High rank, low traffic - what's up? | Warrior Forum - The #1 Digital Marketing Forum & Marketplace

13 years ago

Maybe it is not so attractive to visitors? Have you checked your competitors descriptions and titles, maybe they are more appealing?

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Crew Chief

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Supafly

What would cause a site to rank well, but not get visitors?

I have a website ranking #2 on the first page for it's keyword term. It's for a local general contractor client of mine. Unfortunately he's only getting 100 monthly unique visits out of 8100 searches (per Google Keyword Tool).Have you had similar issues?

It seems there are so many people searching for the term, but too few clicking on this particular site. What could be the problem?

Possible reasons:

1. Poor title tag or title description.

2. Though client ranks higher than all the well known contractors in the area, he still lacks name recognition.

3. Google keyword tool is not accurate.

4. I show him on page 1, but maybe he's on page 2 elsewhere. :confused:

Any thoughts on the cause? Ideas for solutions? Always grateful to the wise and benevolent Warrior Forum.

Dino

Are these searches that you speak of, "EXACT Match" or "BROAD Match" searches?

Giles, the Crew Chief

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Supafly

13 years ago

They have all been exact matches so I'm pretty puzzled about the whole thing.

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willsmith

13 years ago

It took me a long time to realize that the results from the Google Keywords Tool are often inaccurate to the extreme. In building websites I have found that even the exact match estimates from the GKT are frequently grossly over or under reported.

I have a keyword that I optimized a website for last January which consistently shows over 50,000 exact match searches each month and as of today the GKT reports 74,000 exact match terms for that term. My website ranks in the top three positions and gets maybe 5 clicks per month from the search term. At that level of exact search traffic I should be getting dozens of visits per day just by random accident, so I am quite certain that the GKT is not really accurate for predicting organic traffic searches.

My guess is that in the case of low traffic, the traffic estimates you are working with were probably generated from image searches, Google shopping pages, etc. that generally do not appear in organic keyword searches, but may appear for Adword advertisers.

My opinion is that the GKT is really designed for Adwords advertisers and not for publishers trying to get a handle on organic traffic. It is up to us to come up with creative ways of verifying traffic probabilities because at this time it is unlikely that Google will ever make it easy for us to access accurate organic search traffic data. My best suggestion is to compare your GKT results to the Wordtracker Free results. If there is not a gross variance in the results then it is more likely that the Google traffic estimates are accurate.

So many people who build and promote websites based on GKT data are disappointed with their results, and a few are delighted. I will probably get flamed for this, but using the GKT is about as accurate as throwing darts while blindfolded. Just think about this for a moment. Where is the profit to Google in building and maintining a free organic search traffic tool when their money is made through selling Adwords slots and providing a keyword tool based on that need?

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Supafly

13 years ago

Thanks Will. I hate to admit it, but I think I agree with you. In my short time in this business, I have done really well at ranking websites. Most of the sites I have built have made it to the first page for the targeted keyword and usually the #1 spot, but never have I gotten the kind of traffic that is reflective of so many searches. According to Google and some of the other keyword tools such as Market Samurai, which gets its data from Google, I should be getting so many more hits than I am.

I wish this was not the case, because it is a pretty big blow to my marketing and goes against a lot of what I've learned. Traffic, then, has got to be so much more than ranking for one keyword.

I guess the question now is, how to go forward? Are there other tools out there that can give me more accurate data on keyword traffic? Should I start targeting numerous keywords, say, the top five?

Hmmm...

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Finkle 13 years ago

What about Google Maps? I heard that 80% of local searches click the maps before they even look at who ranks number one for the organic term. Another big problem with maps is that you can only rank and list for two or three search terms unless you cheat and list multiple locations. Also, in a big city like San Diego with lots of competitors, the map listings are only probably going to work for the zip codes that are relatively close to your client's place of business.
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- Shaunman 13 years ago
  
  3. Google keyword tool is not accurate.
  
  Yup! I honestly would not be supprised if the google adwords tool says 8,100 and I get 100/month for the 2nd spot (maybe a little). They are just very inaccurate and I have seen similar things.
  
  I think most of these "high rank low traffic" posts steams from an inaccurate keyword estimate from google. In reality you don't really know how much traffic you will be getting from a keyword until you are there. Everything else is just an educated guess.
  
  But you do the best you can.
  
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  Talar 13 years ago
  
  Yep. Google estimates, the real world produces actual results. I have a site that has ranked for years, literally, at number one or two for a a nice term that Google says has several thousand searches per month. per year, maybe. Sometimes I think Google seems to think quite a lot of themselves ;-)
  
  Many of us (and I certainly include myself) are guilty of thinking this is a situation like a math problem. Do step one, do step two, etc. and at the end you get the correct answer and a gold star from the teacher. Math is exact, SEO and more importantly, earning from that SEO is more like poker. Following the rules and calculating the odds and probabilities are important, but you can not factor in an opponent outdrawing you on the river.
  
