Interpreting Top Search Queries

[mobilebadboy]

I've been examining the new top search query data in Google's webmaster tools and it has led me to believe that I must be doing something wrong. Maybe, maybe not. For every X number of impressions it's showing for a particular keyword search where I rank very well, the CTR is very low -- 5% or less.

Example.

The top query for one of my sites is a three word phrase (those are the 3 words I'm targeting). I show up in the 3rd spot the majority of the time for this search (just behind the actual website I'm promoting). For the particular date range I'm looking at it's showing 320 impressions with only 22 clickthroughs, 7% (overall 480 impressions, 22 c/t, 5% -- the rest of the positions are <10).

When my result comes up it shows as (snippet is meta description):

Bobs Blue Widget
Bobs Blue Widget offers abc and xyz.
http://domain.com/directory/bobs-blue-widget.php

Three times the three word phrase shows, I'm the third result, yet I'm losing 93% of the searchers.

This particular section of this particular site is the producer of most of my income. Since I put these pages up years ago I've been very skittish about changing anything on them. I never did anything to try and get these pages to rank, they just did (as opposed to everything I try to desperately rank for and cant).

I just can't seem to grasp why I'm showing that many times, that high, and yet being overlooked over 90% of the time with all the keywords in place that the user is searching for. If I could make positive changes to influence a better CTR and not sacrifice my ranking then I would, but we know how changes go with the SEs, especially Google. Not quite sure how to move forward with this (I'm a statistics freak just for the record).

[Chris]

7% for the third place listing isn't so bad.

But, as well, without knowing for sure, maybe your rank well but it just isn't what people want. Maybe they're looking to buy a widget, not read about it, or vice versa. Maybe someone recently wrote a book called "My life as a blue widget" and that is what they're searching for.

Without knowing further details it is hard to troubleshoot.

If you wanted to experiment yourself, use adwords to try out different phrases and see which ones get the best ctr.

But 7% isn't so bad.

If we assume #2 gets twice as much, and #1 twice again. You're looking at 14 and 28%. Which add up to almost 50% of all traffic.

[mobilebadboy]

My choice of example keywords probably wasn't the best. These top positions are for online casinos; ex: "Golden Tiger Casino". If they search Golden Tiger Casino, #1) I'm boggled why they skip over the actual casino listed #1, often #2 as well, to click on mine to begin with; #2) What makes mine not want to be clicked.

Wish I could run some ads, just not financially feasible (or possible).

The positive is that most of that 7%-ish percent do clickout from my page. Not 100% sure on conversions from there, but it's not bad.

[Chris]

So you're surprised it gets clicked or you're surprised it doesn't get clicked more?

I can answer both questions.

1. It gets clicked because of your title tag, the casino name, first, and alone. The top two listings do not do this. If the surfer does not look at the URL yours seems like the most official.

2. It doesn't get clicked more because the people who do look at the URL come to the conclusion it is not a very good resource, both because of the hyphens, and the ... indicating the URL is extra long, ie, deep content. I wonder if you could get rid of the directory in the URL entirely if it would not help your CTR. Maybe a modrewrite solution?