SEO and Click Thru Rates

Everything to do with using your own website to advertise your rental property. Design, usability, hosting, getting listed on the search engines, optimising your site, pay-per-click, etc, etc.
Pengman
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Joined: Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:54 pm
Location: Portland, Dorset UK

SEO and Click Thru Rates

Post by Pengman »

I've had a Wordpress website up for my property for the best part of 2 years but have got little business from it. I knew that was mainly because it needed serious SEO work doing on it and I was always too busy. Well over the past 3 weeks I've spent many hours learning and doing SEO with the Yoast Wordpress plugin and last weekend I enabled the site on the Google Search Console. In the 3 days from 6th to 9th March, in the UK only, I've had 19 impressions, 3 clicks, achieved a click-through rate of 15.8% and achieved an average position/ranking of 19.3, so just into the second page of Google results. No business as of yet, but I find these results encouraging, particularly when I read that a click through rate of 2% is considered good! Also, as we all know, it's usually the big boys who muscle their way (Trump like) to the head of the Google rankings. I guess I must be doing something right but am not totally sure. Anybody got some experience of click thru rates and/or Google rankings they'd like to share?
I came, I saw, I bought it.
Pengman
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Location: Portland, Dorset UK

Post by Pengman »

5 days later and I've had a total of 4 clicks, 41 impressions, CTR has dropped to 9.8% and average position in the search results is 18.3 (all UK only). 1 click every 2 days isn't amazing, little more than 150 per annum. Will keep monitoring. Would love to know what other's experiences are though?
I came, I saw, I bought it.
Joanna
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Post by Joanna »

I just checked our Wordpress sites (we've got 2 properties each with their own website).

Chandlerscottage.co.uk for the last 7 days got 4.72K impressions, 41 clicks, CTR 0.9% and average position of 31. Interestingly 'owners direct' features in several of the top search terms.

Bakerscottage.co.uk got 751 impressions, 5 clicks, 0.7% CTR and average position of 46.5.

Chandlers is on the coast in East Devon, Bakers is in Chester. I suspect the difference in the figures partly reflects the kind of holidays people are looking at this year - not much interest in city breaks yet!

I did some SEO when I set it them up but haven't kept up with it. I haven't used Yeost, but I'm thinking about it as a way of getting me organised.

When I originally set up the Baker's Cottage site, back in 2004, I did a lot of SEO work on it and it was usually on page 1 of Google for our main search terms and often appeared above TripAdvisor, Holiday Lettings, etc. - those were the days! Now page 1 is dominated by the big sites and the little guys like us have no chance except for very niche search terms.
Jo

Joint owner of Baker's Cottage in Chester & Chandler's Cottage in Sidmouth
Joanna
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Post by Joanna »

If I set it to UK-only the figures change quite a bit:

Chandlers 2.2K impressions, 39 clicks, 1.8% CTR and 14.7 average position.

Bakers 241 impressions, 5 clicks, 2.1% CTR and 26.2 average position.

I think that reflects the fact our appeal is mostly to the UK market.
Jo

Joint owner of Baker's Cottage in Chester & Chandler's Cottage in Sidmouth
Pengman
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Joined: Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:54 pm
Location: Portland, Dorset UK

Post by Pengman »

Joanna wrote: Now page 1 is dominated by the big sites and the little guys like us have no chance except for very niche search terms.
Absolutely right Joanna. I concentrated on search terms that, according to Google, had high usages but (for whatever reason), low competition. But great to see your results (for both UK and worldwide) and I'm sure I'll benchmark against them as I go forward.

Yes, I'd definitely recommend Yoast, but there's a lot to learn and it's definitely moved on a lot since I last dabbled with SEO work in 2000 and yourself in 2004. I guess the thing to do is to invest a lot of time get your sites up to speed, then spend a little time on a regular basis trying to keep them there.
I came, I saw, I bought it.
Pengman
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Location: Portland, Dorset UK

Post by Pengman »

Talking about Yoast, this just popped up ... 16% discount off Yoast Premium
https://yoast.com/16-sweet-reasons-to-l ... xteen-sale
I came, I saw, I bought it.
newtimber
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Post by newtimber »

Joanna wrote:If I set it to UK-only the figures change quite a bit:

Chandlers 2.2K impressions, 39 clicks, 1.8% CTR and 14.7 average position.

Bakers 241 impressions, 5 clicks, 2.1% CTR and 26.2 average position.

