Visit Length

[Spider]

I have a strange phenomenon on my main coaching website. Since Jan 1. I have seen my serps positioning in Google improve from c.95 to c.45 for the search term "business coach" (non-local, non-personalized.) But the number of visitors has reduced. In addition to that, the length of time a visitor stays on my site has dropped, too.

I had expected that higher ranking would result in more visitors, more interested visitors, and thus more time spent on the site. The opposite seems to be happening on both counts.

Anyone have any idea what might be happening? What am I not seeing?

[vangogh]

Being ranked 45ish doesn't necessarily mean much traffic. You'd still be on page 5 and study after study shows people don't click past the first couple of pages in search results. So while 95 to 45 is certainly good improvement, I wouldn't expect it would come with a significant increase in search traffic for that one keyword phrase.

What I'm guessing is happening is that whatever you did to get the page to move up from 95 to 45 also made it go down in other keywords. I would also suggest it was those other keywords that were delivering the more targeted traffic that was sticking around longer on your site. That's why I say not to focus so much on one or two keywords you think you should rank for. Business coach is the obvious keyword, but it doesn't mean people searching for it are looking to hire you or anyone else. Just a thought. Perhaps the best way to attract search traffic is not so much going after a few choice phrases like business coach, but rather providing answers to questions people might typically ask of a business coach. Some of those people will take the answers and leave. Some after seeing several answers may contact you.

Another possibility is the design of your site. Google now shows a thumbnail image of your site in their search results and it could be people mousing over and seeing that image don't think your site is the one they want. It also explains the length of time for those people who find your site without the preview image.

[Harold Mansfield]

A high bounce rate generally means a couple of possibilities:
1. That's not what I wanted.
Unqualified traffic. People are landing on your page for the wrong reasons, meaning the targeting is off. Possibly too general or has multiple meanings.

2. I don't like the way that looks
First impressions are everything on the web. There may be things about your page that makes people assume that you don't have what they want, or they aren't responding to your layout or design favorably.

3. Too long to load
Self explanatory.

4. Other turn offs
Pop ups. Too many ads. The Hard sell. Music.

People generally "bounce around" on the web anyway. A 30%-40% bounce rate is not necessarily bad news. 50% and above means some tweaking needs to be done. The thing is to find out exactly where that high bounce rate traffic is coming from.
If it's from a link or group of links, then those links are not bring in the correct targeting. Could be as simple as changing the anchor text.
If it's from ads, then you can assume that the ads aren't worded properly to bring in the target demographic and could possibly be using the wrong keywords that BEST (meaning above all others) represent your business.
If it's from SE"s then you could be targeting too broadly.

It could be a multitude of things. You can't fix them all at once. Usually targeting is the usual suspect. After you find that you are now holding people more than 30 seconds but no one is taking action, then you have to move to content and design.

Personally on blogs I shoot for the 2 minute range, but it's also important to me how they leave. Hopefully through an affiliate link. If I keep people less than a minute, yet the majority are still leaving through a link that makes me money...I'm happy with that.

For my business site, I hope for 3-5 minutes. (2 to 3 minutes is what I have now) The first step is to get people to stay past 30 seconds. If I get that, then it just means that with some adjustments I can lengthen that time which will better my chances of them taking action.

If I am sure that I am targeting my keywords ( I actually opt for combinations and phrases) and I still can't get people to stay past 30 seconds, then I need to make some BIG changes. Probably content and design.
I have been through it ( not that it ever ends). Had an 80% bounce rate, which made me redesign and rewrite everything. Afterward I started to see some changes and eventually the phone started ringing a little more and the people on the other end were starting to fall into place with the service that I offer at the price that I offer it.

[vangogh]

A 30%-40% bounce rate is not necessarily bad news. 50% and above means some tweaking needs to be done.

This is getting away a little from Frederick's question, but I think you have to look at more than just the bounce rate to suggest tweaking needs to be done. You have to dig deeper to determine if something is wrong. For example say a page on your site exists to generate click for an ad. Then 100% bounce rate is actually a goal since you hope everyone leaves your site via an ad.

You also need to look at the time spent on the page. Someone who bounces within a few seconds is very different than someone who stays on your page or 5 minutes and then bounces. I'm not sure the latter is necessarily a bad thing even if that person didn't click to other pages on that visit.

[Dan Furman]

I don't pay that much attention to numbers like bounce rate, time spent, etc. In general terms, there's only one number that matters online - conversion. That's it. Everything else is nibbling around the edges.

