Clicking on SERPs
-
I've spoken to 2 people in the past few weeks, who have clients who search for their keywords every day, and then click on their own links, but not others, in the belief that this is good for their website ranking.
Google does track clicks with redirects, so I can understand that they would know someone searched for a term, and they clicked on a result.
I could understand if it was once per month, but doing it every day?
And if they keep coming back, to search for other keywords and click on those results too.
Looks like they would just paint a very large target on themselves.
What's your opinion?
-
Seems like this is a great way for the clients to see personalized results with their sites climbing towards the top!
-
Thanks Tom.
Yes, thats what I told them too.
Unfortunately, when someone a client trusts tells them something, it is hard to get them to stop believing it.
-
Traffic has no impact on your SERP visibility. It won't improve it, so doing this will have zero benefit.
In fact, it could even be hurting them (at a stretch). What are they doing once they click through? If they're bouncing off and not spending time on the site, that could actually hurt them. Bounce rate, to some degree, is taken into consideration when Google ranks your site. It would take an awful lot of bounces, but if Google sees people coming to the site and leaving quickly, it's going to start to think "this page does not serve the user".
I wouldn't worry much over clients doing it, but I always believe it's important that clients should understand the basics of SEO, so that they can appreciate your work but also for transparency's sake in the line of business. Educating them over this (and probably personalised search, by the sounds of it) would be a start.
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
-
SERP with no "www"
I have noticed that Google SERP without login is showing the domains without " www " - all of them. Have you seen this too? What does it mean for us?
Search Behavior | | Elchanan0 -
All pages were returning 404 for an hour. Will it impact the SERPS?
Hi, Due to a bug in my website system, all the pages were returning an 404 default page for a period of 1 hour. Can this event impact the SERPs of this site? (the site is heavily visited, more than 500k users coming from google every day, so I assume google crawls my pages every moment)
Search Behavior | | lucasms0 -
Post Panda SERP placement u-turn
Last week we had three terms for a client dive out of the top 100, they all ranked against a particular page, the three terms where where core words for the clients website ... strategic to his business. I assumed that it may have been due to the latest update by Google I assumed it was due to some poor inbound links to the pages (clients re sellers) and a slight abuse of anchor tags. The terms contained one keyword and two variations, a well know software brand. We ranked as high as number two, continually fighting the actual brands main website., but none the less outranking all other re-sellers. This week we are now back ranking higher for the main term (outranking the actual brands website) and the other two are back to where they ranked. Obviously I had organised to sit down with the client tomorrow to discus. Should I bury my head in the sand, rejoice at some fortune and hope the problem is not as bad as I thought, and hope the results stay static going forward ... or is this a chance to rectify those issues I saw with more clarity after the dive bomb of the three phrases last week. Has anyone else noticed anything similar ? Offer any advice ? Cheers John
Search Behavior | | Johnny4B0 -
Spammy website dominating SERPs! Why!?
Hey guys, I've recently noticed that a series of EMDs have been setup to completely spam an extensive set of keywords - and it seems to be working. All of the URLs are keyword targeted with tons of keyword variations. And they're getting massive ranking preference over a number of more established websites. These are just an example of some of the domains; diykitchens1.co.uk fittedkitchens1.co.uk cheapkitchens1.co.uk kitchenunits1.co.uk And then there's loads of local targeted domains such as; kitchensglasgow1.co.uk kitchensedinburgh1.co.uk Again, all of these are getting high ranking with what seems to be duplicated websites. It's pretty bizarre. Will Google penalise these sites? Surely they will?
Search Behavior | | Webrevolve0 -
Theme influence in your SERP
Hello SeoMoz community. I'm a new member here and i took the 30 day trial to test out your tools and to check if i find a need to them. I've a situation that is bugging my mind for a few days and i wish i had more data to have more accurate information. I have a website that stayed on first in my SERP for a competitive term. I did it with a very few links because i focused a lot on the UX (mostly on site performance & layout) and the outcome was a good usability for my site. Since the latest panda my site dropped from first to fifth and then came the Google dance between 5th and the 15th position. Then i decided to change the theme because i saw loads of problems like the page titles, i fixed loads of 301's and 404's, gave it a more clean UX, removed some ads and fixed some of the url's making them shorter and more accrued. This stopped the Google dance completely! And now the site is on the 10th position. I'm not complaining about the positions or panda updates or whatever happened. I just would like some comments on this situation. And i would like to ask if a theme update making the site better (better is a very complicated word in the SEO world know) can give negative feedback to the search engines? Thank you.
Search Behavior | | luisvestia0 -
Hi guys.. post-penguin my website coming in and out of serps every other day... what reason for that? ie. #11 --> #300+
We had one of the pre-penguin "unnatural links " messages in WMT - then Penguin hit April 24th/25th.. wee then set to work on Link profile... since 19th May we have had numerous search phrases come 'back' into rank pre-penguin for a day ie.. #5 - #10 and then drop the next.. ie 300+ this has been happening across a wide range of key phrases.... in fact it may well be that the key phrases are added to the serps 'briefly' or for a set amount of time... but our ranking checker checks daily so while it appears to be every other day in and out there may be another pattern... but the question is What is Google doing here and Why? any suggestions?
Search Behavior | | Geminineil1 -
Click through rate crashing...
I have been on a pretty big content upgrade on my websites. More content 5 pages to 14 pages 100 words to 500+ words per page More images More alt tags This has increased my traffic & my click through rates due to a massive increase in impressions. But because the impressions have gone up so much further my CTR had crashed. I have gone from : 500--> 50 to 4500 -->70 In one month. (Taken from Google webmaster tools) Will having a much lower CTR hurt my ranking in the long run? In the end I want more phone calls about my service so far I'm not yet seeing that conversion happening.
Search Behavior | | Mcarle0 -
Ranking multiple domains in the SERPS for same keywords?
Curious if anyone has had success ranking multiple sites with same whois and server info? We have a client who has purchased multiple businesses over the years in the same industry. Each site has a solid amount of link popularity already and good respected Brand. But I'm wondering with the whois info being the same and the same servers, if ranking for multiple domains will be worth attempting.
Search Behavior | | iAnalyst.com0