What does lower impressions on branded terms represent?

[grantcole91]

Hey everyone! Apologise if this has been answered somewhere else, if so let me know.

I work as an in-house SEO for a private healthcare company. Recently it's been a struggle to bring in consistent traffic and it's getting tougher to replicate traffic figures for the month before, let alone improve. Rankings are consistent if not improving in some areas and I've done work to maintain or improve CTR from page title and meta etc.

I've been considering a few factors and making sure I'm performing the best I can be but, using both Keyword Planner and Search Console, I've noticed that search volume and impressions for our branded terms and industry specific terms like "nursing agencies" have dropped.

My question is: Does this represent an industry trend and it's a case of trying to gain as much traffic from a diminishing pool?

If so, this might make sense. It's worth me noting that we are a national company and recently there has been a amount of negative PR around our entire industry.

[JordanLowry]

A quick search on Google trends shows a decline for the term 'nursing agencies'. I think it could certainly be external factors if your rankings have improved and held steady but traffic is declining. There could be some good content or marketing ideas though to help counteract some of the negative PR around your industry. Especially since it is a national company.

Hope that helps some.

[grantcole91]

Wow, Google trends, really shows that decline. "Nursing agencies" is our biggest non-branded keyword and, with a lot of our traffic semantically related to this, it explains the gradual decrease.

Great idea on the content. We're currently looking at being more active within the industry and getting content onto relevant blogs etc. to diversify our traffic sources and improve brand awareness.

Great to get another opinion that agrees with the theory. Much appreciated!

[JordanLowry]

Your welcome !