Traffic can be bought. If conversion is good, paid-for traffic costs you nothing. I spend more than $600 a month on traffic. It's worth it.

Conversion, conversion, conversion.

[vangogh]

Improving some of those other numbers though can help lead to more conversions. They're all signals for why something is or isn't working on your site. For example someone might be searching for something you have on a page, but when they land on the page your headline doesn't make it obvious that what they want is there. That person probably bounces. Had the headline given them a better indication that what they wanted was on the page the person might have read deeper into the content and ultimately given you a call.

True conversions are the end goal, but there are plenty of other stats that can help you understand why a page is or isn't converting.

[Spider]

Good information, thanks, Harold,VG.

Dan - I agree but you gotta have something to convert. Even you focus on traffic by spending $600 a month to get it. Your point is accepted, though, and I will pay more attention to that aspect.

[vangogh]

Glad to help.

Dan you also have to consider that someone may need several visits to your site before they contact you. There might not be a conversion to measure for awhile. Reducing bounce rates and increasing length of time on the site, along with other key metrics could mean more people interacting with you and your site who you eventually can convert to clients or customers.

No one metric tells the whole picture. You need to look at a variety to understand the current situation with your site and how you can improve your site.

[Spider]

I don't understand this. My coahing site has been on the first page of Google (circ. #4 or #5 - unpersonalized, unlocalized) for the past week but visitors have dropped to unprecedented levels, last week in the single digits, yesterday 10 visitors for the whole 24 hours.

Even posts to SBF have dried up! What's happening? Has the whole world gone on vacation and didn't tell me?

[greenoak]

i hear you dan....and your poiont is pretty hard for some...like in my world where they say a rent is too high, like at a show or a booth... ...well 1000$ is not too high if it brings you the right percent of sales... and 50$$ is too high if the sales arent there...

[vangogh]

Frederick saying your site has been #4 or #5 makes no sense. What you mean is one of your pages is ranking #4 or #5 for a particular query. Unless 100% of your search traffic is coming in to that one page through that one query then you're ignoring all the other pages and queries sending you traffic. When you say traffic is down to unprecedented levels do you mean traffic specific to that one query and page or do you mean the site as a whole?

I would need to see more of your analytics data to be able to offer some ideas as to what's happening. Have you switched to using Google Analytics at all? Or are you still using the same analytics package you've always been using.

As for the forum the slow posting happens at times. Traffic here seems about normal. I think you see less posts at times because for the most part it's generally a handful of people responsible for starting most of the threads or keeping some others active. When they all happen to have other things to do for a few days posting sometimes slows.

[Business Attorney]

Even posts to SBF have dried up! What's happening? Has the whole world gone on vacation and didn't tell me?


Oops, Frederick, I forgot to tell you. We had a nice time and wished you were there.

[Harold Mansfield]

As far as the forum is concerned, I'm usually pretty active but have been pretty busy the last month or so.

[billbenson]

Frederick, its been very slow this week for me. Could be a lot of people taking holiday?

[Spider]

Sorry, VG, I thought my post would have been clear in the context of this thread. More clearly, then -- The index page of my coaching site - FrederickPearce.com/index.html - has been at #4 or #5 on Google's serps for the search term, "Business Coach" (non-personalized search and non-local search, ie. all of the USA) for over a week.

The number of unique visitors to the whole site (all pages), from all sources (all search engines for all search terms, links, 'no referring link') has been lower than I have ever seen it, even when my serps position was #95 and beyond in Google for the term "Business Coach."

Wed, Thur, Friday last week the site as a whole had 3, 4, and 5 visitors, respectively. Tuesday this week, first working day after a holiday, I had 10 visitors. As my serps positioning for the term "Business Coach" has fallen to pleasing levels, the number of visitors has dropped rather than improved.

Seeing as Google's Keyword Tool shows 90,000 global searches a month and 33,000 local searches for the term "Businss Coach" (monthly averages over the past 12 months) I thought it odd that better positioning was accompanied by worsening clickthru.


Thank you, Bill, for that corroboration. Have you any guesses why your activity has slowed, other than people taking a holiday (so soon after Christmas and during pretty horrible weather for many around the country?)


David - Nice!

[billbenson]

Q1 tends to be slow in general. Companies finalizing budgets for the year, weather still isn't great in the north for products used outside in the cold like mine. Three day weekends are an invitation for workers to take an extra day or two in conjunction with the three day weekend to put a bunch of days off in a string and not cost as much vacation time. I've had a few out of office replies from emails I sent which would tend to confirm that theory.

