What are reasons for poor (0 to 2%) CTR in spite of top position (number one) in SERPs?
-
My website pages appear for several local keywords like "granite countertops St.Louis" (About 480 impressions) and my site appears as the top most in SERPs. But the CTR is 1 to 2%. It is mentioned that the top positions may get as many as 35% clicks.
What are the reasons? I need help with detailed solutions.
-
Your first words are "Custom Fabricator" which causes me some friction - This sounds like you might be b2b. Do you sell stuff direct to customers?
Thank you, Doug. This is exactly what bothered me too. I did think they were b2b from those words.
-
The performance of your snippet on the search result pages can be pretty variable and affected by a whole host of things.
The first big problem is advertising. If your ranking #1 on a SERP that has a high volume of ads then they will be diminishing the visibility of your site.
The ads you're competing with have a big advantage over your organic SERP. It's much easier for the advertiser to put specific language in their ad to entice searchers to click through. Matching the users intent and adding compelling benefits / reasons why they should visit their site. (eg: Prices you can't beat, free estimates, fitted in 1 day etc...)
Your snippet describes your business but it doesn't tell me "what's in it for me?" if I click though on the link. Your first words are "Custom Fabricator" which causes me some friction - This sounds like you might be b2b. Do you sell stuff direct to customers?
EGOL has some great advice about sharpening up your snippet.
You've got some reviews and testimonial - What is it that really matters to your customers? Sometimes it's not always what you think it is, or described in the language you'd use (as you're in the trade).
Another question is how much traffic is there for this search term and how "SEO" aware are your competitors. I've noticed that for some competitive terms the real search volume isn't as high as you think it is. I've come to the conclusion that certain terms can be inflated due to the amount of rank tracking going on!
How are your other keywords performing? Are you getting better results from keywords like "granite counter installation St Louis" for instance? Can you compare the CTR between keywords with a similar intent?
The thing is, you don't know what a good CTR for that particular SERP is. You don't know what you competitors (in ads, organic and local) are getting so it's difficult for you to say if you're earning your fair share.
-
Hi Everybody,
i mentioned low CTR when I posted my question, and now I understand that CTR is used for the clicks on Adwords campaign. What I really mean is the clicks ratio of ORGANIC search results and not the Adwords campaign. Clicks on organic results and CTR on Adwords behave similarly?
-
First, I am surprised that the CTR is so low because of your top ranking. My goal with that would be to change the title tag and description tag to match the query as closely as possible and to elicit clicks.
If this was my site I would change the title tag to match the query.... and to elicit clicks.
I don't know your business so I am going to guess.
<title>Granite Countertops: Prompt Installation in St. Louis area</title>
They will see the name of your business in your domain.
Then I would change the description tag. Study the adwords guys. They have great descriptions...
Over 100 colors, Fast, expert installation, Affordable countertops and replacements. Tell them what they are looking for that you can deliver.
-
Thank you, Spencer.
-
It's http://www.archcitygranite.com/ he linked it as an attachment.
-
What are the reasons? I need help with detailed solutions.
If you want carefully considered ideas, please share your domain. Guesses will be a waste of everyone's time.
-
It all depends on the industry, local factors and search trends.
It may be for your industry/business that that is an epic CTR. It also may be that people searching for those items are not actually looking for what you think they are looking for.
Do you have any comparables for your top competitors? There are copious tools out there which can estimate traffic, albeit they can not be very accurate, but still if you compare your traffic to competitor traffic using the same tools, you may get some more insight into what is "normal" for your business.
The bottom line is that every niche has its own numbers and you may be doing everything just fine.
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
-
Webmaster tools search analytics - can you get current position (not average ) to show with out having to click through
We are working using Webmaster tools position, then pages. Looking at the average position to improve our page rankings. A lot of our pages are already moving up quite well, so the average is not reflecting the current position Is there a way we can see the current page rank rather that an average, with out having to click through each search, (position, then pages etc.) it is quite time consuming.
