Odd traffic/sales problem

[Esk247]

Looking at some traffic data for a new business we are working with (collaboration on web content etc) and they're struggling with falling traffic on anything to do with their brand name.

E.g. any keyword/product that contains the word 'thiscompany' or if people are searching for 'this company' all of that traffic had dropped 50% since January and revenue from that traffic has dropped 75%

Which is really odd because this isn't a small fry business. They're turning over £1.2 million a year and have some big adverts in relevant trade magazines, all with their brand name emblazoned over trucks or roads or people. Yet the trend for the brand name is dwindling fast and taking revenue down.

Revenue on all other channels is 30% up since January but any time the brand name is put in it's all red.

Position in SERPs for brand name products/services is down 9 places or more across the board. Yet position for unbranded products are generally up 2/3 places on last month.

Why the hell would that happen? Traffic is generally stable, only a small drop, but organic searches for the brand name and the brand name products are dropping like a stone.

NOTE: This is more a question for established SEO people. Asking me to create a facebook account is really quite irrelevant for a £1.2 million a year company that trades around the world.

 

[JonathanSEO]

Any established SEO person knows trying to work this out without seeing it would be pure guess work. So my guess is start a Facebook page

So the problem is branded keywords have taken a hit in the search engines and they no longer rank prominently for their company name and brand name + service keywords?

If that's the case, what has replaced them in the SERPS? 9 places is a big drop.

Short term trial a branded PPC campaign and see if revenues pick up for them again.

 

[Andrew Baker]

Just a stab in the dark but is their brand name / company name also a high competition generic search query or is it uniquely identifiable to the business? If it's the former perhaps their competitors are doing a better job at targeting that keyword... as I say purely a stab in the dark.

I would say though if they're losing 75% revenue on their brand name searches just set up a brand PPC campaign to sweep up some of the lost revenue.

If you are "companyx" and you target keyword "companyx" the quality scores should be high so you should have low CPCs & high CTRs. At least this will plug the gap until you get to the bottom of the issue and resolve.

 

[Esk247]

If that's the case, what has replaced them in the SERPS? 9 places is a big drop.

Mainly smaller competitors. They have less backlinks, much less indexed pages but they're out ranking this website on several keywords. They weren't a few months ago, but over the last 5/6 months the competitors have just kept moving up while this website has continually gone down despite spending more on PPC and more on national advertising as well as acquisitions of other companies and customer databases.

When looking at trends the brand name trend gets steadily worse month after month where as our competitors brand names are getting better every month.

Overall turnover is up month on month, but that's from other sources such as off site media and trade shows. Organic turnover is dreadful and getting worse.

PPC is working very well, increasing turnover, cpc is coming down every week almost and the clicks are still going up every week. So the website is working and converting at 9% on average.

 

[JonathanSEO]

If that's the case, what has replaced them in the SERPS? 9 places is a big drop.

Mainly smaller competitors. They have less backlinks, much less indexed pages but they're out ranking this website on several keywords. They weren't a few months ago, but over the last 5/6 months the competitors have just kept moving up while this website has continually gone down despite spending more on PPC and more on national advertising as well as acquisitions of other companies and customer databases.

When looking at trends the brand name trend gets steadily worse month after month where as our competitors brand names are getting better every month.

Overall turnover is up month on month, but that's from other sources such as off site media and trade shows. Organic turnover is dreadful and getting worse.

They are been outranked for their own company name by competitors? That would be pretty bad.

Is the brand name a keyword or something? It seems strange how competitors could outrank them otherwise for brandname + service keywords.

For example if my company was JonathanSEO and I had the domain, it's unlikely people would outrank me for "JonathanSEO web design"

Whereas if I was called Onepage Ltd, then "onepage web design" might be a bit different...

I would need to see the SERP and site in question to give any sort of reason.

If they want more brand searches, then they need more type in traffic, only way to get that is via advertising and encouraging people to do it.

 

[Latebloomer]

It is a big company. Go hire a SEO expert or it might lose more.

