Some help needed - organic ctr going down for a b2b website

[martech]

Hi members,

I have a b2b website that I'd like to improve its rankings. Using Google's search console, there is a clear trend that from around March/April, impressions are stable, but CTR from organic search has steadily declined.

Here is the screenshot of clicks vs impressions:

Content is regularly being added to the website ( 2 good blog posts every week). Any ideas on what may be causing this ? and what can be done to improve search rankings for such a b2b website.

Thanks!

 

[fisicx]

Adding blog posts isn’t going to help your ranking. Google regards them as supporting content. If you ranking is falling it’s the core pages you need to fix.

Join UKBF as a full member and you can get a website review.

Without looking at the site it's impossible to do any sort of analysis

 

[Fagin2021]

You can't really tell anything from that figure. You need to dig deeper by segmenting the impressions/clicks by country, device, pages, search terms and so on.

It could be (for example) that your desktop clicks have held steady but your mobile clicks have taken a nosedive. It could be (for example) that your position in the SERPS has dropped for a particular search term. It's also entirely possible that one of the many Google updates this year has affected your overall rankings. Without more detailed analysis you won't know.

 

[Paul Carmen]

As @Fagin2021 says, that data tells you there's a problem, its not going to tell you what it is.

You need to drill down and look at how your site is performing, by page and by devices. You also need to look at your rankings and your CTR in Google Search Console to identify what's changed. Only then can you work on plans and strategy to improve the content/site.

If your market is competitive, or you don't have time or the skills to do this, it may well be worth getting an SEO professional to help.

 

[martech]

Thanks for the inputs, I'll do a deep look into the data and see what I find. I'll share my findings just in case another person has a similar situation.

I wasn't aware you can get a website review as a full member, I'll definitely consider it.

 

[martech]

Finally managed to do a deeper analysis based on the recommendations provided and was able to find some factors that lead to the drop in organic CTR.

Factors 1: Seasonality
It appears to be a trend that happens yearly. I took the data from 2020/2021 and the website had a similar drop in CTR in that period in 2020. Then CTR started going back up from Aug all the way to December 2020.


Factors 2: Traffic drop
From my observation, if traffic to a site declines, there is a tendency of keywords to drop in search engine ranking. I also found similar conclusions of how traffic affects ranking by a study done by Semrush called 17 Most Prominent Google Ranking Factors

When a keyword drops in rank ...ctr is mostly affected compared to impressions. e.g.
if a page is number 1 in Google and another is number 2 .... they'll get nearly the same impressions but ctr for position 1 is: 30%, position 2 is 16%.

The site has traffic from English countries and Sweden, I'm attributing the gradual drop of traffic to the Swedish audience slowly breaking into the summer holiday.
Lower traffic = drop in position of some keywords = drop in ctr


Factor 3: Pause on Branding Awareness Campaigns for the website
The last factor that seems to have had an effect, is branding.
I discovered that branding efforts being done on the site were paused.
This had an overall effect of reducing the clicks the site got from people searching the brand keyword. i.e. people stopped searching the brand name as much as they did when brand awareness campaigns were ongoing.

 

[fisicx]

This had an overall effect of reducing the clicks the site got from people searching the brand keyword. i.e. people stopped searching the brand name as much as they did when brand awareness campaigns were ongoing.

The brand should be #1 in all searches. There shouldn't be any need to run brand awareness campaigns.

 

[makeusvisible]

The figure you are looking at there is a site average, so lots of things could be in play.

For example. Perhaps you starting ranking well for a keyword, which is gaining lots of impressions, but the page which is ranking has a poor title/description and isn't generating clicks.

You really need to dig into which page(s) are producing high impressions and low CTR. Its more than likely an issue with individual pages rather than the site as a whole.

 

[martech]

The brand should be #1 in all searches. There shouldn't be any need to run brand awareness campaigns.

