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Impressions Breaking Records Every Day, Clicks Staying The Same?

by RedShifted
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
(this thread turned out a lot longer than I expected)

I posted my traffic 1-2 months ago. Back then I was happy just to get 100 impressions in 1 day.

Well this is what my impressions look like now -



I'm still trying to figure out, does this mean anything?

It looks like the clicks aren't "flatlining" as much, but how many impressions will it take to get a small steady flow of clicks? Just so the red line stops dropping back down to 0?

BTW, I also do a lot of local search, youtube and craigslist, so our call volume is decent (1-3 calls a day, which IS profitable for our niche) but I want more clicks to the website.

It seems most people call directly from our local listings/youtube/cl and don't even click to the site. Some do, but I've been suprised that there aren't any "winners" right now as far as traffic goes. It makes it confusing to figure out WHERE I need to invest my time. Thats the biggest issue right now.

Since backlinks were the weakest link in our chain, and I recently outsourced them (with a guy I have lots of confidence in), this is what I can do basically:

1) Geotarget more local pages. I'm already targeting about 70, I figured I can work my way up to 100-150. I've been doing a lot of keyword research so I know which towns are best to be targeting. The guy doing our SEO is only targeting our most competitive keywords, so I figure I can work on our long tail keywords more.

2) Target our second service on youtube (which will = 30-50 new videos). Right now we just target 1 service, and since youtube actually delivers calls fairly well for that service (with geotargeted videos), I'm thinking maybe I should skip the geotargeted pages for now and do more videos instead. They are quicker to rank, and although conversions may be a bit less (compared to ranking a page in its place), the efficiency of ranking these videos seems to compensate for that.

3) Keep trying to get better rankings on all of our local search. Right now our google places ranks well, our yelp is also gaining some momentum and our yellow pages can be improved a lot. Reviews still continue nonstop, I have lots of citations but can build more. Not sure what else can really be done with this. Although I can find stuff to do like backlinking my yelp page.

As far as craigslist goes, thats always turned on in the background no matter what. Takes very little time to do the way I have it set up. So not much to be improved on there.

SO, this is a long confusing thread, I know.

The deal is this. In another 3-4 months, we are going to hit a "seasonal peak". So I NEED to be ready for that peak.

I want to make sure I'm investing my time as intelligently as possible right now. Especially these next couple of months. I do all the marketing, my brother takes the calls, sells, and outsources the work with people he's known for years. I basically keep the calls coming in, he turns them to cash.

My question to the vets is, where would YOU focus your time? Would you try to do everything?

PPC is not an option untill I can generate 4-5 calls a day w/out it. That was a goal I had when starting this company. Because PPC will distract me from properly building out my funnel.

Thanks! - Red
#breaking #clicks #day #impressions #records #staying
  • Profile picture of the author KingRoyal
    Just think, if you are on page 1 but link 10, hardly anyone clicks on the bottom links.
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
    Banned
    I see the same thing with my ads at this forum, I can bump them like 8 times a day or 1 time a day, the sales stay almost the same.

    Why? Cause the people that are truly interested are all already aware of what you offer, so the only ones that you attract are the ones that are not really interested in the offer, just curiosity clickers.

    I've seen that with previous businesses as well, you could call it market saturation.

    With everything there is always a number where you reach that point and once you reached that it's important to seek traffic from other sources.

    Look at Coca Cola for example, you see them everywhere, you think more people will start to drink more cola of their brand cause of that? No. Will they lose sales if they quit doing it, yes after several weeks they will start to notice it. Will it help to double their campaign in area's to sell much more? No absolutely not, it's all about finding the golden middle way.

    As you mentioned local it is very logical to think that you reached the top of what you can get already, at least your stats show it. So you have to expand to different regions if this is some local thing, or perhaps you have to use other ways of advertising like printed press if you already kind of dominate the internet in your niche.