[vangogh]

My comments were more to get everyone to see the difference in improving where one page ranks for one phrase as compared to overall traffic to the site.

I know you say you see your page at #4 or #5, but when i search business coach (without quotes) you show up much further down, somewhere on page 7 or so of the results. I wouldn't expect much traffic from that position. Your home page moves up considerably when I wrap quotes around the phrase, but it's still a few pages back and people generally aren't using quotes when they search.

You're saying non-personalized and non-local, but you have to consider how most people are searching. People who have accounts and are logged in are seeing personal results and most everyone logged in or not is seeing their local results. The average person isn't changing either. By the way when I set my location to be the United States you still show up in roughly the same positions as when my location is set to Denver.

My point with the above about the single page and phrase vs traffic for the overall site is to get you not to focus so much on a single phrase. While you put everything into ranking for the one phrase you're losing traffic from other phrases. You become so focused on making sure one tree grows taller than all others that you miss the rest of the forest withering away.

I would however think you should get more traffic from the Houston area, especially as you show up #1 when I change my location to Houston. A few thoughts about how to get more people clicking.

Your title just says BUSINESS COACH. It doesn't tell me much. The result I see below yours says What is Business Coaching. If I'm looking for information about business coaches or coaching I'm much more likely to click the second link since it looks more promising. Also your page title is in all caps, which is the equivalent of shouting. It makes you come across a bit on the snake oil side. Use title case and give me more information than the keyword.

The snippet below your link, which comes from your meta description reads:


Frederick is an experienced business coach for business owners who want to grow their business into a multi-million dollar company. Get help now!

It's a little too much about you and doesn't really make me want to click. It's also bordering on the spammy side. You don't need to use the word business 3 times there. It starts feeling forced. The Get help now! at the end also feels push. I know we always say to think of the description as a mini-ad, but it's reading a little too much like an ad now.

The description is only targeted people who are ready to hire right now. You might argue those are the only people you want to click, but in that case you should expect lower levels of traffic. I don't think you really want to target like that on the generic phrase. I would think people searching business coach aren't anywhere near ready to hire someone. The phrase is too generic. People looking to buy typically use more specific phrases. So your result while in a good position isn't really aligned well with what is likely the intent of the searcher.

Google now shows you thumbnails of the results pages. Mousing over a few of the top links, the thumbnails of the other results are more appealing than yours. Like it or not people are making quick judgements based solely on design aesthetics.

As far as the numbers you see in predicted searches you can never take them as absolutes. You can use them as a relative measure against other phrases on the list or against itself month over month. The absolute values though are much less accurate than they seem on the surface.

[vangogh]

Oddly enough, not long after writing the post above I came across this article on SEOmoz, I'm Ranking, So Where's My Traffic?! (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/im-ranking-wheres-my-traffic).

The article breaks the answer down into 3 possibilities

1. You're Not Really Ranking
2. Your Keywords Don't Deliver
3. Your Results Don't Get Clicked

Similar to what I was saying above, though naturally with a different perspective and some different details.

[Business Attorney]

Steve, thanks for the tips and the pointer to the SEOmoz article. It has always been obvious to me that the the snippet in the search results is extremely important on getting people to click through (largely because it often determines whether I click through when I am doing a search myself). I'd like to say that I have gone back and re-read and improved my description META tags to improve the chance that my snippets will deliver, but with hundreds of pages, I keep putting it off. Maybe this will be the nudge I need.

[Spider]

...I know you say you see your page at #4 or #5, but when i search business coach (without quotes) you show up much further down, somewhere on page 7 or so of the results. I wouldn't expect much traffic from that position. Your home page moves up considerably when I wrap quotes around the phrase, but it's still a few pages back and people generally aren't using quotes when they search...Oh, no! That is ridiculous! Thank you, VG, for running that, but I am so frustrated with Google - they have taken this whole concept of search and totally screwed it up. What is relevant in an unlocalized unpersonalized search in Denver is the same as everywhere else in the country, or it's not relevant.

Screw Google! I am done with them, totally.


Added: Just searched for Business Coach with my computer set as localized to Denver - result? #12. Why is a search on my computer localized for Denver, CO any different from a search on your computer localized for Denver, CO?

Madness! A total screw up!

[vangogh]

Steve, thanks for the tips and the pointer to the SEOmoz article.

Glad to offer them. SEOmoz is still one of the best seo blogs around. One of the few I make sure to read.

