SEO & CPC
-
So...I know Google secret sauce is just what secret but on a couple occasions I've seen a Phenomenon occur that I'd like some help understanding. I work at a fairly new eCommerce sit called www.savvisdirect.com. We have the normal new site desires...more traffic. Most of our traffic is coming from CPC but we were seeing about a 33% increase in organic wk over wk, until...we drastically cut our CPC spend on Google for a wk. Then organic dropped by about 1/3'rd. Nothing else changed, that's it. I know Google says that CPC spend doesn't affect rankings but I've seen this phenomenon a couple time @ a couple different sites & I'm getting to the point where I just don't believe it. What's your perspective on this?
-
I have seen phenomenon like this before, but believe it could stem from the pausing of the ppc campaigns (I have also seen an increase in organics after a paused campaign for competitive keywords).
Once a ppc campaign is paused, your repeat visitors should drop and your CTR may improve for organic positions. Since some people believe that traffic/ctr are computed in their Algorithm this could shift your rankings.
If Google did do this, I think the FTC or some other agency would be down their throats. However, who knows....
-
Another possibility is that you don't have auto-tagging enabled in Adwords. This can cause CPC traffic to be misattributed as Organic traffic in Google Analytics. This recently happened with one of our sites. Make sure you have auto-tagging enabled, and look back at the landing pages for your Organic traffic in GA and make sure they were being attributed properly.
-
Most likely it's a coincidence. Google traffic & rankings fluctuate all the time, especially for new sites.
Google does take user experience into account in its rankings, so there could be an off-chance that somehow the decreased CPC traffic had an impact on SEO. The only way to know for sure would be to increase your CPC spend again, and see if SEO traffic increases. Then cut it again, and see if it impacts your search traffic. If you can repeat this a few times, you will have a strong case for causation there.
However, I personally think that it's unlikely.
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
-
Is there a tool to check the SEO performance of articles from different websites?
Is there a tool to check the SEO performance of articles(like 100+ articles) from different websites in one place? I am looking for a tool where I can put several URLs of the articles we have published in bulk for many of our clients, and it can show me how those articles are performing. This way, we can check the performance of these articles at any time; there is no need to add URLs every time.
Reporting & Analytics | | Foxxr0 -
Canonical Tags & GWT Parameters
A site I'm working on has canonical tags which I find to be accurate, regardless of tracking parameters or anything else added to the url. The tag looks like: And we have alot of parameters in Google Search Console that look like Parameter Crawl page Let Googlebot Decide destination Let Googlebot Decide filters Let Googlebot Decide Since all of our parameters follow a question mark, like http://www.examplesite.com/questions/avocados?source=ad12345 and all of our pages have canonical tags showing the representative url without the additional parameters, why wouldn't we just have the one parameter in GWT as Parameter Crawl ? Representative URL I ask because I find that Google analytics shows pages with parameters as landing pages in search, which has me concerned about Google seeing it as duplicate content. Thanks! Best... Darcy
Reporting & Analytics | | 945010 -
Clarification on Analytics Goals & Funnel Logic
I have a few questions about funnel flow and how my goals are tracked. 1. My goal is a user completing a contact form, form.html. Upon completion, user is redirected to thanks.html, ending the flow. Every page header contains a direct link to form.html. Does this mean every page on my site is considered a "step" leading the user to the contact form? If so, do I list each page containing the form link in the steps, or only form.html? 2. If the above isn't correct, how do I track how the user wound up completing my form. I'd love to know which pages are performing better and leading to more sign-ups (goal completions). Currently I think I'd only be setup to know when a user is on the form.html page and whether they complete it or leave, not how they got to form.html in the first place. 3. My .html pages are actually embedded via iFrame on WordPress pages. My form.html page is hosted on .com/quote and upon completion, form.html redirects to thanks.html within the iFrame (.com/quote remains the actual page). I'd assume this is going to throw off my stats since the physical .html pages don't have Analytics code embedded? 4. How would I track different CTAs on the same page which lead to the same goal? For example, header vs. footer CTA's to the same sign-up sheet. Let me know if you need anything clarified. Thanks a lot for the help.
Reporting & Analytics | | kirmeliux0 -
Campaign Tracking URLs and the Impact on SEO
Hi Guys, I am setting up tracking for a couple of offline campaigns in Analytics and would just like to know if this will cause issues. The situation is below: Two URLs Ranking Well Organically: www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-b URLs Setup for the Purpose of Offline Campaigns www.domain.co.uk/campaign1 www.domain.co.uk/campaign2 Plan to Track this in Analytics www.domain.co.uk/campaign1 redirecting to www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a_&utm_medium=qr&utm_source=test1&utm_campaign=test1_ www.domain.co.uk/campaign2 redirecting to www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a&utm_medium=qr&utm_source=test2&utm_campaign=test1__ So the idea is that the user gets a nice simple URL to input from the off-line media (www.domain.co.uk/campaign1). This then redirects to one of the pages thats performing well organically (www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a) but with the relevant tracking (www.domain.co.uk/campaign1 redirecting to www.domain.co.uk/area-covered/area-a&utm_medium=qr&utm_source=test1&utm_campaign=test1). The only way that the tracking URL can be accessed by the user is if the off-line media URL is entered. My main concern here is how Google will treat this. Obviously I don't want to cause issues with the two URLs that are ranking well organically. Would having a version of exactly the same URL, just with tracking do so? Any help is appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | CarlWint0 -
Wordpress SEO vs Regular Site SEO
Hey Mozzers I'm building a Wordpress-powered site (self hosted on different domain). I know there are different plug-ins and whatnot for Wordpress SEO, but what exactly am I getting myself into? Am I required to use these plug-ins even if I already know how to do regular SEO on-page coding, or are they mainly dumbed-down tools for mom-bloggers to use? Am I still able to use Google Analytics as I am with a regular site?
Reporting & Analytics | | Travis-W
What else is there to think about? Thanks!0 -
SEO Moz Errors
We have SEO Moz Errors and warnings showing up, yet we have cleaned them
Reporting & Analytics | | RNK
up. The same errors were showing up in Google's Webmaster tools but after we corrected them they do not show up as crawl errors in Webmaster tools.
Why is SEO Moz different and why does it continue to show corrections already made.0 -
How would you measure the SEO success of new site launch?
It has been 12 months, and it is time for some serious SEO reality check up. I think we have done some really nice things (social integration, on page optimization etc) but we honestly could do a million time better on some other elements (anchor, text, link building etc...). Would love to hear from the community what would be the top 10 criteria you would use to judge the quality of the SEO work done for a new site during is first 12 months. PS: we are a very content rich over 1,500 new articles/post in our niche with 12 months - our site is migraine.com Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | OlivierChateau0 -
Google Analytics: Difference Between Goal Conversions & Goal Completions
When using Google Analytics, what is the difference between total goal conversions and total goal completions? We have many goals set up in a lead generation environment. Therefore, the only element of conversion is submitted a lead and arriving on the "Thank You" page. THose thank you pages are tagged accordingly. When we run reports though, the number of "Total Goal Conversions" and "Total Goal Completions" never match up.
Reporting & Analytics | | eMagineSEO0