Organic Traffic Drop and Rank Increase After Video Thumbnail added
-
So my company has created a large amount of videos and I took a couple of them and created a test video sitemap to see what effect adding a video thumbnail/rich snippet to the SERPs would be.
It worked on one page and gained 2 spots (position 6 to 4) for the highest keyword, but traffic didn't increase too much. Then a week later I tested it with the page that we get the most organic traffic for, which is ranking for a very big keyword. It worked and gained a bit of ranking, but traffic decreased 50% ever since according to Google Analytics.
It seems to me that the traffic from users clicking on the video thumbnail is not be tracked as google / organic even though it lands them on the intended page/doesn't redirect anywhere else. I've looked to see if traffic to this page increased overall to see if it was being tracked via a referral or as something else, but couldn't find any traffic discrepancy. The only thing I did find is that impressions under SEO > Landing Pages > Video Property increased, but this could be from the page ranking in the Video SERPs now.
Has anyone experienced a similar situation? Do you think having a video snippet could be that big of a turn off for customers that people just aren't clicking like they used to? I don't think so, that's why I'm leaning towards a tracking discrepancy in Google Analytics.
-
Agreed. It took about a week to get the thumbs in the SERP, so hopefully I'll have some more information within a week.
-
So, I think it would be fair to say that those thumbnails are not great.
If you're a consumer looking to buy a desk, you probably want to at least see the deck you're buying, so i'd advise testing some thumbs with detailed high quality close ups of the product itself.
See if that helps. If not, It could be that for this vertical, video snippets are not particularly valuable.
-
Hi Phil,
Here are the URLs in question:
- http://www.nationalbusinessfurniture.com/Reception-Desks-Type.aspx
- The traffic didn't change too much for this page, but the rank briefly increased from 6 to 3 for "reception desk" - currently at 5
- http://www.nationalbusinessfurniture.com/L-Desks-Type.aspx
- This page experienced the traffic drop and briefly increased rank from 8 to 6 for "l shaped desk" - currently at 8
I just submitted an updated sitemap to try to change the video_loc to a product page to get the thumbnail removed from the SERPs for the L-Desks page and change out the thumbnail for the Reception-Desks page to one that reads "Shop Reception Desks" in big letters with branding, etc. I also added the autoplay directive on the updated version, which I've seen doesn't always work.
These videos are technically relevant, however, they are also product specific. We have multiple videos on our product pages so I figured using one in the SERPs for a category page would attract people to our site where they could find many more product videos.
Any insight would be appreciated!
-
Exactly this. In my original reply I mentioned "testing a different still image" and by that I meant testing the thumbnail. Make sure the thumbnail gets your attention as well as showcases what you'd want to see for the particular search queries you are targeting.
-
Hi Joanna,
as others have said, it's plausible that you have seen a decrease in traffic due to the thumbnails. I've seen this happen very frequently, but without exception this has happened when video thumbs were low quality or unrelated to the page in question.
Video thumbs can increase traffic significantly, but it's not a guarantee - one the most important factors here is what the thumbnail actually is. We could as easily say "meta descriptions can increase click through rate" - which is absolutely true, but it really matters what the description is.
I'd recommend changing the thumbs on your videos and testing a few pages to see if the thumbnail style might be a factor here. If you've increased rankings as well as having gained a snippet, and you're not competing against queries with more relevant snippets (i.e. stars for very transactional queries) then my first port of call would be testing thumbnail variations.
Would you be willing to share the URLs of some of the pages in question here?
-
Hi Joanna,
That's really interesting. I do not know the answer to whether rankings with thumbnails are treated differently upon a user clicking, but I agree with Anthony that you might be turning visitors off for some queries. It's certainly worth testing if we can confirm that the traffic is not being misappropriated in analytics.
I oversaw a campaign a year or so ago that placed thumbnails on rather transactional pages for a retailer and we did not see traffic decrease dramatically, but the thumbnails only showed up intermittently. I would certainly agree with attempting to keep thumbnails for pages where a visual guide like a video makes sense, given the results you've seen.
-
Thanks for your response. I was so excited to realize I could control which videos Google puts in the SERPs, having this traffic drop was a major bummer.
I looked in the SEO > Landing Pages section of Google Analytics (which pulls from Google Webmaster Tools - so not exact numbers) and it does show that both pages have had a dramatic decrease in CTR (from 4% to less than 1%) . However, it also shows that they've had a decrease in Impressions. Both of these pages are ranking in the top 10 for their highest keyword.
My guess would be that Google may not be serving up the page as often as they were to certain searchers and/or long tail queries because of a video being associated. I'm going to change the thumbnail on one of them and try to get the thumbnail taken off of the other by changing the video content_loc on the video sitemap to a less prominent page.
