Number 1 - but sales have tanked for my UK site

[MrFewkes]

Hi - anyone in the UK seeing a sales drop off recently (last week or two)?

I got a site to number 1 from number 2 in google about 3 weeks ago - but sales have really fallen.

Is it because im number 1 now - or is it because its the holiday period?

From the past - I have noticed not much difference between sales at position 1 or 2 in G - but this is REALLY bad!

Any UK site owners seeing anything similar?

(Traffic is slightly up since hitting the top - say 7% or so more)

[tedster]

Traffic is up 7% and sales are down? Have you zeroed in on Google Search traffic for just that keyword - and only to that page - or are you just reporting a general traffic figure?

[MrFewkes]

Hi Tedster - general traffic as shown in the AWstats logs.

I think there "could" be an increase in the number of phrases the page is ranking for which are less productive - but even so - from 1 or 2 sales per day to just 1 sale in 12 days :/

I really only monitor the 1 keyword phrase - a two worder - the others (I think theres around 50 in the list) are deviations of those two words with additional words etc.

The main 2 word phrase gets about 80% of the total traffic to the site.

[tedster]

In order to analyze what you are seeing, and whether there's any connection between going to #1 and the loss of sales, you will need to drill down into you data and get more "granular".

Maybe some traffic became very poorly targeted. Maybe it's a temporary shift in buying patterns. Maybe there's a technical problem with your point-of-sale page. You need to dig to find truly actionable data.

[Planet13]

Out of curiosity, has there been a sudden increase in the number of adwords ads that appear ABOVE the organic results that coincided with the move from #2 to #1?

(Or has there just been a significant increase in the amount of adwords ads altogether?)

And what sort of text is it showing in the snippet below your listing? Is it a good sample of text? Or is it pretty bad?

[Dan01]

Is all of your traffic from organic results or do you pay for any traffic?

Also, perhaps people were buying after entering via some other keywords - perhaps those keywords disappeared from the results - unless you are sure your sales are coming from the keywords you monitor.

[MrFewkes]

I checked out the adwords - I think its the chinese again selling for nothing above me.

I dont know how they do it - the adwords costs alone would wipe me out and I sell for double the price and ship locally - they have to pay adwords and ship from china!

Ok - how about this - I advertise a free competition - I will enter anyone into a free once a month draw. Anyone buying in that month will be entered into the months draw and be given another item - worth about 120 USD (about £60) if they win the draw.

Does anyone think this could boost my sales?

[londrum]

it might just be the economy MrFewkes. I have a UK site and my traffic tanked a bit this last month too. i've put that down to my page speed doubling (because of server issues)... but remember that we had those week-long riots in the first/second week of august. that definitely affected my sales throughout the month because people stayed away from the capital... but maybe you sell something different to me.

[MrFewkes]

Hi Londrum - traffic hasnt tanked - sales have (just to clarify).

Do you think a comp may work? Have you any experience of that sort of thing?

[AlyssaS]

Have you checked the obvious - like the product you are promoting is still available?

If you are affiliate marketing, it sometimes easy to miss that the product you are selling is out of stock, or the vendor has moved the page and your link points to the old one, and returns a 404.

[MrFewkes]

Alyssas - I import and stock the product for resale. Whilst I do some affiliate gear - this is not a part of that side of the business as I am phasing affiliate marketing out due to scammers and shavers.

[AlyssaS]

^^ Ok. You need to find out at what point visitors are abandoning your site. Do they get as far as the checkout, or do they leave before then?

If they arn't even getting to checkout then the traffic is mismatched to what you are selling, or your sales copy isn't really doing a good job, or it could be price. If they are abandoning at checkout it might be a technical glitch or could be as simple as your SSL certificate not being up to date (I mention this because it happened to someone I know).

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I think 24 sales in 2 weeks down to 1 sale in two weeks is too small a sampling to draw any conclusions from on just 2 weeks data.

You had higher expectations from the #1 spot but I've seen (and felt) this disappointment before. Did Google alter your title or snippet text with the upgrade in rank? Did Google give you #1 for the exact words but lower your score for the derivative keywords? Basically you need to see if anything besides rank is different and fix it if you can. I don't think you will find anything you can control however since Google is lessening how much webmasters have control over with every passing month. It's time for you to spread your efforts out to other keywords.

[anallawalla]

Your organic position alone isn't all that matters. Compare your title and snippet against the ones lower than you. They might have more compelling text.

[MrFewkes]

Thanks all.

Ok - heres the lowdown from all the points above.

