Leon Quick question, one of my sites just dropped in ranking from page 1, position 1 to page 1, position 2 but the traffic has barely decreased. I'm still receiving roughly the same amount of visitors per day but my position has changed on Google search engine. Weird. Do you guys think position 1 is overrated? What's your opinions? 2 👍🏽218 💬🗨📰👈
Bowie Position 1 is just the best position for visibility in search. It's not that it's overrated, it's that data shows that historically users will click on the first listing the most often. What's the real story is if that traffic is driving your goals and intentions forward. Leon ✍️ » Bowie Just thinking though, if it that's the case, spot 1 should be getting more visits due to higher visibility, but it's showing to me spot 2 still is maintaining almost the exact same of amount of visitors. And if I was fullfilling the intent in the first place, why the drop in position. I thought my site should of maintained its position dunno though so many factors I suppose
Bowie » Leon I think you're going too granular with this, to be honest. If you're in spots 1-3, it's a job well done and you won't typically see large changes in any sort of behavior. Also, the fluctuation could be as simple as they have fresher content than you. There's a million little things that determine these movements. As long as you're not dipping 10 slots in a short period of time, I'd just plug away. 🤔
Edward Relevancy is replacing rank thanks to customized search. So the % of traffic you capture is becoming far less dependent on your Search Engine Result Page (SERP) position for a specific keyword and far more dependent on you fufilling the user's intent. Not suggesting rank doesn't factor in, because it still has a massive impact. Just trying to offer you an explanation as to how #2 may not really be #2 and how as long as you are in the top results you can continue to benefit & grow regardless of precise position. Precise rank/position is getting harder & harder to calculate, even with rank tracker services, as it's one device's opinion in one geographic area. Yes they try to remove settings that skew the data and give you an average rank understanding, but ultimately I may see you as #1, you may see you as #2 and someone else might see you as #8 for the same keyword or phrase. Position is absolutely overrated vs. relevancy. 🤔
Leon ✍️ » Edward Whoah man, very deep insight thank you very much. I'm gonna digest that
Mike 🎩 It may not have moved down for the majority of searchers. The SERPs are not static. What your rank tracker is telling you is not necessarily what everyone is seeing.
Leon ✍️ » Mike I've searched from my mobile, using Chrome and my friend searched on mobile too using Chrome, both display the same results.
Truslow 🎩 It often depends upon the type of thing you've got, too. For example, some searches are "comparison" type searches. A person is looking for a specific product but they aren't going to just grab the first one they look at. They're going to try 3 or 4 different sites first and look for best price, best shipping deal, and so on. Now… if we can't "beat" the people in the top with price and shipping, but we can match it – the ideal position to be in is #3 or #4. They aren't going to buy #1 or #2 right off. They're going to look around a bit. By the time they reach 3 or 4 though, they start to realize – these are all going to cost me pretty much the same – so I might as well just get this one – and they're on my site – so now I win the sale. In this case too, all 4 of those top sites likely have similar click-through rates. The searcher probably tried all of them to get the price and see if free shipping was available. Now… this is a bit less true today that it might have been 10 years ago before all the enhanced listings and things got in the way. The above is just an example of how being in the #1 spot isn't always the place you want to or even need to be. There are still many scenarios out there where this type of thing could very well still be in play. Maybe someone is researching something to find out exactly what the facts are – and, you're the third or fourth. They check the first few to make sure everyone agrees on the facts in general and then end up satisfied on that third or fourth listing. So now, they want to share the fact with their friends and you earned the link by being the page the person was on when they finally decided, "Okay… I know enough about this to say this is what's going on, so let's share this and talk about it in my blog or social media or wherever." I can't find the article now – it was quite a few years back. I can't remember if it was something Danny Sullivan wrote up or Matt Cutts. Either way – they talked about how Google would sometimes experiment with that top position to leverage and capitalize on just that – the "compare the facts" type searches. And the basic gist of it suggested that in some specific cases, Google might put the page it considers to be the best example in that #3 or #4 spot simply because it assumes you're not going to take it on total faith that it's the best until you've gotten some extra background info first. How much of that still goes on? I haven't heard them talking about it much lately, but I can still think of plenty of scenarios where it would be useful to experiment with this type of thing (and also rank certain things this way) – so I can't imagine they would have stopped completely. Point is – number one is nice. Sometimes – being a couple spots down might actually be better for your bottom line. Keep in mind too – in scenarios like the one I've described – traffic doesn't matter all that much either. Sure, they MIGHT be skipping that first listing and going right for you as others suggest. But they also might be hitting it, coming out smarter and better for it, and STILL going to yours afterwards. And then, they may very well be moving onto that third. It's not the traffic that matters – it's the conversions – it's being the one they stopped at at the END of their search journey. That's what matters.
