Getting Traffic for an Unranked Phrase
-
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.
-
Bingo! Thanks Chris
I knew it was something that simple.
-
This is it.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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?
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
-
I have had a huge increase in direct traffic to our website but not sure why this suddenly happened? (no promos during this time period)
I have had a huge increase in direct traffic to our website but not sure why this suddenly happened? (no promos during this time period), traffic up 200%+ according to Google Analytics
Reporting & Analytics | | Julia_a1a1 -
Spam Direct Traffic
Hello, Lately, I have been receiving a big amount of unexpected direct traffic from Boston. After analyzing with Analytivs, this is what I get (please, check attachment). Normally I would be blocking this traffic source straight away from my Google Analytics account, and also blocking this traffic from accesing my servers, but check out the analytic metrics: this traffic represents 12% of my total traffic right now!!! av. session duration is 4:53 !! bounce rate is 72% !!!! pages/session 1.44 !! Service provider is "Microsoft Corporation" who looks like one of the typical spammy service providers. My question is, is this a bot?? what do you think ? Thanks, Luis zUlVHIi
Reporting & Analytics | | Yeeply.com1 -
Why am i seeing google.inc in analytics as direct traffic? Bug?
Recently i have seen two clients sites see a spike in direct traffic coming from google.inc. Is this a bot/bug which i should filter out. Just a bit confused why google.inc has visited our clients site 676 times! Any insight would be great.
Reporting & Analytics | | BlueWren1 -
Direct traffic coming to URLs with /rss_feedIP#
I'm doing a site audit for an organization that has a bunch of really messy old Drupal sites. In looking at their traffic, I see that a majority of it is coming to landing pages that look like this: http://clientsdomain.com/rss_feed173.8.208.97 plus other IP addresses. The bounce rate is 100% and time on site is less than a second. It looks like something that an RSS feed tool might use, but I've never seen something like it before. It creates its own landing page, hits the site, then appears to bounce. This is making their Analytics data look a whole lot worse than the site is actually doing, since the bounce rate is 100% on all that fake traffic. I have some experience with Drupal, but I've never seen anything like this in Drupal or any other CMS. Has anyone out there ever experienced something like this, where direct traffic comes to an rss feed landing page and bounces immediately?
Reporting & Analytics | | newwhy0 -
Google referral traffic drop around 14th July 2014 (UK). Anyone else seeing it?
We've seen around a 25% drop in Google referral traffic from the 14th July 2014 onwards and having real trouble identifying why and from what search terms we're being effected. WMT and Moz Pro don't show any movement. Is anyone else seeing the same thing on UK search terms? Seems a bit late to be the effect of Panda 4.0? Any help would be amazing. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | whis1 -
Locating Source of Referral Traffic
Hey Folks, I have discovered a Korean site is sending considerable traffic to a specific landing page on my client's cosmetic surgery site in California. I am concerned Google may deem this as spammy - I know I do. I have been able to track the referral traffic to this point: cluster1.cafe.daum.net/c21/bbs_read which appears to be a community-based site and/or forum. However, I can not locate the exact source where the href back to my client's site resides. Given that my Korean is not exactly up to par 😉 and Google translate only takes me so far, can any of you suggest an advanced query or method of tracking to pinpoint the source page? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | SCW0 -
Is it possible to get demographic and interest information from DoubleClick cookies?
We use Google Analytics and we are currently extracting information from the Google Analytics cookies about our visitors. Is it possible to access DoubleClick cookies in a similiar fashion and get some demographic/interest information for each visitor to our website (if they have a DoubleClick cookie set)? If so, any information on how to retrieve it would be very appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | WebpageFX0 -
Ideas for a strange surge in direct traffic
Being the type of person that can't stop checking my Google Analytics, I noticed this morning that between the hours of 12 and 2 central time last night I recieved a strange surge of direct traffic. My site typically gets around 40 direct visits per day (most of them coming during peak hours around the time people are getting off of work). I received 150 direct visits during this random time in the middle of the night. My bounce rate soared as almost every visit was a bounce. The visitors locations are spread out as if it is natural human traffic. Every single one of the visitors is using a chrome browser. Has anyone else run into something like this? All I can think of is that someone might have an addon or toolbar for chrome that linked to my site for a while in a way that caused unsuspecting visitors to end up on my page. For now I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping the traffic doesn't return, as it could be bad news for my Adsense. *Edit: Also of particular interest, each direct visit went to an internal page on my site and no two of the 150 visits went to the same internal page. I also added an image showing a normal complete day's direct traffic and my direct traffic for today so far (The bulk of the surge came yesterday but the shot from today illustrates the surge better because it is missing my naturally daily direct traffic that comes in the afternoon) heXFb#LiiEr
Reporting & Analytics | | pattersonla0