SEO traffic to the homepage is down across sites
-
Week over week, I've noticed that organic traffic (and oftentimes revenue) for the homepage are down across most of our sites compared to last year. Brand search interest is down for a number of the brands, but in a lot of these cases, it's not down so much that it would make sense for how much the homepage is down (for example: brand search interest was down 4% last week compared to last year, but the homepage traffic was down 32% in visits).
What I've done is generate entry page reports (this year vs. last year) and then bucket the pages by homepage, category pages, and product pages. In most cases, category pages are up year over year for traffic and revenue. I'm concerned that the homepage being down is more than a brand heat issue, but I haven't come across anything out of the ordinary in Google Search Console and keywords are pretty consistent in performance for the most part. Branded keywords continue to rank at #1, too.
Any thoughts as to what else I can look into?
-
Hey WWW SEO,
It seems to me that the pages' implementations seem correct, so it doesn't appear to be a tracking-based issue.
Have you taken to top terms that are driving traffic to these pages (Google Search Console or internal data if you have it) and plotted them in Google Trends to see how they compare over the past 24 months or so? Some may not be high-enough volume, but those that are should give you a feel for where the the volume stands in YoY comparison.
Regards,
Trenton -
Hi Trenton -
Sure. Here are the 2 that I'm most waiting to anniversary the platform launch for: http://bit.ly/1XgbhtZ and http://bit.ly/1Xvikzl.
I've also seen http://bit.ly/1XvivuF take a hit in homepage traffic (mobile traffic to the homepage is down more than desktop. The desktop vs. mobile performance is kind of a case by case situation, since I haven't really seen any patterns that encompass all brands).
Thanks!
-
WWW SEO,
Mind dropping us a link to the website in question so we can take a closer look? This will allow me to check your tracking implementation and to do a quick check on other factors that may be causing an issue here.
Thanks!
Trenton -
Hey Matt! I'm still trying to figure this out. I'm wondering if it's in part a tracking "issue" or inconsistency. I was looking through both desktop and mobile traffic and they are both down, so it's not like one or the other is the main driver. Organic traffic contribution continues to be down year over year.
Before we moved our sites over to the new platform, some traffic had been directed to a Country Selection page (I can't remember all the details behind this at the moment). When comparing year over year data (we use Omniture), we're including traffic that came through the Country Selection page and went through to the US site. I don't know if there's something with this particular page, or if we are indeed comparing apples to apples by leaving it in (without it, homepage is up. Category pages are generally up across all brands).
Still a lot of digging to do and I keep coming up at dead ends, it seems.
-
Hi WWW SEO! How is this going? We'd love an update.
-
What is direct traffic doing?
And have does mobile organic compare to desktop organic year-on-year?
-
I can take a closer look into competitors and see what's going on there. The way our meta descriptions are structured is first a call out of "official site" (we've noticed a better CTR by calling this out in both organic and paid), action verb, targeted keywords, and "Free shipping". In more of a consumer-friendly flow, but that's the basic structure of call outs.
-
You could perhaps ignore the brand search interest, or the keywords that are being searched by Google and instead look at what your site is actually delivering.
What about your meta descriptions? Use them like a sales pitch & compare them to the other search results. I have found it is often the case that sites lose traffic in circumstances like this when a competitor ups the game & grabs more attention.
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
-
DoesHurt SEO
Hey guys, I've read mixed reviews on this. Does anyone have an answer to whether or not hiding h1 text ( ) negatively effects SEO in 2018. Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | Jason-Reid0 -
Some SEO 2016 questions
Hello MOZ Community, I have some questions where the following is still working for seo in 2016: Is an exact keyword in the domain still a good start? If a domain contains the most important keyword does one still need subfolders with that keyword in the url? Do you need multiple subpages so the main url becomes stronger? Is linkbuilding still the number one factor? Thank you for your thoughts!
Technical SEO | | mhenze0 -
Why my site is not ranking for any of the keywords?
We have a site for Property management software, we have done everything like set proper Title and descriptions, heading tags, robots tag is also ok, set schema and its ok with Google webmaster too also we are doing Social media promotion. can you please check our website and tell me what is the problem??
Technical SEO | | rootwaysinc0 -
Tracing Redirects to a Site
I wonder if anyone has used any tools where you can trace the redirects pointing to a site? I know there are a number of tools out there that can be used to check where a URL redirects to, but I was wondering if anyone has used a tool where I could trace all redirects with the final URL? I am using this for competitor research so I don't have access to Analytics or Webmaster Tools.
Technical SEO | | BeattieGroup0 -
Mobile site SEO: faulty redirects.. 204! help pls!
Hello, I have recently read that a m.site.com should provide the same number of pages as the non-mobile site. Is this so? Is this why my mobile site won't rank? Our competitors have their standard websites showing up before our m.website.com version... Also, do I have to get a whole new set of mobile links for my mobile site? In WT, I am seeing absolutely no inbound links, which seems odd? Any help would be greatly appreciated. 🙂 Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | lfrazer0 -
Site Navigation
Hello, I have some questions about best practices with site navigation & internal linking. I'm currently assisting aplossoftware.com with its navigation. The site has about 200 pages total. They currently have a very sparse header with a lot of links in the footer. The three most important keywords they want to rank for are nonprofit accounting software, church accounting software and file 990 online. 1. What are your thoughts about including a drop down menu in the header for the different products? (they have 3 main products). This would allow us to include a few more links in the header and give more real estate to include full keywords in anchor text. 2. They have a good blog with content that gets regularly updated. Currently it's linked in the footer and gets a tiny amount of visits. What are your thoughts about including it as a link in the header instead? 3. What are best practices with using (or not using) no follow with site navigation and footer links? How about with links to social media pages like Facebook/Twitter? Any other thoughts/ideas about the site navigation for this site (www.aplossoftware.com) would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | stageagent0 -
Help with SEO
Hello, I am brand new to SEO and I'm learning on the go everyday. I am having issues with Google and getting any sort of ranking or analysis or even just traffic reports. I understand the site has never really been optimized so it might really not have any reports. So basically my real question is what helpful tricks or hints do you guys have that I can implement? Anything and everything helps. So far I have run the crawl diagnostics and I'm working on fixing the errors. Thanks fr your help.
Technical SEO | | Future130 -
Site problem
I moved a site earlier on in the year to a better server www.keyrs.co.uk, my main keywords being equity release - equity release calculator and equity release schemes. Since this happened the ranking have gone down and the schemes and calculator terms and have hit positions 7-8 when they were 2-3. basically my question is open to all, i am looking to see what the problem is with these pages as it is driving me nuts. All tools on SEO moz show the pages are doing well, however i must be missing something. Mike
Technical SEO | | TomBarker820