I think that reflects the fact our appeal is mostly to the UK market.
I see that you are setting google analytics cookie without explicit consent which I understand is not allowed under GDPR. I'm finding that not allowing google analytics unless cookies are accepted drastically reduced the impressions.
Joanna
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Post by Joanna »

We have a cookie notice with a message along the lines of 'we use cookies and if you continue using the site then you accept them'.

It isn't set so users must consent before they can use the site though - is that what you mean? I read the GDPR rules when they first came out and as far as I can remember I decided at the time that the kind of cookie notice we've got is OK for our type of site. I could be wrong though.
Jo

Joint owner of Baker's Cottage in Chester & Chandler's Cottage in Sidmouth
newtimber
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Post by newtimber »

Joanna wrote:We have a cookie notice with a message along the lines of 'we use cookies and if you continue using the site then you accept them'.

It isn't set so users must consent before they can use the site though - is that what you mean? I read the GDPR rules when they first came out and as far as I can remember I decided at the time that the kind of cookie notice we've got is OK for our type of site. I could be wrong though.
As soon as I enter the site the cookies are set; I don't think you're allowed to do this under GDPR as people have to click to accept before cookies are set. I may be wrong though...
Joanna
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Post by Joanna »

I see what you mean. When I did our GDPR review I didn't find a simple way to set that up on our sites. There are plugins around now that disable cookies until users click the consent button so I'll look into switching to one of those.

I vaguely remember something in the GDPR rules about whether the Google analytics are collecting anonymised data - I think if it's anonymised then we just had to make users aware of it rather than them having to consent. That was about 3 years ago so I might not be remembering it right. Although, that seems to fit with what I put in my GDPR documentation at the time. I think I had to switch anonymisation or IP masking on in our Google Analytics dashboard. Damned if I can find that option now though!
Jo

Joint owner of Baker's Cottage in Chester & Chandler's Cottage in Sidmouth
Pengman
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Location: Portland, Dorset UK

Post by Pengman »

Joanna wrote:Now page 1 is dominated by the big sites and the little guys like us have no chance except for very niche search terms.
I've been thinking about this and the answer must be for all the small guys to band together and sell through an online site that only represents owners, not agents, and that because of the sheer numbers of us, becomes so large that it has the appearance, both to Google and the public at large, to be one of the big guys. Maybe eventually even the biggest big guy. The irony is that 20 years ago I started what could have become such a site - I did it as a sideline but figured it needed major investment which I wasn't prepared to put in, so it became one of the first .com casualties. Any such site would have to limit itself to only taking business direct from owners though - no agents. But maybe there is such a site out there now, or one that could be such a site? The only site I use, apart from the OTAs, is Simply Sea Views (because I've got a sea view) but from what I can see most of the properties thare are put on by Sykes, so no good in my opinion. I'm heartily sick of paying 15% to the OTAs who add little if any value for it, but getting direct business, or almost direct business at a low cost, ain't easy. Anybody got a view on this?
I came, I saw, I bought it.
zebedee
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Post by zebedee »

Pengman wrote:
Joanna wrote:Now page 1 is dominated by the big sites and the little guys like us have no chance except for very niche search terms.
I've been thinking about this and the answer must be for all the small guys to band together and sell through an online site that only represents owners, not agents, and that because of the sheer numbers of us, becomes so large that it has the appearance, both to Google and the public at large, to be one of the big guys. Maybe eventually even the biggest big guy. The irony is that 20 years ago I started what could have become such a site - I did it as a sideline but figured it needed major investment which I wasn't prepared to put in, so it became one of the first .com casualties. Any such site would have to limit itself to only taking business direct from owners though - no agents. But maybe there is such a site out there now, or one that could be such a site? The only site I use, apart from the OTAs, is Simply Sea Views (because I've got a sea view) but from what I can see most of the properties thare are put on by Sykes, so no good in my opinion. I'm heartily sick of paying 15% to the OTAs who add little if any value for it, but getting direct business, or almost direct business at a low cost, ain't easy. Anybody got a view on this?
Independent Cottages is such a site. Worth looking at. Gets a lot of people looking to book who don’t want to pay commission.
Pengman
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Post by Pengman »

zebedee wrote:Independent Cottages is such a site. Worth looking at. Gets a lot of people looking to book who don’t want to pay commission.
Thanks Zebedee. I don't know how I overlooked Independant Cottages. They rank highly on Google for certain search terms too, although punters still have 2,000 cottages to choose from once they've clicked, so they're not a silver bullet. Very useful though. Thanks again!
I came, I saw, I bought it.
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