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 -
Tracking Numbers and Local Listings
Hello all, had a quick question about the pros and cons of claiming a bunch of local listings and using a tracking # on our business profiles with those listings rather than our actual #. Anyone have any insight into whether this is good or bad practice and why? Thanks in advance!
Image & Video Optimization | | goldbergweismancairo0 -
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 -
Shared location and phone number in Google Places...what now?
Interesting conundrum I've run into with a legal site we've recently started working on. The client didn't initially tell us that their law office shares an address and a phone number with another firm. It didn't take long for us to find this out, but interestingly, it didn't seem to be negatively impacting their rankings...at first. Then as we got into June we simply fell out of the map listings. We occasionally resurface back to a 1-3 position and then disappear again. My presumption is that Google is having trouble deciding if either of our separate listings are legitimate as there are a lot of citations for each and the on site and off site SEO/link factors are fairly similar (with our site having a bit better link profile). So my thought is get a unique phone number (if I can make the client agree) and add a unique suite number and try to reclaim/edit every existing citation we can get our hands on. Anyone else run into a similar problem and beat it?
Image & Video Optimization | | NetvantageMarketing0 -
LOCAL SEO: Franchise --> One storefront. Multiple territory. Multiple listings?
An interesting problem came our way, and I'd love your help in solving it. An individual I'm chatting with owns and manages a number of territories of a service-based Franchise business around Eastern Iowa.**His territory covers multiple cities and zips. He services all of those places, but does not have a physical presence in all. There is one company office. But he has local numbers for each territory.**The corporate franchise's website is dynamic. It shows the 'local' number and information based on the visitor's location. Basically, little microsites for each franchise territory.Three years ago he set up individual Google Places pages for each territory, using a PO box address and the local phone numbers. The Google listings are set up not to display an address. The kick is -- those addresses are now expired. Those Google Local listings still exist, and drive considerable traffic in each target city. As you can imagine, this also causes havoc on his other citations. There are scattered (YP, Yahoo, Yelp, etc) listings for each address. Their name in GetListed brings up all five different addresses, each with a number of web properties already claimed.Now that I've offered to help, I need to determine the best way to move forward. Suspend the verified listings with hidden addresses and move to a single listing for the office location? We could add all of the zips in manually, but it would cover a very wide range, and could lose its rank in local SERPs. Even with a well-optimized description. And the local numbers would likely not show up. Keep the listings. Don't touch them at all. The owner is looking to maintain the look and feel of a local business in each of his territories. That is difficult to do with a single listing. Assuming we decide not to touch the active listings (option 2), what will we do for other listings? Do we claim a local Yahoo listing for each location? Just for the corporate office? Would love to hear how others have attacked the multi-territory franchise problem, or would in this case.Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | SocialJosh0 -
Is anyone experiencing a large number of reviews disappearing in Google Places?
Just curious if anyone else has had issues with any clients losing lots of reviews in the last week?
Image & Video Optimization | | 4RealLocal0 -
Local SEO address question - adding a suite number for shared address for office building
Hi, I have a client that has an address that is shared for a few different businesses in the holistic health field. My client is a chiropractor. There is an eye doctor, massage therapist and acupuncturist aslo sharing the same address. It's a subburban setting with two buildings all sharing one address. In the interest of preventing any merged listings down the road, I recently added un unofficial suite number to his website and Google places business listing. I also did this for all of his online directory listings, and for Bing and Yahoo as well. Did I do the right thing here? It seems to be having a positive impact on his local SEO as far as I can tell. Or at least there has not been any negative impact in the last 6 months Your thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | MozMan20 -
Google Shopping in SERPS - What % of clicks do they get?
Howdy, Looking for any data we can get on the % of click through the shopping results are getting in Google SERPs. There are tons of variables: how many products & which position the shopping feeds and images are shown in but any hard data would be helpful. The background is that we have a client who ranks #1 in Google for a shopping related term and their organic traffic is down in 2011 for this main keyword which has ranked #1 all year since the shopping feeds are continually showing above or below the 1st Google position vs sporadic or no display in years prior. I.e. They aren't happy the traffic is down & we are looking for some data we can provide them with beyond, "Google shopping is now eating part of your organic traffic for that term". Many thanks in advance!!
Image & Video Optimization | | WebpageFX0