Overall traffic increasing but specific short tailed keywords decreasing any ideas?
-
Something very strange has happened regarding my website traffic when making a comparison to the first six months of 2012 and then 2014. Anybody got any ideas?
From my Google analytics from 1 January 2014 to 1 July in other words six months my total traffic on my website was 30,209. Not provided source ( what does this mean ? ) was very high at 23,141 but two of the my main short tail keywords I've targeted in the past "Whitby holiday cottages “only equal 254 and "Whitby cottages" was only 176. When I made a comparison with the same time period below in 2012 the website traffic this year as gone up greatly by almost 20000, but the two of my money short tail keywords as gone down greatly!
If I compare the same time frame for 2012 the overall traffic was only 13,380. Not provided source was nowhere near as high at only 1836 which is also much less than above in 2014 but the short tail keywords I targeted "Whitby holiday cottages was almost 10 times higher at 2005 and "Whitby cottages “much higher at 613.
I ran the questionnaire on http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/quiz/ regarding Panda and particularly Penguin and its association with back links. The article says that Penguin didn't hit the overall keywords, but only specific ones if they been targeted on the following dates the time points of April 24, 2012 and May 25, 2012 which are known Penguin rollout dates. So when I checked the two short tail keywords above for those two dates the figures did seem to drop from 10 hits a day to 5 but then went back up immediately to approximately 10 hits a day during the two-month period which suggested to me that I'd not been hit by Penguin on those dates.
So when you look at the comparison the first six months of 2012 and then 2014 there is no doubt that money short tail keywords of dropped off dramatically for me but the overall website traffic has gone up dramatically. Some of the increase in traffic will be down to time and more articles/pages etc.
The two short tail keywords I mention above I know I've dropped in Google rankings I used to be position three page one and the site is now position 10 so I would assume that's why I've dropped in traffic for those phrases.
Has anybody got any idea what's happened? I can honestly say that I've not noticed it in bookings on the website business seems about the same overall. -
It's probably worth while running a Google ad words campaign just of the keyword Result research
-
No problem! Glad I could help. Once you get an idea of how your campaigns work and how people search for your business, this can in turn help you figure out how (and what to focus on) organically.
Think of it like this: Google says "We could show them the search terms for free in analytics"
Intern says "But, we could make them pay for the data, possibly through adwords"
Google says "Brilliant! Promote this man."
-
Hi,
We seem to be running into each other on the Moz Community forum quite often. According to the attached image, 76% of your organic traffic is Not Provided.
What is Not Provided? Google has chosen not to reveal those keywords (which come from people logged into their Google account). This happened a couple years ago or so.
What can we do about all of that lost data?
Apply a workaround filter (as mentioned above) for everything that is "Not Provided" to now be "np - /page-a", so that we can see what PAGES users are going to via organic search. If we know the PAGES, then we can determine the keywords.
As far as applying the filter, don't even worry about the technical know-how. It's just a copy and paste into filters under admin navigation.
I hope this is clear
Cole
-
Hi Cola
I appreciate what you are trying to do for me above but I didn't fully understand what the filter or how to use it and not technical enough
The only thing I am slightly puzzled by is when Igo down into my Google analytics and filter down into keywords and then organic, beneath the Not Provided Category which is the vast majority, are not all the other ones in descending popularity the actually the keywords people used? That is where I saw my particular favourite short tail keywords "whitby Holiday Cottages" seem to be declining from the past.
I've posted a image of my analytics below for organic keywords
-
I ran the Google ad words campaign for a few days recently when I looked at the search terms it was very revealing and I agree with you it gives you a good idea and end up on your website. Could be useful for future content.
-
Very interesting David thank you very much for the info
I only use Google ad words occasionally because of the cost, but I checked out one of my all the campaigns and it was ery interesting, is quite amazing what terms people use an end up on your website I tried copying pasting some the term straight into the search engine and sure enough my website did appear to terms and never thought of but within the webpages descriptions. Like Cola says low it gives you ideas for producing content in the future.
-
Yeah this is a good scenario for those with larger budgets using "broad phrase" match keywords. By larger budgets, I mean those that can afford to spend for clicks that may not be "relevant" traffic. This can be a good metric for generating content ideas that people search for.
Cole
-
Another way you can see how users are getting to your site is by using your Adwords campaign. If you are running a paid campaign, look at any ad group. Then, go to Dimensions>View: Search terms
This isn't the most 100% accurate way, as you are just viewing what terms people used to trigger your ads, but once you see the terms, that can give you a much closer look at how people MAY be getting to your site. Try it out, you might be surprised at how many ways people search for things. If your site is showing up well organically, the search terms should be pretty close to where you are getting impressions and clicks, particularly if your ad and site come up on the same results page.
-
Good news for you - this can all be cleared up simply.
Not Provided is Google saying we are not showing you the keyword data (from organic). There is a filter for a workaround. You'll never know the "exact keywords from organic" that are Not Provided. However, you can filter that data to tell you what pages they're going to. And if you know the page they're going to, it's highly likely that you know the target keyword for that page. So your Not Provided data could actually be those targeted keywords you mentioned.
The filter:
Filter type: custom - Advanced
Field A -> Extract A: Set to Campaign Term: (.not provided.)
Field B -> Extract B: Set to Request URL: (.*)
Output to -> Constructor: Set to Campagin Term: np - $B1
Check field A, field B, and override output field. (leave case sensitive unchecked).
