Branded terms CTR drop
-
Moz Hivemind,
I'm working with an ecom beauty brand and retailer who re-platformed their website at the end of August last year. Their CTR dropped from 70% plus for branded terms to 50% over night and has steadily declined ever since, down to the low 30s as an average the last few months.
Their rankings for branded terms have remained in the number 1 position, despite a slight blip at launch, which is to be expected.
They admit that some new distribution deals with major retailers have added some competition to the mix, but much later in the year.
I could totally understand a rankings drop and an initial hit, but has anyone seen anything like this before, is there something on the new site that could impact CTR like this, either in the SERPs or perhaps a reporting issue?
As the click itself is taking place in the SERP and their rankings are solid, other than the meta description, which they swear was unchanged the first few months after launch, any ideas what could be happening here?
Thanks so much.
-
Yes, first lesson: don't anchor text spam your site in comments like these as it's pretty obvious you tried to score a link with this comment. So stop doing that and focus on creating actual value.
-
Thanks everyone, all good answers, Title tags I will take a look at, but shouldn't have changed a great deal if at all... but the devil is in the detail.
Branded search ppc will definitely have played a part as well, including their own activity.
-
Do they have any insights from Google Ads on their branded keyword campaigns? That would usually be my first guess, somebody started bidding on their brand keywords which would take at least 10% away likely from your regular organic clicks by just pushing it down the page.
-
Go to archive.org to see your old title tags.
-
They swear the meta descriptions were unchanged, what about the title tags?
-
Your SERP CTR can drop when Google changes the SERP interface. They can slap more images, ads, videos, "people also ask" , news and various types of rubbish that absorb the clicks before your organic rankings are seen. Competitors above or below you could start adding kickass prices, free shipping, or free beer to their title tags.
.... but, my usual suspicion is that the developers monkeyed with something.
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
-
Lower Impression higher clicks and CTR Compared to Previous Month?
I'm looking at our monthly traffic report and noticed that impressions were down in October compared to September but Clicks and CTR increased. I'm thinking it's because certain keyword increased in rank thus increase chances of a click through? Anyone else have any idea? Thank you in advance. Here is the data below: September:
Reporting & Analytics | | davidwang
Total clicks: 5071
Total impressions: 83429
Avg. CTR: 6.08%
Avg. Position: 28.4 October:
Total clicks: 5695
Total impressions: 79366
Avg. CTR: 7.18%
Avg. Position: 28.90 -
Google Analytics direct traffic dropped by 50% after switching to https
Hi, everyone, have a little dilemma and was hoping to get some advice here. I recently installed a new SSL (3 months ago) to force our URL to start with https://. The site was earlier accessible through https:// and http:// prefix however now I have made it so that all urls are redirected to the correct https:// version. The problem is that direct traffic has dropped by more than 50% after implementing these changes and I can for the life of me figure out why. Why would the direct traffic drop all of sudden after making these changes? I am starting to suspect that the earlier data was inflated and that Google analytics was counting users coming from a http:// version of the URL to a https:// version of the URL was counted as direct traffic. Could that be it? Any other possible causes? Would really appreciate any guidance on this problem. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | nsereke0 -
Sudden Drop in Index Status on GSC
Hi all, We've seen a sudden drop in index status on GSC from 19,000 to 12,000. Rankings, referring domains, organic traffic etc. have not changed. However, we have implemented a huge number of redirects and done a site migration from http to https in the past year. Could this have an effect? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | SMVSEO0 -
Penguin 4.0 update: drop in results end of September
Has anyone noticed certain drops in keyword rankings on/around 29 September? Has this to do with the Penguin 4.0 update? I read that this hasn't come "bug-free". Will this be adjusted the upcoming weeks? Or is this drop content-based based on the new algorithms and the content needs to be adjusted/updated?
Reporting & Analytics | | Mikrocentrum0 -
When I click on organic search, the biggest drop is on keyword "not provided". What does this mean?
I am trying to identify the reason for the drop in organic search.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sable_Group0 -
Sudden dramatic drop in "some but not all" keyphrase rankings for client, 3 weeks ago
I noticed recently that 4 of my keyphrases which ranked on page one, and were climbing 3 weeks ago, have suddenly dropped to > 50. What could have happened? I did find an issue with my sitemap (yoast generated), but why would that suddenly change? And even more importantly, how do I fix it?
Reporting & Analytics | | chill9860 -
Since the 6th June there has been a serious drop in search impressions and clickthroughs in my GA + webmaster accounts.
Since the 6th June there has been a serious drop in organic search impressions and click throughs in my GA + webmaster accounts for my website. This leads me to believe my site has been punished for something? Where would be the best place to start diagnosing the issue causing the drop in search traffic? 2T9hz.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | Scurrypoint0 -
Want to link to GA profile, but the one I want is not showing in drop-down
How can I manually add the correct Google Analytics data in to my account? The two options I see on the drop-down are not the ones I want to select and I don't see a way to do it manually. Help!
Reporting & Analytics | | Uniqueson0