Can Very High Impressions and 0% Organic CTR Impact our SEO Rankings?
-
I have a very strange feeling that someone bad is trying to hurt our company, but maybe I am wrong. Let me explain.
In the last two month, we have seen a very significant drop in sales on our website, but we couldn't figure out why. We have looked at different metrics (Google Search Console, Moz, Google Analytics), but everything looked alright. We had 10% loss in traffic, but we didnt believe at the time that it could be the main issue.
Just yesterday we've discovered the following (please see attached screenshot
- On August 18, 2018 Google launched Search Update
- On the same date, we had a jump in Organic Search Impressions for one particular keyword, which we never tracked before: "free facebook login".
- Majority of all impressions (233,000 out of 258,000) were from Philippines.
- Very low total number of clicks (50 clicks) led to 0% Average CTR for this keyword. Which in return, also lowered our global CTR by 1%.
- One month later we had 1000's of spam emails sent to our Helpdesk from two IP addresses, also from Philippines. We blocked them of course.
It could be all coincidence. I dont know. But do you think that someone can use this fraudulent tactic to lower our CTR and drop our ranking and traffic? Can this influence our SEO in any way?
It's also possible that someone is attacking Facebook and we just happen to be there, on the first page, for the same keyword. Should we try to eliminate our page for this keyword and see what happens?
I've checked this article from Rand Fishkin - https://moz.com/blog/impact-of-queries-and-clicks-on-googles-rankings-whiteboard-friday and it seems that CTR is an important factor. However the article is from 2015 and maybe it's no longer relevant.
What should we do? Thanks!
-
Oleh, I think it would be safe for you to try to eliminate ranking for that keyword. With that low CTR, If you don't do it then Google will do it for you, which would be worse.
It is my understanding that CTR is a signal, but that if someone is manipulating it they would have to keep doing it for the long run in order for it to stay effective. It wouldn't be a permanent thing, as you would slowly rise up again when the attack stopped.
You wouldn't be the first or the last to block all traffic from the Philippines. I'd start there.
That said, I have no idea what the title and description are in the SERPs, or what the landing page is, or if the content is relevant to that query. All of these things matter.
Also, I have doubts that CTR for a single page or query by itself would cause a 10% drop in traffic across the site, even if the global CTR did lower because of it. As Roman suggested, have a very close look at your link profile using a tool like Link Detox or Moz Link Explorer, just in case they are hitting you there as well.
-
Hello Oleh,
It could be that you just started ranking for that term in that country (for any number of reasons), and therefore the spammers took notice and started emailing you. It really is hard to say without knowing the page, but Roman has some good advice. I'm not entirely sold on Disavow files, but you should definitely look to see if you have new links from domains in the Philippines.
You can also block traffic from that country if you don't think you'll ever get any customers from there.
-
First of all these the checkpoints that you need track
- You need to carefully check all your link-profile looking for spam links pointing to your site
- Disavow all those links with a high toxic score/spam score. Disavow Tool
- Check all the anchor text and queries on your Search Console, GA, Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush or any other tool.
- Also, start to think of creating some geo-IP segmentation on your server
- Try to find a pattern on the IP address of your visitor and block all the suspicious IP or even regions
Hope this info helps you to answer to your question
Regards and Good Luck
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
-
Overlay / modal for product pages - bad or good for SEO?
Hi all, I am considering using full overlays/modals for an e-commerce site for all our product pages (category/listing pages will be "normal", the product page will come over the listing page as an overlay/modal when you click on the product). Those “product overlays” will also be accessible directly with own URL (if need to be linked to for ex.). All the literature I find out there treats overlays and modals as “marketing” ones (ads, sign-ups, etc.) and is generally critical to overlays when it comes to SEO, while also saying that an overlay that has to do with good UX should not hurt the SEO of our site. What do you think? Will all product pages as overlays be considered as good UX by the search engines and therefore not be negatively impacted, SEO speaking? Or should we stay clear of overlays and create “normal” product pages? Thanks in advance! Arnaud NB: The reason we want to create those overlays are for design and UX purposes, and try to increase our conversion rate.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Arnaud_Fo0 -
Massive drop in rankings alert!