Basically, this filter says "for not provided" - tell me the URL that users are going to. And from there, you can do some digging and determine what keywords are working. Also, this will affect future data, not past data.
I hope this helps.
Cole
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
-
Keyword in alt text or keyword in the body?
lets say i have 2 percent keyword density in the whole page and another 2 percent are coming from alt texts from images? is that 4 percent, am i exceeding the limit or its fine?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Can the disavow tool INCREASE rankings?
Hi Mozzers, I have a new client who has some bad links in their profile that are spammy and should be disavowed. They rank on the first page for some longer tail keywords. However, we're aiming at shorter, well-known keywords where they aren't ranking. Will the disavow tool, alone, have the ability to increase rankings (assuming on-site / off-site signals are better than competition)? Thanks, Cole
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
I need a lot of content completed in a short amount of time. Suggestions on where to look?
I'm looking for writers to write content for 1000+ key words. 300-400 words per keyword. I would like this done by the end of July. Any suggestions or recommendations on where to find a team that can produce quality content in that amount of time? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cloudhasher0 -
How do I make a content calendar to increase my rank for a key word?
I've watched more than a few seminars on having a content calendar. Now I'm curious as to what I would need to do to increase ranking for a specific keyword in local SEO. Let's say I wanted to help them increase their rank for used trucks in buffalo, NY. Would I regularly publish blog posts about used trucks? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | oomdomarketing0 -
Loss of 85-90% of organic traffic within the last 2 weeks.
Hey Everybody, Have a client that recently came to us asking for SEO help. Did some initial analysis on their current SEO status and most everything looked pretty good. On-page work was pretty good, nothing really lacking there other then missing alt tags for all images. Their linking profile looked good too. Lots of good links from quality sources, all relevant. Client has done some good press releases. They could probably use a bit more focus in their content as it is somewhat general and not keyword focused. Initially it didn't look like they needed any help with their SEO, so was a bit curious as to why they contacted us. Today we get their google analytics information and immediately noticed that they have had a 85-90 percent drop in organic traffic from all major search engines that started about two weeks ago. If all their SEO looks to be done properly, any ideas what would account for the massive drop in traffic? The only thing that looks like may have happened is that they may have dropped a couple spots from position #1 to position 2-3 for some of their highest traffic terms. Even if that is the case, I would not expect such a high drop off in terms of organic traffic. Just curious as to what anyone else can attribute the huge drop in traffic to or what else may help identify the issue. It's almost as if analytics was turned off or removed from the site, but that is not the case.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Whebb0 -
How should I look to gain traffic for a blog hosted on our own site?
Ok I know what you're going to say.. social media etc right? The problem is we do that already but we're stuck in an industry that just isn't very sexy! People reading twitter/facebook don't want to read about toilets in their spare time, or keep it as a hobby. If you search bathroom blog (uk google), you will see we are about 5th, it gets us no traffic, as I imagine it's not a popular term so I can see you starting to ask why we write a blog in the first place. We write the blog because at the moment the whole industry is dominated by pile it high sell it cheap online stores and all their blogs are written for google only so finding decent or unbiased advice is rare. Seriously, these guys are creating fake blogs and paying for links inside other blogs all over the place in order to boost their rankings so we figure if you really want some good advice people can't find it. If they find our blog they will get some good advice and good content.. and then the hope is that they give us a call and we can see if we can help them. The problem is these guys are hogging all the keywords.. and it seems the bathroom industry has very few keywords that people search! Now I know we are in it for the long haul.. so taking time doesn't bother me, but I was wondering if there were any tried and tested places to post a blog that could get us at least seen so that people could see how different our content is? Or if all else fails, can anyone suggest the right keywords to aim at besides the "bathroom suites" etc that these huge online stores dominate?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | willryles0 -
Sudden drop in rakings for a keyword.
Hi, A few weeks ago my homepage - http://www.linearsky.com dropped out of the rankings completely for a keyword I was promoting (web design staffordshire). I was thinking that one of the reasons could be a sudden link spike. The reason being is that I have been doing some development work (for a client) on one of my sub-domains. Now this is a Magento site with thousands of products, with my keyword rich link in the footer. From looking at the Google webmaster tools, it seams that alot of these pages got indexed accidently. Could this sudden link spike be enough to be penalised by Google? Apart from that the only borderline black hat stuff I have been doing is some reciprocal link swapping with a few websites in my niche - http://www.linearsky.com/misc/links.html I also bought a paid link on http://www.iwebtool.com/browser_details, (that I have now asked to be withdrawn) to see what kind of boost it would give me. I know this is unethical, but a number of page one competitors were also using this said link. Also it was only indexed for a few weeks. Could Google really pick this up so quickly? Any ideas of how to resolve this? Many Thanks Marcus
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | marcusuk-3041050 -
Beaten in SERP's by a site going 'all in' on 2 keywords in their anchor text profile.
I would like to get peoples thoughts on putting 80% of your anchor text links in just 2 keywords vs a nice spread of branded and longtail keywords.. like I am. recently fell off the first page for a key SERP.. and the site in P10 has gone nuts on just that two keyword's.. I know we have a good site onpage/ conversion / low bounce rate page views etc.. Pretty sure we get more traffic than them. Seems that this obvious bloated anchor text profiling has worked for them though.. What do you guys think/know?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | robertrRSwalters0