SEO: High intent organic revenue down in Europe
-
Our team is stumped and we are hoping some of you might have some insight! We are seeing a drop in Europe organic revenue and we can't seem to figure out what the core cause of the problem is.
What's interesting, the high intent traffic is increasing across the business, as is organic-attributed revenue. And in Europe specifically, other channels appear to be doing just fine. This seems to be a Europe high-intent SEO problem.
What we have established:
- Revenue was at a peak in Q4 2017 and Q1 2018
- Revenue dips in mid-late Q2 2018 and again in Q4 2018 where it has stayed low since
- Organic traffic has gone up, conversion rate has gone down, purchases have gone down
- Paid search traffic has gone up, conversion rate has gone down slightly, submissions have gone up
- Currency changes are minimal
- We cannot find any site load issues What we know happened during this time frame (January 2018 onward):
- Updates to the website (homepage layout, some text changes) end of April 2018
- GDPR end of May 2018
- Google Analytics stops being able to track Firefox
Europe is a key market for us and we cant figure out what might be causing this to happen - again, only in Europe - beyond GDPR and the changes we've made on our site is there anything else major that we're missing that could be causing this? Or does anyone have any insights as to where we should look?
Thank you in advance!
-
For example, the amount of organic visitors, can depend on if Google is rolling out a Google algorthim update?
Here at Walsh & Partners Ltd, we see massive fluctuations in where our website ranked, and number of organic visitors, during the March Google Core Update 2024. So, it might be that there is a significant algorithm update underway?
-
@Vijay Gaur I also wanted to add that we checked and haven't seen any issue with bot traffic
-
Hello, thank you for your reply!
1. We are just seeing this trend in European countries.
2. We manage SEO data with google analytics, console, VPN searchers and ahrefs. Our target market is researchers that are publishing research (specifically non-native speakers).
3. Yes it is cyclical - we typically see a lull during the summer and winter holiday (similar to the US academic calendar). For most of our customers, it depends on how often they publish.
4. I'm not familiar with spam (bot) traffic. What is the best way to look into this? -
Hi There,
The information above looks insufficient to draw conclusions, however, I understand your main concern is about a drop in organic traffic from a specific geographic region and conversion drop as well.
Here are some further questions:
- -Is your industry seeing a downtrend in general in Europe or elsewhere?
- How are you managing the international SEO of your website? What is the main target market for your website? How is it international targeting setup in google search console (old version)?
- Is your business cyclical in nature?
- Have you analyzed whether the earlier traffic was spam(bot ) traffic, how much is the drop from such traffic?
Thanks,
Vijay
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
-
SEO threats of moving from [.com.au] domain to [.com] domain for a 15yr old SAAS company.
Hey Guys. I work for a 15 yr old SAAS company which originally started with a country-specific [.com.au] domain and later got a [.com] domain as the business grew. The AU website has a DA:56 while the [.com] has as DA: 25. Now we are looking to have everything migrated to the [.com] domain. But, my concern is that we might lose the SEO value of the AU domain. I was wondering if anyone has any experience in this or recommend a case study on this topic. Thanks! Allan
Algorithm Updates | | allanhenryjohn0 -
How much do branded search organic traffic & direct traffic impact the ranking for their non-branded topic/keyword?
Hi Moz community, We can see many websites with a reputation will have more number of visitors landing with these two types of traffic mostly (>90%): organic traffic of brand queries and direct traffic. Will these visits help and impact the ranking of these websites for the keywords/topics they been employing? Ex: Moz will have many such visitors. Will this really impact the ranking of Moz for non-brand queries they try to rank for, like "SEO Software". If so, will this have a huge impact or it's just a minor ranking factor. Because we have this with our website and we don't see such boost in rankings compared to our competitors with less direct traffic; where as I been looking at some SEO articles that direct traffic is one of the most important ranking factors. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Best place to employ "branded" related keywords to gain SEO benefits and rank for "non branded" keywords?
Hi all, I want to put this question straight with an example rather than confusing with a scenario. If there is company called "vertigo", a tiles manufacturer. There are many search queries with thousands of searches like "vertigo tiles life", "vertigo tiles for garden", "vertigo tiles dealers", "vertigo tiles for kitchen", etc....These kind of pages will eventually have tendency to rank for non-branded keywords like "tiles for garden", "tiles for kitchen", etc. So where to employ these kind of help/info pages? Main website or sub-domain? Is it Okay to have these pages on sub-domain and traffic getting diverted to sub domain? What if the same pages are on main website? Will main website have ranking improvement for non branded keywords because of employing the landing pages with related topics? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
38% of SEOs Never Disavow Links: Are you one among them or the other 62%?
Hi all, Links disavowing is such a advanced tasks in SEO with decent amount of risk involved. I thought many wouldn't follow use this method as Google been saying that they try to ignore bad links and there will be no penalty for such bad links and negative SEO is really a rare case. But I wondered to see only 38% SEOs never used this method and other 62% are disavowing links monthly, quarterly or yearly. I just wonder do we need to disavow links now? It's very easy to say to disavow a link which is not good but difficult to conclude them whether they are hurting already or we will get hurt once they been disavowed. Thanks Screenshot_3.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
SEO for mobile sites?
Let's say I have an ecommerce site and it has a separate theme via device detection. So I may even have different content on the pages. So for example, on desktop, on mysite.com/flowers I have a video about flowers. But on mobile, I have 10 000 words of text. Will this page rank better for people searching via mobile? Will google give different search rankings, based on desktop vs. mobile? Or how is Google calculating this? Are there any good mobile SEO tips or a knowhow base?
Algorithm Updates | | JaanMSonberg0 -
PPC vs Organic CTR
Hello, I found two studies that seem to contradict themselves about PPC vs Organic CTR:
Algorithm Updates | | Cornel_Ilea
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2200730/Organic-vs.-Paid-Search-Results-Organic-Wins-94-of-Time
http://brandongaille.com/google-organic-click-through-rate-statistics/ Which one is true? Thank you
Cornel0 -
Local SEO NAP - Two Different Cities....Same Zip Code
I've come across this recently and wanted to get your thoughts. I personally live in a city called Greenacres (yes, it's the place to be) but my zip code is also for Lake Worth. I'm a local SEO company so doing Local SEO stuff is pretty pointless (Google changed that in 2010) but I am sure other people have this issue for their business. Question, What do you do when your zip code is for two different cities. Do you try to make all NAPs (Name Address Phone Numbers) the same city. What if you cant'? Does having the NAP show up different cities hurt your efforts? etc. Obviously I think you'd try to keep the NAP as consistent as possible but what do you do if the citation source changes it or only uses the major of the two cities? There isn't a right or wrong answer (or maybe there is) but I wanted to get some thoughts on it. Darin.
Algorithm Updates | | DarinPirkey0