SEO CTR Case Study

SEOMadHatter · Dec 2, 2019

A pretty simple one.

There have been a bunch of case studies done on this in the last couple of years and a whole lot of variables that could be screwing with the results. For the most part, I listened to the case studies. The little testing I'd done on this in the past suggested it wasn't worth the time and I moved on.

Since then I got a tip a fairly big SEO firm uses CTR as their go-to in-house strategy and generally I don't trust things I don't see with my own eyes.

The Test

I've got a site that has had no other changes to it for about 9 months. So barring Google algo shifts any changes we see here is likely related.

I'm sending a daily stream of clicks through to my site. The search volume is relative to the target keywords, most of the traffic is from T1 countries and they'll sometimes randomly visit sites in the #1 and #2 spots before going to mine.

Taking a few keywords. Some are bottom of page 1 others range around page 2-3. I'll keep it running for a month or two and see what happens.

I'll update if anything shifts. Not really too sure what to expect here. My gut says there'll be little change if any but let's find out. Setup some rank tracking and letting it go.

Ashway · Dec 2, 2019

Are you using a bot with proxies?

If yes than it would be damn interesting to know if ranking moves

Nut-Nights · Dec 2, 2019

OP I would follow. But I have small opinon here, How can you say improvement is from ctr or links or some update or some other thing?

SEOMadHatter · Dec 2, 2019

Ashway said:
Are you using a bot with proxies?

If yes than it would be damn interesting to know if ranking moves

It'll be going through residential proxies. I'll maybe expand this to mobile at some point but let's see how this goes.

Nut-Nights said:
OP I would follow. But I have small opinon here, How can you say improvement is from ctr or links or some update or some other thing?

The site hasn't had a change in 9 months, it's highly unlikely to get an organic backlink and if you're going to rule out Google updates then you have to disregard basically every case study since we can't control that. I'm not doing anything with this site at the moment other than check the rankings once in a while.

pravinlpatel · Dec 2, 2019

Does it not going to harm if you're running Adsence?

Tishina · Dec 2, 2019

There are case studies about this: You need continuous supply of high CTR rate to push a low ranking page to the top so it stays there. If the CTR falls, the ranking will follow too.

SEOMadHatter · Dec 2, 2019

pravinlpatel said:
Does it not going to harm if you're running Adsence?

We can skip that entirely - I'm not running Adsense. I don't understand anyone who uses Adsense outside of specific traffic types.

Tishina said:
There are case studies about this: You need continuous supply of high CTR rate to push a low ranking page to the top so it stays there. If the CTR falls, the ranking will follow too.

Yes, I've heard this before but I don't agree with the premise or the original test.

If (and that's an if) this improves the rank and gets pages from page 2-3 then it's being given a better chance to get real user interaction. If I know my content answers the search better than some of the stuff on page 1 but it just doesn't have the backlinks to rank. If I can push it there and it performs better than the existing stuff - in theory, Google should want to keep it there if it's using user metrics.

Plus - even if I did believe the premise it'll cost a lot less to inflate the CTR than I'd make from the niche so it'd still be worthwhile.

assaultclass · Dec 2, 2019

Following. Should be an interesting case study.

SEOMadHatter · Dec 3, 2019

Bit of an interesting moment today when I checked in on the analytics and saw an uptick on these keywords coming from SEO.

It worked that quickly?! No. Of course, it didn't. This is going to fuck with my analytics because I'm sending traffic through those keywords.

In my defence, it was about 8AM and I hadn't had my coffee. At any rate it looks like the setup is working so I'm going to set some rank alerts up and leave this sit for a while.

assaultclass said:
Following. Should be an interesting case study.

Like most SEO case studies it's going to be like watching paint dry for a while but the results might be interesting.

Enchanter · Dec 3, 2019

Interesting. Will be following.

SEOMadHatter · Dec 3, 2019

Sarah Boyer said:
I would followalong with However, I have opinon that is small here do you state advancement is out of any upgrade or links or ctr or another entity?