Otherwise, facebook will be the answer

 

[Alan]

Give me access to the analytics & PPC accounts and I might be able to give an opinion. As said earlier, anything else is just guess work.

 

[Ola1]

A number of thoughts

£1.2 million turnover is not big fry nowadays

The usual reason you get out ranked in Search is that the other guy has more influential links pointed at them

As has been suggested , the company name may well be generic, ergo open to competition from all an sundry

There are a lot of really sharp SEO's out there

 

[JonathanSEO]

£1.2 million turnover is not big fry nowadays

It's not small fry either.

 

[Esk247]

A number of thoughts

£1.2 million turnover is not big fry nowadays

The usual reason you get out ranked in Search is that the other guy has more influential links pointed at them

That's 1.2 million for just one website, not including the rental income and separate wholesale company...but it's just so people know we are not talking about a little gift shop in Cambridge that doesn't know what the internet is. So advice like 'do you have a blog' is irrelevant in this question, the company has a huge blog, huge twitter and facebook following that interacts with the brand 7 days a week.

It's purely the organic searches for the brand name that are cause for concern as they're consistently dropping yet searches on PPC and for products/services are going up.

So if someone searched for say Piggy Bank, those searches are increasing and our website is getting higher traffic than ever. But if someone searches Daves Piggy Bank, those searches are dropping (Dave being the company name). So people are using the brand name less and less which is worrying considering the company just spent 20k on a series of industry focused magazine adverts purely to stimulate people searching for the brand name.

 

[JonathanSEO]

That's 1.2 million for just one website, not including the rental income and separate wholesale company...but it's just so people know we are not talking about a little gift shop in Cambridge that doesn't know what the internet is. So advice like 'do you have a blog' is irrelevant in this question, the company has a huge blog, huge twitter and facebook following that interacts with the brand 7 days a week.

It's purely the organic searches for the brand name that are cause for concern as they're consistently dropping yet searches on PPC and for products/services are going up.

So if someone searched for say Piggy Bank, those searches are increasing and our website is getting higher traffic than ever. But if someone searches Daves Piggy Bank, those searches are dropping (Dave being the company name). So people are using the brand name less and less which is worrying considering the company just spent 20k on a series of industry focused magazine adverts purely to stimulate people searching for the brand name.

I would say they need to hire in some experts. Perhaps an agency that controls all their online efforts and marries everything together and can provide a more thorough service.

Some things you have described don't quite make sense. I mean without seeing their analytics, it could simply be branded searches are down because consumers are buying on their first visit via non branded searches rather than returning. Hence the drop in branded searches & organics. I would look at multi channel funnels and try and join up the dots.

 

[Esk247]

I would say they need to hire in some experts. Perhaps an agency that controls all their online efforts and marries everything together and can provide a more thorough service.

Indeed. They're paying 3k a month to a marketing company that 'specialises' in SEO and SEM but they only produce a monthly report, which we can do ourselves just by printing the reports from analytics/adwords/webmaster tools.

I'm wondering if some links are being devalued for over optimisation? Such as over optimising content that contains the brand name and those links are being disregarded now.

Puzzling. I'll have to check over the backlinks as well to check the quality.

 

[Ola1]

In the OP we have

Position in SERPs for brand name products/services is down 9 places or more across the board. Yet position for unbranded products are generally up 2/3 places on last month.

Then in a subsequent post you put

It's purely the organic searches for the brand name that are cause for concern as they're consistently dropping yet searches on PPC and for products/services are going up.

So if someone searched for say Piggy Bank, those searches are increasing and our website is getting higher traffic than ever. But if someone searches Daves Piggy Bank, those searches are dropping (Dave being the company name). So people are using the brand name less and less which is worrying considering the company just spent 20k on a series of industry focused magazine adverts purely to stimulate people searching for the brand name.

The two are not the same , which is it ?



The site is being out ranked for its own brand name ?

or

People are using the brand name less

 

[VaidehiVyas]

Your SEO person check your site analytic. If your site's visit and revenue both are decrease when any Google Algorithm's update are come. So, your site may penalized by Google Algorithm.