Getting Traffic for an Unranked Phrase
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Over the last month, 40% of a client's search traffic as resulted from a phrase that they are not even ranking for in the top 100; nor are they popping up on PPC ads for it.
How is this happening? I feel like I am missing something very obvious.
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Bingo! Thanks Chris
I knew it was something that simple. -
This is it.
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One case I thought I would mention about one of our clients:
They were getting ~15% of their traffic from a shorttail keyword that they didn't rank for in all the Major SEs. However, as I dug in, I found that they ranked #2 in Google+ Local (but weren't showing in the mixed searches)... that in turn was driving 1000s of impressions and 100+ new visitors per month to their website.
I don't know if your client focuses on local search but if they do then that could be where the hang up is. Google (and Bing Local and Yahoo Local) ranks things completely different in the local SERPs than they do in the General Search... you may find that they are owning keywords that you didn't know they were ranking for.
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I would suggest to start from Analytics software. Tracking issue is common with third party Analytics software. You need to check client's server logs and data warehouse data as well.
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Does the client have an image on the site that matches the phrase? If a query pops the image results snippet within organic results, you may see traffic from a term that you rank for within image search, but not organic.
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I've had it happen with almost every client... albeit, not always at such a high percentage
It's a little hard to help you analyze a problem without knowing the website and phase... I can appreciate that you don't want someone poaching your client... but from my experience Mozzers are respectful about that stuff. Care to share so that we can dig a little deeper and help?
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