How Much Does CTR Affect Your Google Rankings? Brafton case

How Much Does CTR Affect Your Google Rankings? Brafton case pixelwork

How Much Does CTR Affect Your Google Rankings? Brafton case

This is a company case brafton which discovered the importance and effect of click-through rate on Google search:

Well, I took a very intimate look at Google, and saw everything I needed to know.

When you spend enough time digging into Google Analytics, you're bound to reach a point where you scratch your head and question everything you thought you knew. And if you're like me, then you make sure to turn to your colleagues with your ramblings as you investigate their mysteries.

This time, to save my colleagues from the research work, I allowed myself to find out for myself and this is what I found. This may answer questions you've also had.

I was scanning our blog's search presence data from January, when an anomaly jumped out at me:

 

Big numbers always catch our attention, as was the case with the first item on this list. But Double the impressions of the second best? We must have done something right. TRUE?

But wait a minute, you just got 16 clicks, for a CTR of 0.01%. Hmm, my first thought was that it must have ranked on the second or third page for a generic term that gets a ton of searches. We've seen that before.

Wait a second… Does this post also have an average of 4.0 position for all queries?! That's impossible. How could an article rank in the top five results and get close to 110,000 impressions, but have no clicks?

Well, now we obviously have to figure out which queries we are ranking for.

 

That?! Do you classify yourself among the first 4 positions on the first page from google with the keyword “LinkedIn”? It's amazing, and also explains why no one is clicking on the article – people are searching for LinkedIn, not Brafton, clearly.

So how does a very specific article, written by our humble content specialist, end up on the first page of results for a keyword in this case the name of one of the largest websites in the world? From a business point of view, this article is useless, but there seems to be a deeper story.

First of all, we need to isolate the time period and do some analysis.

 

Well, now it's getting weirder... All the impressions occurred in a single day.

Let's go back and analyze: The article was published at noon on December 16, generated 100,000 impressions, and then drops completely in less than 24 hours. As?! Did someone release the item to Mordor?

Most likely, the rankings have fallen. Let's analyze the average position of the article over time...

 

Okay, it was ranked in the 3rd-4th position for the keyword “LinkedIn” during one day, and generated 100,000 impressions, but no one clicked on the article. So then?

 

It went from ranking 3.8 to the third page.

Just for the sake of thoroughness – and sanity – let's go through our timeline again.

  1. An article was published on December 16.
  2. That article ranked at the top of the first page of Google for the keyword “LinkedIn.”
  3. Nobody clicked on it.
  4. In less than 24 hours, I change the ranking to the third page.

Here is the only factor that changed: Nobody clicked on the search result. Nothing was changed in the article. The website was not reviewed. Domain authority didn't fall off a cliff. There was no tsunami. Nothing happened.

It is clear that the article was not a good result for visitors searching LinkedIn, the click rate confirmed this and Google corrected the ranking. All in one day. How did you get there in the first place? I'm sure I don't know – that's a mystery for another day. But that, ladies and gentlemen, is how powerful click rate is as a ranking signal.

There are teams of people who try everything to achieve this. And Brafton stumbled over this like a bear tripping over a log.