High Rankings, Search Volumes & Low CTR

[quickmobile]

I'm hitting a roadblock: I've successfully optimized our company website for 5 keyphrases, 3 of which we're ranking #1 in Google.com for, and for which monthly search volumes in the US are > 10,000. Yet, our CTR for those searches is below 1%!!!

In plain words: people are looking for our industry, find us on as the first result, yet don't click on us! It's the first time I've experienced this in SEO and I'm wondering what is going on - and if anyone has suggestions.

Any help is appreciated...

[AdoptionHelp]

That's pretty weird...

1. Perhaps googles estimates for traffic are incorrect and overstated.

2. Maybe your title and meta description needs some work so that searchers are more enticed to click to your site.

[EGOL]

Not knowing your experience level... my guesses are.....

Your search volume estimates are broad match and your rankings are personalized.

If those are both false then this is a very unusual case.

[Cornel_Ilea]

Hi Florent,

To calculate your CTR you shouldn't compare Google estimates with you traffic.

Google Webmaster tools gives you an exact CTR number

Take a look at this http://i.imgur.com/wWZzr.png

Cornel

[Andropenis_Australia]

What is your website visitor counter like per month? Same as the source you are getting this info from ?

Look at the site above you (adowrds )and below you, if you were looking for your services/products, who would you click on, honestly ?

Probably just an off CTR counter, wherever you are getting the info from.

[quickmobile]

Hi Ryan,

1. Yes, agreed

2. It might be that but still it's odd that out of a few thousand searches we only get about a few dozen clicks as #1...

Will dig in further

[quickmobile]

My volume estimates are from the Google Adwords tool - so I guess they could be broad? My rankings aren't personalized, in fact I've done them through the incognito window in Chrome on google.com and even tried through a proxy in the US (we're based in Canada) - still we rank #1 for 3 major keyphrases. I guess it could be that our page title needs work but I'm worried that if I change it might impact our ranking position...

[quickmobile]

Hi Cornel,

The Google Webmaster tool indeed looks more accurate - but it doesn't give me an average search volume on Google, moreover it only provides with the impressions of our website for relevant key searches.

Furthermore, the Avg position on there doesn't seem accurate, as it displays 2.5 for one of our keyphrases, even though we've consistently been ranking #1 for the past 6 weeks.

What I don't understand is why the Google adwords tool would give an average search volume of 15,000 in the US for keyword X when the webmaster tool gives me an impression rate of 360 for the same keyword. The two should correlate, shouldn't they?

[Cornel_Ilea]

Hi Florent,

For me if Webmaster tools shows me 1600 impressions and I'm on the first page, that means 1600 people searched for the term, I consider that search volume, this doesn't apply to search results where I'm not on he first page.

A 2.5 position can be real even if you are no1 for 6 weeks. The reason being is personalized results, you can be no1 on your results and be no 3,4 on other people results.

Are you sure that 15.000 searches are 'exact match' searches?