1. Its paypal "Buy Now" buttons. That is always up and running.
2. NO SSL - I have never had this - in two years it hasnt been an issue - paypal handle it all.
3. I agree somewhat - two weeks is a small sample - but the clock is still ticking and 1 sale yesterday is a boost - but still decimated.
4. No - google hasnt changed anything I can see in either the title or snippet - I have just checked again though to make certain this is true.
5. The exact words - I rank for at number 1 - there are others - and they will sell aswell - but they are few and far between - like 4 or 5 phrases and I still rank for them.
6. Just info - lets say I sold water pistols - I rank 1 for "water pistols" "green water pistols" "big water pistols". This is EXACTLY how it is. It really doesnt get any better for being accurate in what I sell and what they searched for - any more accurate is not possible - its the top of the tree.
7. My neighbours are amazon affiliates - another of my sites - adwords bidders. Nothing special - really - just PRICE :( I have to pay 30% total import duty and vat - they do not.

LOL Kickaxe - I think you are right - time to spread my efforts - but not with keywords - time to get a job.

[MrFewkes]

Can anyone speculate for me as to whether a competion draw would help?

I can do the work in a day or so - but my worry is that by adding extra content - I will lose my rank for some reason only google would know.

Its this which stops me experimenting and offering new things.

Having said this - the irony is that ive got nothing to lose now sales have gone.

[Planet13]

Hi there, MrFewkes:

Firstly, congrats on getting to the #1 spot.

Is this the same site that you had mentioned in this thread: that new links were not effective in improving rankings about a month back or two back? I remember you saying that you had pointed a link or two at a particular site and that you didn't see any improvement right away.

I think a competition would help, not hurt, but I think the challenge is how you are going to PROMOTE the competition. I don't know how much traffic you get on a daily basis.

I know you said that traffic isn't a problem, but that sales are. Still, I would just kindly suggest that maybe if you could use the competition to better promote traffic, it might also increase sales as well.

Are you sure that the keywords for which you currently rank #1 are the keywords people that BUYERS were using to find your site on those days when you were selling 1 or 2 items per day? Meaning, have you looked through google analytics at the $ Index for your keywords and seen which actual keywords bring in money?

[AlyssaS]

^^ You can have your competition on Facebook. Put an image on your site saying "visit our Facebook page to take part in our competition", and make it a clickable link to your Facebook fanpage.

On your Facebook fanpage you can organise the entire thing, using custom tabs. You can even set up a shopping cart on there. (I'm trying out payvment, which is free facebook shopping cart software, as they are still in beta - they allow you to accept payment by paypal, debit card and credit card, and they have the verizon stuff too).

So get the customers to your facebook fanpage, and then do the whole process from competition to sale there.

[londrum]

this is probably a dumb question, but are you sure that you're number one?
you might be looking at personalised serps. make sure that all of that is turned off

[Planet13]

this is probably a dumb question, but are you sure that you're number one?

I would argue that is possibly a GREAT question.

[MrFewkes]

Planet - yes - it is the site I had problems ranking. Twitter (I think) sorted it in the end. But I did so many different things offsite that I am not certain which action contributed the most - maybe it was all the things combined.

The daily uniques is about 40 from the exact match "word1 word2" phrase. The external kw tool exact match / local results is 1900 per month - so 40x30 1200 for me at number 1.

Yes - I am 100% certain that these words are what the buyers were using - and still are.

I will never use google anal for this or any of my sites. They are only trying to find out what words are worth anything for their own gain in the longrun - if they wish to pay me for the information they can - if not - they can swivel on a thorny stick.

Yes - I am number 1 in FF and IE - on different computers with all cookies cleared. My FF - I never click my sites. I checked on a friends PC to be certain. I have made this mistake in the past but not this time.

I will look into the facebook fanpage things. Is there really going to be a working fanpage for waterpistols though? :)

[pageoneresults]

From 1 or 2 sales per day to just 1 sale in 12 days.

Me? I'd be looking at the ordering process to make sure nothing broke. That type of drop in sales is usually indicative of a technical issue, especially if you moved from the 2 to 1 spot. I've always seen a noticeable uptick in sales when moving from 2 to 1 and a downtick when moving from 1 to 2.

Is there really going to be a working fanpage for water pistols though?

There's a fan page for everything, isn't there? Just make it the best one! :)

[MrFewkes]

Pageone - thanks - its all paypal - nothing is broken at all on that side of things.

Last time this happened I had been hacked. My .htaccess contained lines which said if the referrer was google (amongst about 200 others) the user was redirected to a chinese virus page.

Ive checked for that aswell - all is clean!