SEO traffic to the homepage is down across sites
-
Week over week, I've noticed that organic traffic (and oftentimes revenue) for the homepage are down across most of our sites compared to last year. Brand search interest is down for a number of the brands, but in a lot of these cases, it's not down so much that it would make sense for how much the homepage is down (for example: brand search interest was down 4% last week compared to last year, but the homepage traffic was down 32% in visits).
What I've done is generate entry page reports (this year vs. last year) and then bucket the pages by homepage, category pages, and product pages. In most cases, category pages are up year over year for traffic and revenue. I'm concerned that the homepage being down is more than a brand heat issue, but I haven't come across anything out of the ordinary in Google Search Console and keywords are pretty consistent in performance for the most part. Branded keywords continue to rank at #1, too.
Any thoughts as to what else I can look into?
-
Hey WWW SEO,
It seems to me that the pages' implementations seem correct, so it doesn't appear to be a tracking-based issue.
Have you taken to top terms that are driving traffic to these pages (Google Search Console or internal data if you have it) and plotted them in Google Trends to see how they compare over the past 24 months or so? Some may not be high-enough volume, but those that are should give you a feel for where the the volume stands in YoY comparison.
Regards,
Trenton -
Hi Trenton -
Sure. Here are the 2 that I'm most waiting to anniversary the platform launch for: http://bit.ly/1XgbhtZ and http://bit.ly/1Xvikzl.
I've also seen http://bit.ly/1XvivuF take a hit in homepage traffic (mobile traffic to the homepage is down more than desktop. The desktop vs. mobile performance is kind of a case by case situation, since I haven't really seen any patterns that encompass all brands).
Thanks!
-
WWW SEO,
Mind dropping us a link to the website in question so we can take a closer look? This will allow me to check your tracking implementation and to do a quick check on other factors that may be causing an issue here.
Thanks!
Trenton -
Hey Matt! I'm still trying to figure this out. I'm wondering if it's in part a tracking "issue" or inconsistency. I was looking through both desktop and mobile traffic and they are both down, so it's not like one or the other is the main driver. Organic traffic contribution continues to be down year over year.
Before we moved our sites over to the new platform, some traffic had been directed to a Country Selection page (I can't remember all the details behind this at the moment). When comparing year over year data (we use Omniture), we're including traffic that came through the Country Selection page and went through to the US site. I don't know if there's something with this particular page, or if we are indeed comparing apples to apples by leaving it in (without it, homepage is up. Category pages are generally up across all brands).
Still a lot of digging to do and I keep coming up at dead ends, it seems.
-
Hi WWW SEO! How is this going? We'd love an update.
-
What is direct traffic doing?
And have does mobile organic compare to desktop organic year-on-year?
-
I can take a closer look into competitors and see what's going on there. The way our meta descriptions are structured is first a call out of "official site" (we've noticed a better CTR by calling this out in both organic and paid), action verb, targeted keywords, and "Free shipping". In more of a consumer-friendly flow, but that's the basic structure of call outs.
-
You could perhaps ignore the brand search interest, or the keywords that are being searched by Google and instead look at what your site is actually delivering.
What about your meta descriptions? Use them like a sales pitch & compare them to the other search results. I have found it is often the case that sites lose traffic in circumstances like this when a competitor ups the game & grabs more attention.
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
-
Site:www.domainname.com - does not find homepage in Google (only inner pages - why?)
When I do a Google search on site:www.domainname.com, my clients homepage does not appear. Other inner pages do. The same thing happend a while ago and I did 'fetch by google' in Search Console. After that the homepage was indexed again when I did a site:www.domainname.com search. But now (2 weeks later), it's gone again. When I search on the brand name of the website in Google it does find the homepage. I don't know why it doesn't find the homepage when I do a site: search. Any ideas? [see images where you can see the problem] XTrDn 2doHF
Technical SEO | | robk1230 -
Mobile site not ranking
Hello, I have a m.site.com version of my original site. It is about 1/10 the size, and no matter what I do-I can't get the site to rank. I've added more pages and specified canonical etc etc. Should I add as many pages as my larger site has? Are there specific places I should be submitting this version beyond the typical? I am at a loss, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! L
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1 -
Cache Not Working on Our Site
We redesigned our site (www.motivators.com) back in April. Ever since then, we can't view the cache. It loads as a blank, white page but the cache text is at the top saying: "This is Google's cache of http://www.motivators.com/. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Jul 22, 2013 15:50:40 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime. Learn more. Tip: To quickly find your search term on this page, press Ctrl+F or ⌘-F (Mac) and use the find bar." Has anyone else ever seen this happen? Any ideas as to why it's happening? Could it be hurting us? Advice, tips, suggestions would be very much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Motivators0 -
Doing SEO for site that publishes articles everyday?
Hi, I was wondering on the best way to do SEO for a site that publishes articles daily. In other words, I add a new url to my site daily. How should I ensure that the new pages are optimized? Do I need to submit each new site to search engines? Any tips?
Technical SEO | | waltergah0 -
Can we use our existing site content on new site?
We added 1000s of pages unique content on our site and soon after google release penguin and we loose our ranking for major keywords and after months of efforts we decided to start a new site. If we use all the existing site content on new domain does google going to penalized the site for duplicate content or it will be treated as unique? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mozfreak0 -
Will rankings for my micro site rank better if I 301 redirect it to my main site?
This is my first time asking so I will try to be as clear as possible. Ok, I have a micro site that is an (exact match domain) and the domain is a couple 3-4 years old and ranks very well for several search terms. The main two terms it ranks for are like this. houses for rent in XXXXX XXXXX homes for rent (XXXXX equals a city name) The issue is this site has no backlinks, zero advanced SEO, I only did basic optimization to it when i set the site up. Even site structure, url structure all are not good.
Technical SEO | | Robbie8299
The only page I have ever even seen rank is the main root url. But with all that the site does really good in the top 1-2 results for key search terms. Now, I have a main site that is a very big site that has steadily been climbing in search terms every month with great backlinks, optimized for the city and all.
It currently ranks on second page for the listed search terms listed above. What I want to do is 301 redirect this microsite to my city page on my main site that is much better optimized for the key city terms.
The 301 redirect would point this "root domain" (mymicrosite.com) to my city page that looks like this. www.mymaindomain.com/city/XXXXXXX If I do this will Google rank my main URL city page as well as it ranks this microsite with zero links, seo, etc, etc. What happens if it does not? Will I be able to turn off the 301 redirect and keep the microsite rankings? My main reason for wanting this is I want this city page to rank well and I only want to optimize one site instead of both. Any help would be great!0 -
Are article sites a good way to generate traffic and links
I read a lot that article sites are a great way to generate links and traffic but i would like to hear from people on here to see about their experience with article sites. I have tried article sites and i have to be honest that most of them are no follow links and have also not generate any traffic. I have written over 30 articles for free article sites with no traffic coming from them and this has been done over a eight month period can anyone recommend any good article sites that can produce traffic and also ones that produce do follow If you feel i am wasting my time putting articles on free sites then please do tell me
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860