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
-
Local SERPs Question - Phone Call or Click?
I have a client who recently experienced a boost in local organic rankings. They were appearing towards the bottom of the local (maps) results (with their phone number & address listed) for their main target keywords. After this ranking boost, they are now positioned higher in the SERPs, in the traditional organic section. It seems as though this boost in rankings has actually caused a slight DECREASE in organic search traffic to their website. My theory is that when they were listed in the Google+ Local section of Google, some people must have been calling directly from the SERPs instead of actually clicking through to their website. Due to the issues involved with organic call tracking, it's obviously difficult to measure the actual impact of strong Google+ Local rankings. So, I'm on a mission to find some reliable data on this. For my own peace of mind and that of my client. Does anybody know of any research conducted that analyses the % of local searches that result in a phone call directly from the local SERPs without actually clicking through to a business' website or Google+ page? In know this is a tricky one (and probably harder to ascertain on desktop than mobile) but any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Search Behavior | | Dave_Eddy0 -
Do sever errors affect SERPS
hoping someone can help VPS has been causing me 10 days of server errors (im now moving off it) as my wordpress site has kept running out of memory. At the same time my traffic had dropped. Could google and bing be penalising me for number of errors, dropping me in SERPS and resulting in web traffic?
Search Behavior | | mutant20080 -
Any Good Study on the Effects of CTR on Keyword Capitalization in SERP Description
Hey Guys I am wondering if any of you have done any study or testing on this ( or perhaps you might have come across one at some point in your career ) Personally I feel that while adding a description , it makes sense to Capitalize the Keywords and other words ( first letter only ) that I want to emphasise on ( perhaps stuff like Buy, High Quality, Best, etc ) . I want to pick your brains on this and see what you guys think about it. I have not tested the effects on CTR yet .. if someone else has then it will be a good resource for me to go through. ( and if no one else has done any relevant study I might do it at some stage ). Regards Saijo
Search Behavior | | Saijo.George0 -
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 -
SERPs changing on an hourly basis
Hi Mozzers, Can anyone help me please. I have a client that is ranking in position 2 for his major keyword in G.co.uk. He's been moving up but over the last 7 - 10 days he's moved down, then back up and around and around the front page which we all know can happen. The thing is - this is changing through the day 4 or 5 times in some cases. I've checked when the first page of the SERPs have been indexed via the cached button and normally Google hasn't crawled the competition or my guys site on the given day the changes happen, yet he's been 2, 5 and 7 and back to 2 in about 3 hours. Are these social signals do you think? whats going on - any ideas? Cheers Bush
Search Behavior | | Bush_JSM0 -
Why are my SERPs fluctuating 60+/- on a weekly basis?
I have a blog that's gone from not indexed, to indexed and ranked around 85 on 3 target key phrases. With a bit of SEO the blog jumped to around 11th on those 3 key phases in a week or so. Now, the following week, it has bombed back to 76th. Why the dramatic fluctuations?
Search Behavior | | ksracer0