PPC seems to have had a seriously negative impact on organic rankings?!?
-
We've been targeting a keyword on behalf of a client for the last few months. The page had good content and had been steadily climbing the rankings.
It reached a position of #12 and then suddenly dropped off. Within 2 weeks it was out of the top 50 and is now around the 10th or 11th page (useless).
This drop off matched exactly with the cleint switching on a low level PPC campaign, driving traffic from this specific keyword. The stats on this have shown a really high bounce rate (so we'll need to ask some other questions about content) - but could this be the reason that organic stats have taken a hammering?
If Google associated people landing n that page from that keyword (even though its paid) as not finding relevant content, I'm assuming this could have a negative impact on the organic rank?
Any Thoughts Welcome....!!!
-
Here's the thing, you have 2 referring domains pointing to this page and one of them is pointing to it 298 times using the anchor text "penetration hosting" *(which I'm assuming is the keyword you are being penalized for.)
That's no good. BUT totally recoverable. If those links are internal, there are several things that can be done but the domains should be more important. Build some content, gain some natural links and make sure the anchor text is varied. This should happen on it's own if these links are built organically.
Build organic to gain organic.
-
This is my guess as well. I'd be dollars to donuts that your drop in ranking happened somewhere around October 5th.
Can you confirm or deny that via GA?
-
Hmm. I'm doubtful that a PPC campaign would knock you down like that in the organic results. When did the drop happen? Google has done several updates in the past few weeks, including a Penguin update, that may have happened at the same time. I noticed that in Open Site Explorer you only have two "external" sites linking to the page, cnsmosaic and cnsgroup. From the links on the hut3 site, I'm assuming these are all part of the same company.
It's possible, however, that Google sees the links from those sites as external links. Since it would appear that the links to the penetration testing page are sitewide accross the cns sites, I wonder if Google is treating those as external sitewide links, all with targeted keywords, and has penalized you for it, either manually or by algorithm.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
My guess is the google algorithm updates happen to coincide with your lower ppc budgeting.
-
Thanks Tuzzel, feel free to have a look.
The Page is http://www.hut3.net/security-assessment/penetration-testing - and until a few weeks ago was climbing the ranks on the 'Penetration Testing' keyword.
Child Pages of Internal and External Penetration testing were also ranking in the top 3 of their respective terms (although search volumes are much lower).
-
While bounce rate and page engagement would play a role i'd be surprised if this was solely down to the PPC campaign, particuarly if its low level as you mention. Whats the URL of the problem page and we may be able to case more light on the matter / offer alternate potential areas to investigate.
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
-
Does paid search get more traffic compare to organic search now?
does paid search get more traffic compare to organic search now? todays we have four ads link in google that cover all screen of mobile. should we invest more on adwords and organic isn't important like before??
Paid Search Marketing | | Pintapin1 -
Finding Organic search keywords
Hello How do I get the organic keywords that searchers type into organic search to find your website? I know google does not officially provide keywords for organic search now, only paid and I have seen work arounds at.. https://blog.kissmetrics.com/unlock-keyword-not-provided/ https://www.optimizesmart.com/optimize-organic-search-campaigns-keyword-referral-data/ Are there any other better suggestions you would give?
Paid Search Marketing | | TMS_spa0 -
Organic and Paid
HI Guys, For one of my site we have been investing a less in Paid and since we have done that the Organic has gone quite up. I know there is a connection between the two but i would like to know if any of you can share their experience on this matter. I would like to know if someone has a run some experiements to understand how much each channel influences the other. It goes without saying that Paid tend to cannibalize a bit of organic but when it goes down, should i really expect an increase in organic? Any thoughts? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | AlessioCesaro0 -
Paid Conversion as Organic Conversion - (gclid stripped)
Hi, I have redirect a page using 302 but after redirect paid conversion is start appearing as organic conversion before that tracking was working fine. When I checked I found 'gclid' stripped after 302 redirect. How can I fix this ? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Alick3000 -
Best UK PPC management company
I'm looking to outsource my PPC management and would love some feedback on which companies are worth paying for this service? I'm worried as there are so many cold calling scam artists out there and I want to choose the best company for the job. I have been considering "Adrac" as they only charge when they save you money! Sounds too good to be true so I'm automatically sceptical. Can anyone vouch for Adrac or suggest a better/different company?
Paid Search Marketing | | niallfred0 -
Paid Press Release Site - Our competitors do it... and it seems to work?
Hi Im seeing our competitors use sites like 24-7pressrelease.com to release rather uninteresting and dubious press releases and it seems to be, looking at their link profiles, the lions share of all links to these particular landing pages. Yet since I've joined SEOMOZ all i've seen is that PR sites don't work and arent worth it. So far, I've resisted doing any PR stuff and have just kept on creating and promoting content which is severely time heavy work. Is there really 0 value in these? If i have 0 PR currently and add just a couple is that worth it? The co. we compete against are at it every week with this site and similar paid sites. Are they making a mistake?
Paid Search Marketing | | xoffie0 -
Proportion of traffic from adwords vs organic search
Hi People, I wanted to know if anyone knows what typical click through rates of paid vs organic search results are. We seem to be experiencing a very low click through rate with our organic search results versus our adwords and it seems to be getting worse. For example our website www.natureshop.co.uk ranks 4th for the search phrase "icebreaker" in google.co.uk (and we are the first online retailer). We are the first adwords listing as well. For the past 3 months we have had 867 clicks through our organic listing and yet with adwords we had 14,000 clicks. This seems pretty strange to me. Both have conversion rates of around 5%. Do you think these sorts of stats are becoming the norm for brand based searches? (icebreaker is a merino wool clothing brand). Adwords also says that there were around 125,000 impressions of this phrase in the search network for this period. Which means with a ranking of 4th our click through rate is less than 1%? If anyone else can share their experience or provide some commentary on this it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance Conrad Cranfield
Paid Search Marketing | | ConradC0 -
PPC Campaign Setup Fee - Fair?
We already do our PPC campaigns with an agency and we're looking to create another campaign. They told us that the amount of traffic around our campaign would allow for about $2-3k spend per month, possibly with some additional funds placed into display ads. For this campaign, they have proposed a setup fee of $2k and an increased management fee of $750 -- is this a reasonable price?
Paid Search Marketing | | kylesuss0