    You know you can find a website in many ways, so not sure if that extra long tail traffic will really help you cause the people might've runned into you already several times, makes no sense to click then.
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  • Profile picture of the author RedShifted
    That is great effn advice Niko, I have to admit.

    Because thats exactly what I'm noticing right now. The more work I do trying to increase visibility in the same areas, the less visibility I seem to achieve (or less conversions I should say).

    So I think just like you said, I need to make myself visible in areas where I don't currently exist. When I first started, it was such a small amount of work that got those first few calls coming in, then a lot more work to make them a little more consistent, then a ton more work for barely noticeable improvements.

    So it has to be reaching some type of saturation point.

    And to avoid that, I see 3 choices -

    1) Target completely different regions north or south of the regions I target now.

    2) Target a completely different service in the same regions (like instead of mold keywords going for waterproofing keywords now).

    3) Start advertising in completely different mediums.

    Either way, there needs to be some type of dramatic shift. And I definitely know what I need to focus on now.

    Thank you!

    -Red
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by RedShifted View Post

      That is great effn advice Niko, I have to admit.
      That's business experience, twice

      I think option 3 would work best for you, you target a complete different public with that. You have no idea how many people hardly use the internet to search something. Most never come further then Facebook, so perhaps Facebook Ads could lead to new sales, not even such bad idea.

      Just read the part about setting up a new site, sometimes you can win marketshare with that indeed.

      I once had a webshop, and sales stagnated in the way I was doing it, same thing of "Oh we know him already", then I started a second webshop, different real address, different telephone number, different design, same products really gave it a tiny twist, in no time I increased my overall sales with 30% while the products were still shipped from the exact same location.

      Obvious you can't do that many times either as setting up such thing one more time would probably get a 15% share, then 5% and so on till you totally saturated the whole market. At that point it's wise to expand to different countries, in my case that was Belgium as they speak the same language there and I also expanded with a completely different range of products.

      Sure I knew there were competitors that did better then me with the same type of products in the same country but they had a much wider collection and were in business for ages so you can not expect the same results as them. I kind of performed best of all back then when looking at number of sales (compared to similar sized business like me, not the huge authority ones obvious), but then wholesale prices went up, new competitors who shipped it directly from China and offered it at huge warehouses and construction shops you name it, eventually the business went broke cause yeah there was no way to beat up against them so my warning: Be careful with advertising in other media to just make a few more sales, advertising costs can break you.

      If I had the knowledge of now, a fatter bank account and the SEO knowledge as well, heck I would be beating the shit out of everyone!

      Sometimes I even think to make a comeback in that niche, but now that I live in Thailand it's kind of impossible of course. But once I increased my bank account a bit more I will definitely keep it in mind to do such thing. I think I would scare the shit out of my smaller/medium competitors when they see all their rankings drop cause I dominate every position at page 1 for their main kw's

      And those kw's aren't even that tough, it's Holland after all, maybe 50 online webshops that I would have to beat.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Before you get too crazy with changing your marketing and worrying about ad blindness (which despite what Nik0 says, I highly doubt is your problem), you need to dig into this further.

        Forget the Coke example above. You are in the mold removal business. The SAME people are not searching for that kind of business every single day. So no, they are not seeing you constantly and just ignoring you because they have seen it over and over again. If people need this kind of service, they are seeking it out, maybe searching around a bit for a day or two, and then calling someone and getting it taken care of. They don't then go back and perform the same search over and over again, unless the mold removal service sucked and they need to get a better company to do it right.

        You need to dig into which keywords are causing the increase in impressions. I would bet you will find 1 of 2 causes behind it.

        1) You are now ranking for a phrase that gets a decent amount of traffic but is not really related to your business or service area. Hence the increase in impressions with little to no additional clicks.