Interesting note: Since we first started embedding videos on our pages, Google had been intermittently including video thumbnails to the SERPS based on when/if Google picked up on them by crawling our pages naturally. However, when I added a more extensive XML sitemap, Google removed all the videos from the SERPs and we saw a dramatic increase in traffic with no visible dramatic change in ranks (aka the ranks we are watching didn't change).
So I'm hoping the video sitemap will ensure Google only uses the videos on the pages we tell them to. If not, I'll have to talk to my developer on how to ensure Google doesn't pick up on the video links on the page.
At least now I know how not to use videos! Interesting stuff.
-
Adding a video snippet to your search result can definitely decrease the CT rate of your organic listing for certain queries. If it's a highly transactional query, like the name of a product, and the searcher is planning on making a purchase, they may mistake your result for a page that only features a video. They will choose other results because they want to purchase.
Adam Audette has been recently talking about this fact and included a slide in a recent SEO for Ecommerce presentation he did.
You are going about this the right way by testing and monitoring your click-through rates. Perhaps you can test a different still image for the video next. Ultimately, you may end up removing the video sitemap. Be sure to test how it effects the actual conversion on the landing page as well.
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
-
How to see organic traffic trend in GA?
Hi Guys, I want to identify whether organic landing pages in Google Analytics month on month (over 6 month period) have increased or decreased in traffic and whether the traffic trend is positive or negative. See attachment of the data. In total there are 500 pages, so it's just not feasible to review each organic chart for each organic landing page to view the trend. I’m sure there is some way to view this in Google Analytics, but just not sure how. Any suggestions? Cheers. 0Bnv85G.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | spyaccounts140 -
Referral Traffic Issue
I'm working on a site that has low traffic volumes due to its niche. That's fine but we are daily getting referral traffic from unrelated domains without a link. These visits are always 100% bounce which is impacting the overall click.through rate. The domains are not the same and different ones come through all the time, so it is difficult to keep on top of. Any ideas what could be going on here and an effective way of dealing with this?
Reporting & Analytics | | MickEdwards0 -
Why would our client's site be receiving significant levels of organic traffic for a keyword they do not rank for?
We have a client that has received 100+ organic visits for the keyword 'airport transfers', yet the site does not rank in the top 100 search results for this keyword. We have checked that it is not untagged PPC traffic. Truly baffling. Can anybody help?
Reporting & Analytics | | mrdavidingram0 -
Have i got a manual action on rankings?
Hi guys, so recently Google released the 'manual actions' tab under 'search traffic' in Google webmaster tools. Recently hit by panda i checked this and got: " Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole." However was this not the message before saying it was not a complete manual ban, just affecting a few bad links? I was hit badly in the rankings but still have some good terms and traffic is not that bad still from organic non-brand. I have fixed many of the bad links (horrible articles submissions that went out of control in 2009) - do i do a reconsideratikn request? i have disavowed the bad links that are left 3 weeks ago? so do i wait to see if disavow works or do a reconsideration request?I was sure this was like the message sent out before which meant it wasn't that bad for your site, just a few links ignored? Any advice much appreciated, thank you.
Reporting & Analytics | | pauledwards0 -
IP address changed, subdomains added - how will affect?
Hello, Two weeks ago we have changed IP address of our website, also we've added new subdomains for static content (like img.domain.com & js.domain.com) and changed the links on the site accordingly. The old IP is also working and the old links are accessible too. For some reason, since the change, we see a SE (google) traffic constant drop everyday. I've read only Google's support (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34437) that such change shouldn't affect the ranking anyhow. On the other hand I've consulted with SEO people and was told that such change may affect in the close new feature (for couple of weeks) and then bring the ranking back. I would like to hear another opinion, I want to get back to our board with approved answers. Please advice. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | maddogx0 -
Rank tracker tool - seomoz
Hi All, I have noticed that ranks in the tool -rank tracker are not correct for my keywords sometimes. Does anybody else has experienced this? Isn't it real time updated? What other free rank tracker tool you guys would suggest which can send you weekly accurate updates? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | EG0CENTRIX0 -
SEOBook Rank Check Problem
Has anyone who uses SEOBook Rankcheck in Firefox (version 7) had problems with the tool picking up rankings for Bing, but not Google? I've got keywords that I know I rank in the top 10 (and my Raven account confirms it), but when I run a report on Rank Checker, those same words aren't ranking; instead I just get a "-". I've tried restarting my computer and emptying my cookies; but no luck. Any thoughts?
Reporting & Analytics | | EricVallee340 -
Will having a subdomain cause referral traffic from the domain name?
Hi! One of our clients has a site with the store on a subdomain: store.example.com. When we've set up goals for order confirmation pages, we often see most of the sources attributed to example.com. Is this because of the subdomain issue? How would we correct it so that we would see as the referring source for the goal the site that sent to the root domain originally, and not the site that sent to the subdomain? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | debi_zyx0