Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does CTR Affect Ranking & Authority? Can PPC Influence That Too?
-
Hi everyone,
Good CTR and bounce rate seem to affect rankings positively, but what about domain authority? Is that something built entirely on links and semantics, or does CTR play a factor too?
Consider a homepage ranking for its brand name. Switching off any brand PPC will increase the natural listing's CTR. Would that have a positive SEO impact on the homepage/domain?
-
Hi there,
Since Domain Authority is a Moz metric, it is not affected by CTR due to Moz not being able to determine or collect this sort of data.
As far as CTR and PPC influencing search rankings goes, there are good reasons why Google would not rely on either metric too intently. For one, it would be very easy to mimic a very bad bounce rate on a competitor's site: set bots to click on search results to a competitor website, click straight out.
It would be a big conflict of interest for PPC to influence SEO either positively or negatively, and although none of us are naive enough to believe that Google always does everything with the best of intentions, they would be in a world of trouble if this type of behaviour were proven.
CTR and bounce rate are so easily influenced / manipulated by factors outside of quality, authority and relevancy that I assume their influence on rankings is quite low. Sure, this data is valuable to Google, but it won't be a signal that has a huge amount of relevance.
-
As Martijn said, I can't see that DA would be affected by CTR. This is more likely affected by links and how Google perceives you as an authority site. I am sure there will be lots of other factors that play a part in this also.
-Andy
-
Hi boux,
At the moment Google is probably incorporating the CTR in some way to calculate the rankings. They know from the period of time between visiting SERPs how much time you\v'e spend on a page. I however doubt that they will use it to calculate the domain authority. As for some pages it won't say a thing that you've only been to a page for 30 seconds. To be fair I don't think you'll ever be able to calculate the impact of switching off your PPC brand listings to see as positive impact on SEO.
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
-
Can access my site using www
Hello, when I try to access my website using www i would like it to redirect to non www but instead it shows a sal error message.
On-Page Optimization | | Voopoo2 -
Will changing a URL negatively affect ranking?
Hello Mozzers, We would like to change the URL for a page on our website which ranks well for some our keyphrases/words. We are hoping the change of URL, through the addition of an additional keyword would help boost the rank of that URL further. At the moment out page gets 2 x A and 2 x B 1xF on the MOZ page rank tool using 5 keyphrase/word variations . One phrase ranks 4, one ranks 3 and the other 3 are 'not in the top 50' Our plan was to change the URL, using SHF404, and use 'Fetch' in the Google search console to re-submit the page to Google. Appreciate you can't give any guarantees how Google will behave, just wondered what your thoughts were on the wisdom of changing the URL in the first place? Thanks Ian
On-Page Optimization | | Substance-create0 -
Author Byline Question
What's the best practice for displaying author information at the beginning of an article? We're presently displaying it as: By <Author> • Jan 16, 2015 • <City>. We're considering making it even more concise by removing the term 'By'. Would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we did this? Any other ways we should optimize?
On-Page Optimization | | TheaterMania0 -
H2s & H3s for Category Navigation
Hi all. I am wondering how best to format a category navigation menu. Currently I don't think we're using H2s correctly on our website. Am I right to think that the top level category e.g. Games should be formatted as an H2 and the sub-categories underneath this should be formatted as H3s (to show a hierarchy)? Is there a limit on how many H2s and H3s you should use? Obviously only one H1 per page. Thanks in advance Paul
On-Page Optimization | | kevinliao0 -
Have you seen an increase in your Rankings after improving your TTFB rate?
After reading the Post by ZOOMPF http://moz.com/blog/improving-search-rank-by-optimizing-your-time-to-first-byte I was wondering if any of you have optimized your TTFB and noticed improvements in rankings. Have you optimized and not noticed any differences?
On-Page Optimization | | JMacSupply0 -
Disclaimer in footer - is it affecting my SEO?
For legal reasons I am required to include a 266 word disclaimer in the footer of every page of my credit card comparison site creditcards.com.au. My question is in 2 parts: is this indexable content likely to be hurting my SEO? if so, what is the best way to include the text in the footer but prevent search engines from indexing it? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | OMGPyrmont0 -
How many keywords max can I optimize each page for?
I don't want to over optimize by doing 1 keyword per 1 page, but then if I do more, seomoz on-page tool report doesn't give an A grade for each keyword I optimize. I usually optimize for max 3 keywords that are very closely related, meaning they use the same words. Ex. dentist los angeles, los angeles dentist, dentist in los angeles Am I on the right track or what's your recommendation? Should I create different landing pages for each keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | sub90900 -
Transferring authority from one domain to another
My dilemma For example: If I have a website ranking at number 11 for (Keyword) and there is a site named www.(Keyword).com ranking at number 12 for (Keyword), if I were to buy this site and redirect to my own site, would this be at all beneficial? Any advice would be much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | CMoore850