Big Drop in Traffic, No change in Position
-
Penguin 2.0 was a great update for one of my biggest client. A website that was using terrible black hat techniques and ranked first on the most important keyword in my clients niche got kickt from the SERP's and my client jumped from 4th to 1st. The jump in traffic was enormous and on top of that 5% of the traffic converted instead of the usual 2,5%- 3% on other traffic.
Untill July 2nd. Traffic from the keyword dropped by 80% while we were still in position 1, after a lot of digging I thaught I found what caused it, Google booted the keyword from their autofill.
My question is if anyone has seen a removal from tthe autocomplete making that big of a difference in search volume.
-
Hey Robert,
Thanks for your answer. I understand the confussion reading my question.
Yes my client is still in positon 1. It's pretty clear that the lower conversionrate an visits are due to the drop in traffic from that searchphrase.
The thing that I find most puzzling is that a keyword that had a volume of almost 50.000 per month in my country got completely removed from the autocomplete. It was a simple two word search term, the new preferred keyword in the autocomplete is the same except, for a space and the last letter.
-
Laurens
I had to read this a couple of times to understand but there are a few questions: Still in position 1? Conversion rate sitewide dropped 4 % points... do you mean from 5% to 1% or do you mean from 5% to 4.8%?
For traffic from the keyword dropped 80% I would look at it like this: If the keyword was a phrase with two or more words: hot bananas tonight and that auto-complete no longer finished to be the full term I could see a lot of banana lovers just leaving tonight off, and subsequently you would see much of that traffic for the "newer" auto complete (hot bananas) IMO. But to drop 80% just because of this would be something to see.
As to your conversions dropping that is what makes the picture quite cloudy. You have to look at other/similar keywords and ask the same questions. If you see the same drop across the others I don't think you can say this caused it.
If total traffic dropped by 10% and the keyword was 80% then look at site traffic and this KW traffic prior over time. Get a median ratio of the two. So KW = 100 visits overall equal 1000 prior to change. Then KW = 20 and site = 900 after drop. For the keyword traffic that remained, is the conversion rate different? So, same keyword, different conversion?
Once you lay these out you will have more actionable data. I would look at visitor flow, etc. in analytics and slowly draw a picture of precisely what is happening. Don't look to prove it is the change in auto complete. Go see what is there, get the data down, then draw a conclusion. It may end up the same, but you will know you covered the bases.
I know this is not a perfect answer for you, but I hope it helps.
Best
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
-
How do I get the sub-domain traffic to count as sub-directory traffic without moving off of WordPress?
I want as much traffic as possible to my main site, but right now my blog lives on a blog.brand.com URL rather than brand.com/blog. What are some good solutions for getting that traffic to count as traffic to my main site if my blog is hosted on WordPress? Can I just create a sub-directory page and add a rel canonical to the blog post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | johnnybgunn0 -
Need to change 1 million page URLs
Hey all, I have a community site where users are uploading photos and videos. Launched in 2003, back then it wasn't such a bad idea to use keywords/tags in the URLs, so I did that. All my content pages (individual photo/video) are looking like this: www.domain.com/12345-kw1-kw2-kw3-k4-k5 and so on. Where the 12345 is the unique content ID and the rest are keywords/tags added by the uploader. I would like to get rid of of the keywords after the ID in the URL. My site is well coded, so this can be easily done by changing a simple function, so my content page URLs become this: www.domain.com/ID What is the best course of action? 301 the KW URLs to non-KW version? Canonical? I really want to do this the proper way. Any advice is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mlqsko0 -
Looking into the future! Changing SEO for the trends.
Hi Mozzers, How is it going? I run a website called Orange Octopus that offers videogame tips from the best pro gamers in the world. We get plenty of long tail traffic but the keyword that is most important to the business is "FIFA 14 tips". Using Moz as a template, I tried to model my site's category pages after Moz. (http://moz.com/ugc/category/link-building) and OrangeOctop.us (orangeoctop.us/fifa14-tips/) With the new FIFA 15 videogame a few months away from being released, I wanted to start preparing for the keyword "FIFA 15 tips" and "FIFA 15 guide". Being proactive and aggressive with rankings for when the game first comes out. Would you recommend starting a new category? Or changing FIFA 14 tips to FIFA 15 tips by just changing the url and title of the category page? Really need some expert help. Play hard! Joey
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | orangeoctop.us0 -
Traffic dropped suddenly
-In early January 2013, we had to switch servers after many years with the same one. We were highly ranked and getting about 8500 unique visitors per month. -We didn't notice the traffic falling because we were focussed on a major site redesign and addition that we launched in April 2013. Visits continued to fall, this time also because the company that launched it didn't double check their work and had some dead links etc. Those were all fixed by approximately June 2013.- early January 2014 we switched servers again because we were afraid the new server we moved to was perhaps ranked poorly or was possibly a spamming site before. Currently, nothing has changed. What was about 8500 unique visitors per month 18 months ago, is now about 1,000 and no leads are coming in at all.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HasitR0 -
Large Site - Complete Site URL Change and How to Preserver Organic Rankings/Traffic
Hello Community, What is your experience with site redesign when it comes to preserving the traffic? If a large enterprise website has to go through a site-wide enhancement (resulting in change of all URLs and partial content), what do you expect from Organic rankings and traffic? I assume we will experience a period that Google needs to "re-orientate" itself with the new site, if so, do you have similar experience and tips on how to minimize the traffic loss? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | b.digi0 -
CHange insite Urls structure
Hello Guys! I have a situation with a website and I need some opinions. Today, the structured of my site is: (I have had this site architecture since many years) Main country home (www.mysite.com.tld) o Product_1 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product1/) § Product_1 articles www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product1_art1 www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product1_art2 www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product1_artx o Product_2 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product2/) § Product_2 articles www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product2_art1 www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product2_art2 www.mysite.com.tld/product1/product2_artx I have several TLDs with their main and their products. We are thinking in modify this structure and begin to use subdomains for each product (The IT guys need this approach because is simpler to distribute the servers load). I not very friendly with subdomains and big changes like this always can produce some problem (although the SEO migration would be ok, problems could appear, like ranking drops), But, the solution (the reasons are technical stuff), requires the mix of directories and subdomains in each product, leaving the structured in this way: Main country home (www.mysite.com.tld) o Product_1 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product1/) § Product_1 articles product1.mysite.com.tld/product1_art1 product1.mysite.com.tld/product1_art2 product1.mysite.com.tld/product1_artx o Product_2 Home (www.mysite.com.tld/product2/) § Product_2 articles product2.mysite.com.tld/product1_art1 product2.mysite.com.tld/product1_art2 product2.mysite.com.tld/product1_artx So, the product home will be in a directory buy the pages of the articles of this product will be in a subdomain. What do you think about this solution? Beyond that the SEO migration would be fine, 301s, etc, can bring us difficulties in the rankings or the change can be done without any consideration? Thanks very much! Agustin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTeamDespegar0 -
Serps drop on 21st
Hi, This is my website: http://goo.gl/fl5a5 Earlier i used to be on #1 and #3 page results for most of my results. But after 21st dec, my results went to 10th and 13th page of results. Is it due to latest panda update? http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-maybe-16121.html If so, can you guys examine my website and provide me your suggestions please... PS: i have followed only genuine kinda link buildings, my content is 100% unique. Will be waiting for your replies.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vegitt0 -
Image Search algo changes
Just seen the image algo changes that have apparently been put into place in the last 3 months My spam tester image site didnt seem to feel anything. Did anyone feel image search change (for better or worse?) And on what dates? Cheers Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | firstconversion0