The reason for brand awareness campaign is because the website is reselling a software that is popularly known(though it can be white-labeled)

So some visitors come to the website by searching the popular software, but because it is white labeled on the website, branding campaigns were being done. So that people get used to the brand name.

As per Semrush's study "Building brand awareness is as important as putting efforts into SEO."
The more direct visits(traffic) you get the higher the tendency of other keywords to go up in ranking.

 

[fisicx]

As per Semrush's study "Building brand awareness is as important as putting efforts into SEO."
The more direct visits(traffic) you get the higher the tendency of other keywords to go up in ranking.

I wouldn’t take too much notice of that advice. People won’t remember your brand. They will search for the software not the provider. And their statement that ranking is related to numbers of visitors is complete tosh.

 

[makeusvisible]

As per Semrush's study "Building brand awareness is as important as putting efforts into SEO."
The more direct visits(traffic) you get the higher the tendency of other keywords to go up in ranking.

I think what SEMRUSH were saying in this study (or the person who wrote the article), is that a brand awareness campaign, by definition should result in an increased volume of citations, and inbound links. These inbound links in particular could have a positive impact on your organic rank, across all keywords.

What I wouldn't agree with is "The more direct visits(traffic) you get the higher the tendency of other keywords to go up in ranking.". Direct visits to your website are going to have zero bearings on your organic rank. The only marginal impact could be data Google gleams from bounce rate and experience, but that would be negligible and debatable.

 

[martech]

I would disagree regarding direct traffic not affecting the ranking of keywords on a page. It does, I didn't think it would in the beginning but I have done some tests and they do show direct traffic affects keyword ranking.

Somethings to take note of that I found in my tests:
- the traffic has to be from real people, (not from bots or from the sites that offer to sell traffic )
- the traffic/visitors have to find what they are looking for on the website (i.e. have a low bounce rate and also things that keep engagement high like clicks to other pages on the website, perform searches, watch videos etc

Here is a summary of one setup I did to test this that I would like to share
1) Bought new 2 domains
- domain 1: Created a new website and put relevant engaging content on the website.
- domain 2: Had a unique catchy dot com name to make it easier for people to remember and type. The purpose of domain 2 is only to redirect to domain 1.
2) No backlinks were built for the website(domain 1).
3) Created engaging youtube videos that mention for people to get what they want, they should visit domain 2 [dot] com
4) To make the videos get extra promotion for free, I ask people to share the videos, to incentivize them to do this, they would get a discount if they showed a screenshot of sharing.
5) I started generating lots of direct traffic to domain 2 which redirects to domain 1.

Results and observations
- Keywords in the website (domain 1) started going up in Google.
- In around 3 months some easy keywords had reached position 1
- In around 6 months some moderate keywords of around 2000 - 6000 searches per month reached position 1 (no backlink built) outranking websites that had a considerable amount of backlinks.
- I would at times stop the redirect from pointing at the website (domain 1) to see the effects. Within 24 hours some keywords would start losing ranking, 2 or 3 days some keywords would disappear from page 1 of Google to other lower pages such as page 5 in Google.

To me, that demonstrated that traffic does affect the ranking of keywords on pages receiving the traffic.

 

[makeusvisible]

I would disagree regarding direct traffic not affecting the ranking of keywords on a page. It does, I didn't think it would in the beginning but I have done some tests and they do show direct traffic affects keyword ranking.

Somethings to take note of that I found in my tests:
- the traffic has to be from real people, (not from bots or from the sites that offer to sell traffic )
- the traffic/visitors have to find what they are looking for on the website (i.e. have a low bounce rate and also things that keep engagement high like clicks to other pages on the website, perform searches, watch videos etc

Here is a summary of one setup I did to test this that I would like to share
1) Bought new 2 domains
- domain 1: Created a new website and put relevant engaging content on the website.
- domain 2: Had a unique catchy dot com name to make it easier for people to remember and type. The purpose of domain 2 is only to redirect to domain 1.
2) No backlinks were built for the website(domain 1).
3) Created engaging youtube videos that mention for people to get what they want, they should visit domain 2 [dot] com
4) To make the videos get extra promotion for free, I ask people to share the videos, to incentivize them to do this, they would get a discount if they showed a screenshot of sharing.
5) I started generating lots of direct traffic to domain 2 which redirects to domain 1.