  And from a practical, totally personal guess, I think a few hundred people per month searching for a contractor in San Diego is a lot closer to reality than 8,000 plus people. About 266 people per day sitting down and typing in a search for a contractor? Fails my personal reasonableness test.
  
  If this is a site where the client is trying to collect leads, I'd consider 100 a month good performance, if you can convert 10% to clients who come forward and ask for an estimate, that should yield a couple paying contracts per month ...which I assume is the reason he's making the online effort to begin with.
  
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  paulgl 13 years ago
  
  If he is really a local contractor, is he using google maps?
  That's where the money is for local businesses.
  The traffic you get from any random search will be pretty
  low value, and anyone in another location would not be
  clicking. He also needs to get on sites like angieslist.
  
  Paul
  
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  If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.
  
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Wiggy0618

13 years ago

Will, I think you have hit the nail so square on the head it's unreal. This is all stuff I've been kinda thinking / wondering about (in a conceptual kinda way) for a while now...glad to see I'm not the only one.

Thanks

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Matthew Iannotti

13 years ago

You could always check to see how much advertising dollars are being spent on the search terms and generally speaking its often a safe bet that if loads of money is being spent, there are people searching for that term..

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willsmith

13 years ago

I wish this was not the case, because it is a pretty big blow to my marketing and goes against a lot of what I've learned. Traffic, then, has got to be so much more than ranking for one keyword.

Yep...I was really devastated when I realized a lot of my work was based on inappropriate data. At first I was angry at Google because I felt like they were deliberately feeding me bogus data through their Keyword tool. Once I got over my temper tantrum it finally dawned on me that the data they provide is probably reasonably accurate if you are an Adwords advertiser, but not so accurate for organic SEO purposes.

The actual organic search data that we need for decision making, and which is being typed in at Google.com, is just the starting point in the search totals calculation. There are many more potential places where Adwords ads are displayed for queries that are not typed into our beloved Google.com search bar, but are added into the total search counts. Here are just a few places where adword ads are displayed and search counts included in the total GKT search calculations, but your website may never see the light of day for the query:

Google search for -
images
videos
maps
news
shopping
books

The above list is probably just the tip of the iceberg for queries included in GKT search counts that will never result in your website being displayed whether you are in position 1 or 999. Google is not trying to deceive us by any means. Their keyword tool is built to serve their Adwords advertisers and it does that job quite well because it indicates a universe of queries where the Adwords ad may be displayed, but that group of potential queries may be quite different than the group of queries typed into the standard Google search bar. It really is an apples and oranges type of thing.

Having said all the above, there are to my knowledge no keyword tools that will give an accurate search count for queries being typed in at the Google.com search bar. That information, like accurate backlink counts to websites, to my knowledge is not, and may not ever be available.

I think that the best we can do is take search counts from multiple tools like Wordtracker, GKT, and others, compare them and then use our common sense in deciding whether to proceed with building a website or writing articles. Also, I would like to point out that all of the above is just my opinion and probably full of errors. I am not an SEO expert and would love to hear some expert guidance about this problem from someone who really knows what they are doing.

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Groovystar

13 years ago

If you pop up at #2 but nobody is clicking, have you worked on the meta description tag? That is so important if you use google for your marketing. It's your chance to put up a catchy, very brief ad up right on google that can make a difference in how many people go for it.

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Supafly

13 years ago

This has been incredibly eye-opening and it seems there is a consensus that the GKT is designed for Adwords advertisers. It makes sense, after all, that Google would design a tool to help its paying customers.

Some of you have also mentioned Google Maps, which I agree is extremely important for the local search market; however, in a city the size of San Diego, as Finkle suggested, it is nearly impossible to rank for a term that includes the word San Diego unless the business is actually in San Diego. My client is in a town just outside of the city so he will rank for that instead, which hurts. We may have to find him an address within the SD city limits to compete in Google Maps.

The other approach is to get him to rank for other keywords and get him multiple listings per page for those keywords. Lots of work and more money, but could prove to be profitable.

I really appreciate all the thoughtful comments and suggestions.

Thanks

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Opeleroy

13 years ago

I've had the same issue with GKT. I'm ranking in the top 10 for several of my keywords...with my three main keywords combining for about 7,000 global monthly searches...and yet I'm only getting a couple clicks per day altogether.

Frustrating, but as someone mentioned, it seems like GKT is geared towards the AdWords user.

Thanks

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hifrend

12 years ago

yeah, me too. more than ten thousand global searcher every months but only little clicks to my site. And at the weby mastery tools show only 70 page impression for that keyword.
why we do keywor research while the KRT is not accurate.

I also try wordtrackier and get the same result. little traffic while they show seventy thousand of searcher per moth.

Thanks

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High rank, low traffic - what's up?

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