Image & Video Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
Google images not showing on SERP
Hi, I recently noticed that after a specific name search, Google images on the 'Web' SERP are no longer showing up. About a month ago, there were atleast 4-5 headshots of this particular person showing up whenever his name was searched. Now no images are showing, just the ten organic links and two links from adwords campaign we have going. The images are still optimized and some are even from editorial sites. Does anyone know what may have caused the images to disappear and what we can do to bring them back to the main SERP? (Not sure if it matters but we are in Canada) Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | Lorne_Marr0 -
About page showing in SERPS instead of Home page
I launched a daycare website a few months ago. For some reason Google does not like my home page. I know there is a lot more I can do to promote the website in general, but I can't figure out why, when I search for the brand name, the about page shows up followed by a few external listings, but no result for the home page anywhere. It is indeed indexed (checked site: and tried searching for an exact phrase in quotes and ran all the tests in webmaster tools), but it just isn't showing up. Can anyone see anything I'm missing? If you google "hello world daycare" (in victoria bc, canada) you'll see the about page for helloworlddaycare.com. Any help you can provide to solve this mystery would be much appretiated!
Image & Video Optimization | | PlusROI0 -
Optimizing 2 identical sites for different States
We have 2 websites that are about 99% similar in content, the only difference being the references to the State (CO and IN) and location information. Any recommendations on meta information or other ways to make sure we are not penalized for duplicate content? Thanks in advance!
Image & Video Optimization | | MeghanS0 -
Can this make one's local listing vanish from Google local search?
Hi All, Does anyone know if selecting "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under "service areas and location settings" in Google Places can cause a business's listing to disappear from Google local search? My interior designer client has a bricks-and-mortar location, was ranking at about #20 for "interior designer" in Portland, and now has dropped from local search. I had "No, all customers come to the business location" selected previously. In the past week, before the vanishing, I made these changes: 1. changed the service area to "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations", 2. removed "Portland" from the description in Google Places, and 3. submitted maybe two dozen directory listings to high DA sites (using Whitespark as the tool for determining where to post). Thanks everyone! Zack
Image & Video Optimization | | HammerandHand0 -
Consolidating mulitple Google+ Local pages with one Google+ Page
Hello All, I have trawled the internet, but can seem to find the answer to this question: "How will Google integrate multiple Google+ Local pages with one Google+ Page?" A bit of background to this. I work for a company that started online, but has since moved into retail stores. We currently have 14 stores around the UK. Now each of these stores has a Google+ Local page which were automatically converted over from the old style Google Places pages. I have read that these pages should be integrated with our regular Google+ account. All of the examples I have read about seem to relate to offline businesses that have moved into online, rather than online business that have moved into physical retails stores. And these examples are just one store, one Googe+ Local listing & one Google+ business page. That seems simple enough... but what about multiple locations?! Do I just need to sit on my hands and see what happens? Or are there things I can be doing now? Cheers for any help! Rich
Image & Video Optimization | | JBGlobalSEO0 -
Local SEO - our company is in 2 very different locations
Hi, Our company nlpca.com is in 2 locations. It's doing really well in San Francisco, California But we've opened a 2nd location in Salt Lake City, Utah The problem is that our site is all about San Francisco, California. Utah is just as important as San Francisco to us and we need to start tailoring to both. People from Utah say they are confused because our site is so tailored to California. Even our domain name is the keyword "NLP" combined with the state initial "CA" for California. A new domain is not an option. One thing we are thinking of doing is changing our header to say "The NLP and Coaching Institute and the NLP Institute of California". It would say both of our company names and hopefully the first would catch the Utah people. But I don't think it's just our banner. Can you take a look at our site and tell us how to tailor to both locations and keep our current working optimization for San Francisco, California? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Does position in local directories effect google detecting citations?
There are a lot of local directories that i have seen google pull citations from. Quite often i see people putting listings in these directories prefixed by several "A"s, so that they will appear on the first page of the list. Just how deep does google crawl through the pages of these lists? will google actually crawl through all the pages? Some of these directories offer paid listings that appear at the top of the directory. We have been considering purchasing some of these paid positions, so that google would be more likely to pickup our citations. In one case i have noticed a directory: shopincities.com do something that spiked my interest. Basically, if you start clicking through the different pages of a category, the site will block you after 3 or 4 pages in. It serves you an error saying that you are not human. In my mind this is to prevent google from fully crawling their whole list, so that the people who pay for the top positions are picked up, and the people who don't pay, even though their profiles are listed there, never get crawled by google. So would you pay for position on these directories? here are some examples: http://www.shopincities.com
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg
http://www.411.ca
http://www.goldbook.com
http://www.n49.ca
http://torontodirect.com
http://www.yellowpages.com Or would you just throw a whole bunch of A's infront of your business name so you appear on the first page of listings? Or do you belive it doesn't matter how deep you are in the listings, and with enough time google will find it regardless and credit it as a citation?0