Results and observations
- Keywords in the website (domain 1) started going up in Google.
- In around 3 months some easy keywords had reached position 1
- In around 6 months some moderate keywords of around 2000 - 6000 searches per month reached position 1 (no backlink built) outranking websites that had a considerable amount of backlinks.
- I would at times stop the redirect from pointing at the website (domain 1) to see the effects. Within 24 hours some keywords would start losing ranking, 2 or 3 days some keywords would disappear from page 1 of Google to other lower pages such as page 5 in Google.

To me, that demonstrated that traffic does affect the ranking of keywords on pages receiving the traffic.

The issue with this kind of testing is that the scope of one website is very limited compared to the billions of pages google have in their index.

You have mentioned that you launched domain 1, and published engaging content. You have done two things right there which will encourage Google to not only index, but to rank the site. As you have described you would expect those ranks to appear and improve over 3-6 months.

Google officially doesn't use data about direct traffic and how people interact with your site to influence rank. The only way they could obtain that data would be via Google Analytics. In fact Google’s Webmaster Help Analyst, John Mueller stated that Google does not use Google Analytics data for ranking purposes:

“We don’t use Google Analytics in Search…”

People will always debate Google uses Analytics data to rank websites, and it's right to debate these things, but officially google has said 'no' and there isn't any evidence to suggest they are being untruthful about it.

 

[fisicx]

I would at times stop the redirect from pointing at the website (domain 1) to see the effects. Within 24 hours some keywords would start losing ranking, 2 or 3 days some keywords would disappear from page 1 of Google to other lower pages such as page 5 in Google.

Nothing to do with traffic. That's because you told Google domain 2 was no longer important.

Everything you did up to the point of stopping the redirect told google domain 2 was worthy of ranking (you were passing lots of jink juice). Turn off the tap and your credibility goes down the drain.

 

[Paul Carmen]

I would disagree regarding direct traffic not affecting the ranking of keywords on a page. It does, I didn't think it would in the beginning but I have done some tests and they do show direct traffic affects keyword ranking.

I'd suggest that the article is badly written and what they mean is related to branded searches and ranking.

A direct non search visit will have virtually no impact on any organic rankings. A branded search variant and then clicking on an organic result will, as CTR has quite a big impact on the ranking of a page in Google's organic results.

 

[martech]

The issue with this kind of testing is that the scope of one website is very limited compared to the billions of pages google have in their index.
.

I agree my data set is small but I did this to test findings done by Semrush. Semrush used larger data in doing their study.
In their study, they used data consisting of 600,000 keywords from our worldwide base (US, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and others) and the first 100 SERP positions for each of them.

A direct non search visit will have virtually no impact on any organic rankings.

As I had mentioned above, I had the same thoughts/theory. Not until I decided to test practically for myself.

Virtually all the websites, I did an experiment to test this showed that direct non-search visits have an effect on ranking.
Something to note
The volume of this direct traffic matters. and it has to be actual people looking for something on your website or engaging with it.

Another test I did. (no redirects were used.)

3year old website had good backlinks but most of the keywords were stuck on page 2. I started sending direct traffic to it. this is way back in 2019.
The ratio of traffic before the experiment was (Social was insignificant)
Direct : 10%
Organic : 90%
Volume of traffic was around 3000 visits per month.

Early days of the experiment:
Direct traffic: 95%
Organic: 5 %
Traffic volume around 130,000 visits per month

Keywords for this website started going up after a week or so sending traffic.


Currently in 2021
Direct traffic: 55%
Organic traffic 45%

Direct traffic volume is more or less constant...but organic traffic has increased significantly after a big number of keywords the website was targeting attained the top 3.