becool
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I am interested in your thoughts regarding a traffic conundrum I’ve been faced with. My site offers professional services to consumers where the competing pages shown on the SERPs for the keywords I am targeting offer the same services and provide nearly identical descriptions and calls to action. Specifically, the titles and meta descriptions shown on the SERPs do not differ much (if at all) from one competitor to another. Perhaps an imperfect parallel is “Experienced Bathroom Plumbers - Contact us today to speak with an experienced bathroom plumber and receive a free estimate!” Taking the parallel further, my site is in the plumbing niche and my money pages are geared toward the types of plumbers a consumer may require (e.g. bathroom plumbers, kitchen plumbers, toilet plumbers). Unlike plumbing, however, in my niche, the competitors all offer the same price for the same service and provide the same quality, at least with respect to what is disclosed on our websites. My supporting content (non-money) pages are pages that pertain to plumbing jobs and the pages are imperfectly optimized to avoid keyword cannibalization (because the content of each supporting page can overlap with a corresponding money page, albeit without duplication). Many of the keywords I am targeting contain geo-qualifiers, such as “New York City Bathroom Plumbers” (and the titles and descriptions listed in the SERPs, including mine, similarly contain geo-qualifiers).
The site’s link profile, on-page and rankings have steadily improved as a result of nearly two years of work. While the keywords I am targeting are relatively low volume (according to the estimates provided by AHREFs and SERPWoo), Search Console shows that the keywords are generating impressions (e.g. ranging between 1-81 impressions over the past 7-day period, when filtered by country and web search, depending on the keyword - for a total of roughly 7,000 impressions across all keywords in the last week). Further, while Search Console presents a less-than-stellar picture of the site’s rankings, the third-party trackers I utilize indicate that 2 keywords rank in the number one spot, 20 keywords rank in the top two to five spots and 31 keywords rank in the top six to ten spots (when the trackers are set to emulate searches conducted in a particular city located in the state my site services and where the business address is – although manual searches performed throughout the state suggest the rankings are similar in other cities/counties throughout the state). As of late, I appear to be on (what I hope is) the tail-end of a bounce/dance, which is likely relevant to my issue.
The site has performed poorly in terms of generating traffic thus far and I have not been able to achieve a positive ROI. The site is in (what I believe to be) a competitive niche with competitors spending significant monthly sums to achieve and maintain their rankings and nearly all of the sites that rank well have been established for decades, while my site has been established for less than two years, (factors that are probably lessrelevant to responding to my traffic conundrum, I would imagine).
To date, I have attributed the lack of traffic to the fact that my keywords have not reached many first position spots. My reasoning has been that since the competing sites shown in the SERPs for my targeted keywords all provide the same services and employ nearly identical titles and descriptions, users are inclined to click on the first site shown in the SERPs (almost always a competitor) and end up hiring a competitor (because there really is no need to view other sites unless the user requires a different type of service, is dissatisfied with the competitor’s service page or is shopping around, which is less likely in my niche, despite the plumber parallel referenced above). To the extent a user makes his/her way down to my site, I would imagine, the services they’re searching for are particularized and are different than the services my competitors offer and therefore, are different than the services I offer, resulting in skipping over my site/link, a click/page view and bounce or potentially filling out a pop-up form on my site and culminating in a request for services that I don’t necessarily offer, which explains some of the semi-irrelevant leads I have received in the past.
It’s worth noting that aside from targeting other keywords (e.g. long-tails), there’s very little that can be done by way of differentiating myself from the competition, at least that I can think of (and I am not really at the conversion optimization stage yet). Additionally, geography is especially important to my site and the competing sites because the services we offer are generally state-specific. Consequently, only 8 of the 70 “new users” (who reached my site through organic search since August 1, 2018 according to Analytics) initiated the search from within the state I service. Given that my pages almost always specify the area within which I provide services, a person/user situated outside of the state I service will leave the page relatively quickly after clicking on my site (hence 62 unhelpful “new users” displayed in Analytics in the last month).
My experience in the niche as well as the substance of the keywords I am targeting suggest that brand-loyalty isn’t a massive factor (in that users probably are not searching for “New York City Bathroom Plumbers” and then clicking on a particular website due to brand-loyalty/familiarity). (This statement would probably make more sense if I revealed my niche/site).
