Better Average Position but Decline in Clicks in Search Console

It may not be a simple sine wave, but website traffic graph goes through ups and downs as in a sine wave but at a very high frequency. While the ups excite, a sudden unanticipated down trend worries the business owners and webmasters. Then is the time to dive into Google Analytics or any analytics tool to get the list of pages with maximum drop. Target keyword ranking is the metric to check to know the reason for the drop in traffic to a particular page. Two scenarios emerge here, one huge drop in the keyword ranking and the other is the keyword ranking being intact or improved. Let us park the first scenario to stick to the topic of this blog. One might wonder, why the traffic went down even though the keyword ranking is the same or improved.

What to Check in Search Console

As the routine checks include checking the page speed, bounce rate and the user flow through different pages. After concluding that nothing has changed dramatically in any of these areas, next destination to dive into numbers would be Google Search Console. One must check if the page is indexing accurately to ensure that they are not missing any potential traffic. The next step to enlighten you on what has happened is to check Search Results under Performance tab in the search console.

Here are the Steps to Follow

Keep the search type in Web
Select the dates to compare the metrics
Click on the “+ New” beside the date tab, select the page, filter from the options “URLs containing”, “URLs not containing”, “Exact URL” and Custom (Regex) based on the requirement.
Check “Total Clicks” and “Average Position”

You might be surprised to see relatively better average position but decline in clicks. One might wonder why the page didn’t receive more clicks even though the keyword fared better. Improving the keyword ranking makes it visible to a greater number of people i.e., increases impressions. You might have to dig deep to know the reason which might be a reliever.

Reasons for Better Average Position but Decline in Clicks

Get to the queries tab located below the chart, sort the queries by lowest average position. This will help you find the keywords that the page has been ranking for. You will find some of the keywords for which the page is related to have secured better positions. But the keywords which are not very closely related to the page content might not have better rankings or might have completely lost the rankings. These keywords were once considered as relevant to the page and were awarded better positions. The drop in the rankings for these keywords has nothing to do with what you might have or might not have done. The change must be attributed to how Google perceives your page. The search engine has attributed your page to many irrelevant keywords which it restrained from after an update.

Here is an example:

Page Content: Benefits of IoT in Supply Chain Management

Previous Keywords Examples:

IoT, Supply Chain IoT, Internet of Things Supply Chain, IoT Management, IoT Supply, Integrating IoT to Manufacturing, Companies using IoT in Supply Chain, IoT Value Chain, Supply Chain IoT Companies, Global Value Chain in IoT, IoT Traceability, Benefits of IoT in Supply Chain, IoT in Supply Chain Management, IoT Benefits in Manufacturing

After Algorithm Update:

Benefits of IoT in Supply Chain, IoT in Supply Chain Management, IoT Benefits in Manufacturing, Internet of Things Supply Chain

As Google tries to become smart and provide better results to the users it keeps updating the search engine algorithm. One might see little to drastic changes in the traffic after the updates. Improving the positions of relevant keywords made the average position go up, removing of irrelevant keywords reduced the clicks. This will help you bringing only quality traffic to the website which thereby increases user engagement and reduces bounce rate. This can also be cross checked in the number of goals reached through that page. You might not find any decrease in that.

Let me know your thoughts!

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