Hi fello SEOs. I've been working for a large UK artificial grass company since last November. They we're converting badly but ranked no.1 for the keyword artificial grass. Now they convert well but have slipped down to 18. That's one hell of a drop!!! The website is www.easigrass.com But; Before I came on board they had their main .com website with about 25 subdomains for each major city in the UK. I switched that in February 2016 to sub folders and the rankings for "artificial grass" have drastically dropped in the SERPs but they now have many more pages being indexed by Google. I'm simply lost at what has happend. Am I trying too hard to rank or is there a problem that I''m not seeing. Many of the pages have great grades and scores with MOZ, most in the 90's so the on-page SEO doesn't seem to be a problem. I'm wondering if there is something that I'm not seeing. HELP!!!!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | SeoSheikh0 -
Split test content experiment - Why can't GA identify a winner here?
I have been running a content experiment for a short while now and GA has just ended it saying it cannot determine a winner. Looking at the images (links below), without any form of analysis I can already see a pattern of greater success in Variation 1. It ended with a 93% probability of outperforming the original yet the content experiment ended with no winner. Does this mean the 95% confidence threshold I set should've been lowered? Ultimately I'm going to choose this as my winner but why didn't GA push it as the winner? Is there something I am missing? Image 1 - Showing e-commerce performance (objective of split test was transactions) Image 2 - Showing conversions (same split test, same objective, just different report) Your thoughts and comments will be appreciated.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | OptiBacUK0 -
How do I get Google to rank the right page?
My site ranks #1 for Arabic Interpreting on Google UK. This great, but it's ranking my home page rather than the my specific Arabic Interpreting page. The home page shouldn't really rank for this term as it has very little connection with this exact term. This means that while the site ranks great, the conversion is pretty much zero. How can I get Google to rank the page I've optimised for this term? I know the ranking will no doubt slip but may the conversions will be better. Can you help please?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | GlobalLingo0 -
Any Suggestions for Building an SEO Friendly Auto Dealership Website?
Does anyone have suggestions for re-designing an auto dealership website? Is it possible to build a WordPress website that accepts an inventory feed from VinSolutions? I've been building websites and provided SEO services for years. This is my first time working in the auto industry. The issue I am facing is that our dealership currently have two websites. Both are built on 3rd party platforms and I am seriously considered rebuilding our website from scratch. Our first website was been provided to us by our Hyundai and the website is managed through Cobalt. While I like that the website is directly affiliated with Hyundai, it's very difficult to manage and I have yet to be able to get the techs to grant me access to the FTP server or provide help with installing Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools. The owner of our dealership never liked the Cobalt website so they decided to launch a second website that is created and managed by a company called Dealer Specialties. The site is also very difficult to administer and I only see problems later down the road. Is anyone familiar with working with auto dealership websites? I would love to hear your comments on the best way to proceed with our new web presence.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | bryanmull0 -
Need help Tracking PPC vs Organic and respective ROI
So I have a client who uses PPC and Organic SEO to drive traffic. Once a user gets to the site, the most common action is to fill out a form. I have Auto Tagging enabled in Adwords so all PPC clicks have "gclid" in the url. I am also grabbing the Google Cookie and parsing it out to determine if the visitor is PPC or Organic. So I have an if statement in my form code to pass PPC vs organic through the form for tracking purposes: $url = 'http://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; if (false !== strpos($url,'gclid')) { ?> Essentially this is saying: If gclid is in the url, or if the cookie contains PPC
Conversion Rate Optimization | | tjsherrill
set the Web field as PPC Else
Set it as Organic. this is working about 80% of the time. I am trying to raise the accuracy. any ideas where I might be missing some data? thanks0 -
How can I pass the Search Term into a lead form?
We receive lead forms from interested visitors that include their name, email, grade level, and academic goals, and we would like to also know which specific phrase they used when searching for us. I need to find a way to grab the referring keywords and pass them as a hidden form field. Can this be done, and are there scripts available that can do this?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | brycebertola0 -
Re-designed website... how to increase organic traffic?
We re-developed our website (adboards(dot)com) around 6 months ago. This has in turn led to a downturn in sales/visits. We have managed to get visits/sales increasing steadily but not to the level of the previous site. Even though we believe the new site is (seems) much more friendly both for SEO and potential customers. We currently run a PPC campaign which seems to bring in steady sales, the problem seems to be our organic traffic and getting our keywords ranked higher. We have tried various methods for increasing our organic traffic including:- Keyword Analysis for our landing pages Backlinking: From various directories and industry related sites Googlebase submission Blog relating to industry news & products Any advise on which area we should be focusing on or any obvious errors you can see on the site would be greatly appreciated.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | bwfc770