great to work as bate so as to make your customer click.
Have you tried authorship? That could be a real change if you can go over the hurdles on making it work correctly. There is an excellent post about this and a "case" with troubleshooting
http://moz.com/blog/getting-authorship-to-work
On the other hand, definitely take a look of your page, creative and unique content and design, try to show your best content or at least present your content in an attractive way, first I would try to imagine who is arriving to the query and try to fulfil his needs and doubts. Usually Infographics help and could be a good idea to make one if applicable.
B. low to medium position
Then you have the same problems but you need to improve your seo, I would make a try to on-page seo with titles, descriptions H, alt and so on... but as you know that is just to begin.
Hope it’s useful for your purposes,
Cheers from a nice sunny day in southern Spain.
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