Organic Brand Clicks/Traffic Drop - Why?

[rec123]

Hi Moz Community,

I've been reviewing Search Console and have been noticing that there has been a consistent drop in brand clicks. The overall number of keywords (especially for the top 2 pages) have been increasing, according to SEMRUSH, however, traffic and sales are still in decline.

There are no algorithmic and manual penalties, in addition, paid search activity has been increasing in the leadup to Christmas.

Has anyone experienced this and potentially advise how to diagnose and resolve this issue?

[katemorris]

Ah, so you mean brand terms as in the brands that you carry, not your own? Those are fairly large brands that sell through a number of sites, so you have a large competitive base.

You are seeing the number of different queries rise, but your traffic to the page in question is falling. I would take that to mean that the brand head terms are where you are losing the traffic. You're pulling in longer tail phrases but not enough to recover from the lose of traffic on head terms.

I doubt display has anything to do with this, it sounds like a pure SEO problem. However, with so many brand focuses at such a high level of competition, it is going to be hard to pinpoint what is wrong without an in depth SEO review. I can't provide that to you, but you might look into engaging with someone to do some in depth reviews of the traffic to your brand pages over time to pinpoint the drop started to happen, what changes might have occurred on page to create a change in relevance of the page, if there are new entrants to the market pushing your results down, or if there are any penalties or algorithmic issues with your site that might be impacting the site overall. Those are good places to start.

Best of luck, I know this industry well. Another Kate Morris runs Adore Beauty, so I've kept an eye on this field for a long time.

[rec123]

Hi Kate,

You've interpreted my question slightly differently, but it still helps. Firstly the site is The site is facialco.com.au

You are correct in that the brand terms are seeing less clicks and that impressions are improving.

Brand category pages have recently seen a slide in rankings from page 1 i.e. dermalogica, alpha- h despite seeing an overall improvement in the number of keywords from SEMRUSH and this is what helped with traffic and sales along with the lions share coming from the homepage.

I have considered about paid search cannibilization, however, accounts are linked correctly and for November we have seen improvement in organic traffic (although down 30% year on year).  There is more display search activity taking place - would this be a factor?

[katemorris]

Let me rephrase to make sure I have this right.

Using Search Console you are seeing clicks to terms with your brand in them dropping. Clicks, but not impressions. When you check SEMRush, there isn't a drop in the term's collective demand. However, your analytics shows the same traffic decline that Search Console shows and you are also seeing a sales decline.

You mention that your paid search for these terms is converting well and you are seeing more traffic there?

Have you considered that your paid search is cannibalizing your organic traffic?

If I am misunderstanding, please let me know. The more you can share about the terms you are seeing declines for, the better the problem can be diagnosed.

Thanks!