I'm not so great about descriptions either. Years ago I let a plugin automate them and now the task seems daunting to go back in and write them all by hand. What I need to do is start with my next post and make the descriptions part of my routine. Then I can go back and fix up older posts one by one. Descriptions can help click through. Your description may not always be what shows though. Google will grab either that, a description at the Yahoo or DMOZ directories if you're listed, or small bits of text on the page. They'll pick whichever they think matches closest to query used.


I am so frustrated with Google - they have taken this whole concept of search and totally screwed it up.

Frederick people in different places sometimes do want different results. A simple example. If you and I both search "pizza" very different results are going to be relevant most of the time. And while a business coach or web designer can work globally people still often like hiring people local to them. I don't think either of us gets punished when someone is searching for us in a different area, but rather we both get a little boost when people in our area are searching. My guess is if the personalized and localized search went away you wouldn't see those top 10 results in any location.

The main takeaway is not to get caught up so much in rankings, particularly over a single phrase or two. Where you see your page ranking isn't where I see it, or where David will see it, or where Harold or Bill will see it. What you should be thinking about now is traffic as opposed to rank and what you'd like is to pull traffic through a wide net of keyword phrases instead of focusing so intently on one or two.

[billbenson]

Spider, "screw google" is really not a good approach.

Another suggestion. There is a thread right now for adwords. To see where you really are, you could make a couple of adwords ads promoting the same page and keywords you are currently trying to get from natural SERPS. Price the ad so it will be number 3 or whereever your "business coach" term places you or you want to be.

You will get two things from this. One you will see the number of impressions for that search term. The second, you will see the number of clicks you get for that search term. If you make the ad as close as you can to what G displays in the natural SERPS and you make the keywords "business coach" or whatever you are investigating, and you use the same landing page G sends surfers to in the natrual SERPS, you will get a good feel as to your click through rate which is what it sounds like is not working for you.

With that, you can tweak you page meta title and other stuff for both G placement in the natural SERPS and CTR. Obviously you can do this for other keywords as well to see what is going on.

[Harold Mansfield]

Frederick people in different places sometimes do want different results. A simple example. If you and I both search "pizza" very different results are going to be relevant most of the time. And while a business coach or web designer can work globally people still often like hiring people local to them. I don't think either of us gets punished when someone is searching for us in a different area, but rather we both get a little boost when people in our area are searching. My guess is if the personalized and localized search went away you wouldn't see those top 10 results in any location.

The main takeaway is not to get caught up so much in rankings, particularly over a single phrase or two. Where you see your page ranking isn't where I see it, or where David will see it, or where Harold or Bill will see it. What you should be thinking about now is traffic as opposed to rank and what you'd like is to pull traffic through a wide net of keyword phrases instead of focusing so intently on one or two.

I totally do not see the same results that you see for your site.
I'm just curious, at it's best what kind of traffic was your site getting and when was that?
I don't check my stats that often, but you've made me curious where I stand and what I'm getting on a daily basis.

[Harold Mansfield]

This just in from Google today concerning constant algorithm changes to return high quality sites in the serps:

We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.

Official Google Blog: Finding more high-quality sites in search (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html)

[vangogh]

David started another thread (http://www.small-business-forum.net/search-engine-optimization/4635-google-tweaks-its-algorithm-push-low-quality-sites-down-search-results.html) on this recent change being dubbed the farmers update.

I doubt it would be anything that affects what Frederick is asking about here, since it's only just gone into effect. Still an interesting change by Google.

[lav]

Screw Google! I am done with them, totallyGoogle smoogle!!! LOL

[jpohl]

Like it or not, if you want Internet traffic, Google will be your main choice. The only other source that can give you more traffic is probably PPV traffic though something like trafficvance but expect to pay.

Back to the topic, Its assumed that bounce rate and time on site are a couple factors in googles algorithm for deciding on what pages to serve up in the serps. Two things I would suggest is to add some video if you want longer visits. The better suggestion is that you make sure that you have a purpose for every page of your site and that you have a CALL TO ACTION on each page. THere are several things you can do but one easy one is to mention related posts within the content of your post or at the end.

[Harold Mansfield]

I agree with the video suggestion. Where as before (on my music blog) I only had a video every now and then, I now have videos throughout the site and it has lengthened my time on site quite a bit and helped with my exit links. I have more exits through affiliate links by tying the two together.

Related posts also help to direct people throughout more of the site and increase page views but that is more of a blog function, since you don't have posts, but static pages, so I guess you would have to add that additional navigation to the bottom of your pages. However it is limited if there is no new content such as new articles or blog posts so it doesn't really give people a reason to come back for another visit if they don't take any action the first time.