What are your thoughts regarding my thinking that the site is not generating traffic because I need to secure more number one spots (because users/consumers/searchers in my niche aren’t going to click on the 3rd or 5th page listed in the SERPs as outlined above) unlike a site geared toward a niche with competitors that can and do differentiate themselves and there’s more room for product-service differences? Admittedly, the appropriate course of action, I think, would be to wait and see if I am correct as my rankings continue to increase with aggressive white-hat marketing that is ongoing, but this has been a lengthy and costly undertaking for me that I have not made a dime from. It’s especially daunting because had I diverted the funds elsewhere toward less competitive sites (with potentially more volume), I would have likely achieved an ROI by now. What am I missing?
Thanks and sorry for the length of this post.
The site’s link profile, on-page and rankings have steadily improved as a result of nearly two years of work. While the keywords I am targeting are relatively low volume (according to the estimates provided by AHREFs and SERPWoo), Search Console shows that the keywords are generating impressions (e.g. ranging between 1-81 impressions over the past 7-day period, when filtered by country and web search, depending on the keyword - for a total of roughly 7,000 impressions across all keywords in the last week). Further, while Search Console presents a less-than-stellar picture of the site’s rankings, the third-party trackers I utilize indicate that 2 keywords rank in the number one spot, 20 keywords rank in the top two to five spots and 31 keywords rank in the top six to ten spots (when the trackers are set to emulate searches conducted in a particular city located in the state my site services and where the business address is – although manual searches performed throughout the state suggest the rankings are similar in other cities/counties throughout the state). As of late, I appear to be on (what I hope is) the tail-end of a bounce/dance, which is likely relevant to my issue.
The site has performed poorly in terms of generating traffic thus far and I have not been able to achieve a positive ROI. The site is in (what I believe to be) a competitive niche with competitors spending significant monthly sums to achieve and maintain their rankings and nearly all of the sites that rank well have been established for decades, while my site has been established for less than two years, (factors that are probably lessrelevant to responding to my traffic conundrum, I would imagine).
To date, I have attributed the lack of traffic to the fact that my keywords have not reached many first position spots. My reasoning has been that since the competing sites shown in the SERPs for my targeted keywords all provide the same services and employ nearly identical titles and descriptions, users are inclined to click on the first site shown in the SERPs (almost always a competitor) and end up hiring a competitor (because there really is no need to view other sites unless the user requires a different type of service, is dissatisfied with the competitor’s service page or is shopping around, which is less likely in my niche, despite the plumber parallel referenced above). To the extent a user makes his/her way down to my site, I would imagine, the services they’re searching for are particularized and are different than the services my competitors offer and therefore, are different than the services I offer, resulting in skipping over my site/link, a click/page view and bounce or potentially filling out a pop-up form on my site and culminating in a request for services that I don’t necessarily offer, which explains some of the semi-irrelevant leads I have received in the past.
It’s worth noting that aside from targeting other keywords (e.g. long-tails), there’s very little that can be done by way of differentiating myself from the competition, at least that I can think of (and I am not really at the conversion optimization stage yet). Additionally, geography is especially important to my site and the competing sites because the services we offer are generally state-specific. Consequently, only 8 of the 70 “new users” (who reached my site through organic search since August 1, 2018 according to Analytics) initiated the search from within the state I service. Given that my pages almost always specify the area within which I provide services, a person/user situated outside of the state I service will leave the page relatively quickly after clicking on my site (hence 62 unhelpful “new users” displayed in Analytics in the last month).
My experience in the niche as well as the substance of the keywords I am targeting suggest that brand-loyalty isn’t a massive factor (in that users probably are not searching for “New York City Bathroom Plumbers” and then clicking on a particular website due to brand-loyalty/familiarity). (This statement would probably make more sense if I revealed my niche/site).
What are your thoughts regarding my thinking that the site is not generating traffic because I need to secure more number one spots (because users/consumers/searchers in my niche aren’t going to click on the 3rd or 5th page listed in the SERPs as outlined above) unlike a site geared toward a niche with competitors that can and do differentiate themselves and there’s more room for product-service differences? Admittedly, the appropriate course of action, I think, would be to wait and see if I am correct as my rankings continue to increase with aggressive white-hat marketing that is ongoing, but this has been a lengthy and costly undertaking for me that I have not made a dime from. It’s especially daunting because had I diverted the funds elsewhere toward less competitive sites (with potentially more volume), I would have likely achieved an ROI by now. What am I missing?
Thanks and sorry for the length of this post.