        2) A few of your targeted keywords hit the bottom of page 1 and previously were on page 2 or beyond. If a keyword moved from page 2 to #10, the impressions will go up quite a bit because you are now on page 1, but at #10 you won't see much of an increase in clicks if any at all.
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        • Profile picture of the author nik0
          Banned
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          Before you get too crazy with changing your marketing and worrying about ad blindness (which despite what Nik0 says, I highly doubt is your problem), you need to dig into this further.

          Forget the Coke example above. You are in the mold removal business. The SAME people are not searching for that kind of business every single day. So no, they are not seeing you constantly and just ignoring you because they have seen it over and over again. If people need this kind of service, they are seeking it out, maybe searching around a bit for a day or two, and then calling someone and getting it taken care of. They don't then go back and perform the same search over and over again, unless the mold removal service sucked and they need to get a better company to do it right.
          EDIT: Thought a bit about it and yeah you're right. Probably some kw with good volume that isn't related to a service hire. Many people who type in something like "mold removal" "how to get rid of mold" will try to find a solution their selves and ignore any type of service provider.

          It wasn't clear to me where those impressions/views came from as he didn't indicate that in the post. (lol says it right in the picture 'search queries', probably screenshot from Google webmasters, shows how long I haven't used that tool).
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
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            • Profile picture of the author nik0
              Banned
              Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

              I am sure that people are searching for DIY solutions from time to time, however, and Red can correct me if I am wrong, those are not the kind of keywords Red's business is targeting. He is targeting local SEO keywords related to mold removal services in the NJ area, traffic that is looking for someone to come to their house and get rid of the mold.
              When you mentioned those things I should've taken a few minutes to think it through instead of instantly replying. Edited the post before your new one showed up lol, just a fraction too late.
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        • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post


          1) You are now ranking for a phrase that gets a decent amount of traffic but is not really related to your business or service area. Hence the increase in impressions with little to no additional clicks.

          2) A few of your targeted keywords hit the bottom of page 1 and previously were on page 2 or beyond. If a keyword moved from page 2 to #10, the impressions will go up quite a bit because you are now on page 1, but at #10 you won't see much of an increase in clicks if any at all.
          My vote is for #2. That seems most likely.
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  • Profile picture of the author RedShifted
    Thanks Mike I appreciate it.

    According to WMT I'm picking up more traffic for "mold inspection nj" and "mold testing nj" when our traffic for "mold removal nj" has gone up a bit less than the first 2 (its more competitive).

    We do focus more on removal (considering its in the name of our url), so thats probably playing a role.

    Or maybe it means that people searching for testing or inspections, have less urgency than people searching for removal.

    I also noticed our site moved from the bottom of page 2, to the 4th position of page 2 for "mold removal nj", so maybe we're picking up more impressions from that. Plus we also have a youtube video on page 1 for that keyword that seems to have crawled up a couple of positions.

    Looking at it holistically, the majority of our keywords on page 1 are less competitive keywords, for our google places (mold inspection nj, mold inspections nj, new jersey mold inspection, mold inspection new jersey) that are not in the name of our url.

    Then the actual keywords we want to target (mold removal nj/mold remediation nj) we just have a video on page 1, then our website on the top half of page 2. Plus about 50 geotargeted pages for large towns in our area. Then 30 geotargeted youtube videos. All of the geotarged ones are on page 1, but they don't get a lot of traffic.

    So maybe we just need to get those bigger keywords on page 1 for the website, then our clicks will go up.

    Its a fairly competitive industry, I'm just hoping we compete for those keywords in the top 3-5 by summer time. I don't see position 1 or 2 happening anytime soon as those sites are well established. Otherwise my plan was to get some youtube videos on page 1 for various waterproofing keywords, and possibly trying to rank a second google places listing as well. Keywords like "basement wateproofing nj" "flooded basement nj" "wet basement nj" etc etc. Problem with that, those are much more competitive keywords than the ones I'm targeting now.

    Guess I'll just have to keep at it and keep improving my funnel. But you are right, I shouldn't get too far off track considering how much time I've already invested.

    -Red
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