This bot just spun @Nut-Nights answer. Is this a thing I've never spotted before? Seems like an obvious thing to do but I've not actually seen it.

ritafairclough · Dec 3, 2019

Are you using a bot to send the clicks? I know you are using proxies, just asking about the way you are doing it.

SEOMadHatter · Dec 3, 2019

ritafairclough said:
Are you using a bot to send the clicks? I know you are using proxies, just asking about the way you are doing it.

Considered a couple of ways of doing it but I need it to be T1 traffic so yeah I'm using a bot but it'll look incredibly human-like especially compared to your average CTR services.

fb3003 · Dec 3, 2019

@SEOMadHatter - what do you mean by T1 traffic?

for such tests, my understanding is that you or your bot would be searching for your keyword in google and then click on it, and then click trough few pages...
stop
change proxy
repeat

am I missing something? are you doing it differently?

i did such a test, but because the bot was using proxies, it hurt the ranking..

rand fishkin (moz) did a similar test few years ago, using real people, and the result = ctr does have a positive impact on serp.

SEOMadHatter · Dec 3, 2019

fb3003 said:
@SEOMadHatter - what do you mean by T1 traffic?

for such tests, my understanding is that you or your bot would be searching for your keyword in google and then click on it, and then click trough few pages...
stop
change proxy
repeat

am I missing something? are you doing it differently?

i did such a test, but because the bot was using proxies, it hurt the ranking..

rand fishkin (moz) did a similar test few years ago, using real people, and the result = ctr does have a positive impact on serp.

By T1 I'm talking about the countries. This is mostly US/UK/CA/NZ traffic.

Some will go directly to mine others will bounce around the SERPS before settling on mine eventually. I ran a similar test a long time ago and it had the same result. The bot was obvious and Google seemed to agree because the rankings tanked until I turned it off and it bounced back. Yep, accidental negative SEO.

There's a lot of different variables here, those case studies were a while ago and apparently a big in-house firm does this shit so I figured it was worth checking.

Lauren11 · Dec 3, 2019

Following, I thought of doing this recently, can u tell me which bot you are using?

Zera Api · Dec 3, 2019

Does the traffic penetrate the inner pages too ...

fb3003 · Dec 4, 2019

SEOMadHatter said:
By T1 I'm talking about the countries. This is mostly US/UK/CA/NZ traffic.

Some will go directly to mine others will bounce around the SERPS before settling on mine eventually. I ran a similar test a long time ago and it had the same result. The bot was obvious and Google seemed to agree because the rankings tanked until I turned it off and it bounced back. Yep, accidental negative SEO.

There's a lot of different variables here, those case studies were a while ago and apparently a big in-house firm does this shit so I figured it was worth checking.

i think those big-in house firms do this, using their own private proxies. i would not even be surprised if this is done manually using cheap labor, without any bot involvement.

fb3003 · Dec 4, 2019

Lauren11 said:
Following, I thought of doing this recently, can u tell me which bot you are using?

i used googlesearchbot , which sucked ass. major negative impact on serp.

SEOMadHatter · Dec 4, 2019

Lauren11 said:
Following, I thought of doing this recently, can u tell me which bot you are using?

It's a custom setup I'm afraid. Just something rough to see if it's worth looking at.

HatArrows said:
Does the traffic penetrate the inner pages too ...

It tries to look human which means it'll sometimes browse around the inner pages as well.

fb3003 said:
i think those big-in house firms do this, using their own private proxies. i would not even be surprised if this is done manually using cheap labor, without any bot involvement.

They might well but I've been doing this long enough I don't necessarily think doing it manually is better than good automation. As for proxies - that also might be true but I'd rather have residentials.

fb3003 said:
i used googlesearchbot , which sucked ass. major negative impact on serp.

It sounds like a great result to me.

SEO CTR Case Study

Elite Member

Power Member

Elite Member

Elite Member

Regular Member

Regular Member

Elite Member

BANNED

Elite Member

Supreme Member

Elite Member

Senior Member

Elite Member

Elite Member

Elite Member

Regular Member

Failed to resolve a dispute resolution thread.

Elite Member

Elite Member

Elite Member

Main Menu

Marketplace

Making Money

BlackHat World