Volatility higher and rankings lower for national than cities

[Corey]

If I run the volatility tool country-wide I get a low ranking with high volatility but if I run it per city throughout the country it shows a slightly higher ranking with medium volatility. How should I perceive the meaning of this? Do Nationwide searches pull results from a wider dataset? Or maybe there's more competition for national rankings than local? Thank you.

 

[davidcronk]

Hi Corey, I'll let you know my background I'm a data analyst been working in the largest Telcos in Australia/Asia for the last 20 years. I don't know that much about SEO despite building my first website in 1993. But you only need to follow the logic - which is what you've done - to know what you have said there is true.
I would say this about volatility of SERPs I actually think that Google is giving up on free search traffic and I think there is volatility there "on purpose". All my metrics (not that much data but mainly my observation) are saying that I'm getting more impressions for less clicks and that will be because more real estate that was taken by search results is being taken by paid listings and other Google generated search replies. And the past 3-5 months its hit hard. If you believe Google Search Console one of my websites that had CTR of 0.7% is now 5 months later 0.1%

 

[Corey]

Organic is definitely under attack. I still have lots of organic sites that are thriving and growing though. My explanation for that won't get much love here so I will stow it.

This client is completely addicted to PPC so what you say makes sense. Attached, something occurred on Dec 24th for them (before I met them) and everything is just weak right now, right across the board — including their PPC. Trick is they use RapidLMS so every change is kerfuffle.

 

[davidcronk]

Its difficult to make comparisons because I think each niche will act somewhat different depending on the amount of competition which I guess is dependent on the "ability to make money" in that niche.

I was talking last night about how you can make a nice travel video and get 50 views on YouTube but then I find a video about breaking beaver dams in Lithuania and it has 300k views (real YouTube channel).

I guess it comes down to niching down and if you can still rank high for a keyword that still brings in traffic, the traffic is still there. But I would argue the traffic is ever decreasing.

 

[Corey]

Its difficult to make comparisons because I think each niche will act somewhat different depending on the amount of competition which I guess is dependent on the "ability to make money" in that niche.

I was talking last night about how you can make a nice travel video and get 50 views on YouTube but then I find a video about breaking beaver dams in Lithuania and it has 300k views (real YouTube channel).

I guess it comes down to niching down and if you can still rank high for a keyword that still brings in traffic, the traffic is still there. But I would argue the traffic is ever decreasing.

I'd have to see the video but 300K could be a lot of reasons. Check the channel average, could be organic. But could also be so many other things.

A lot of it is random. I put a 2 minute video up on how to use one of these things and it got 83,000 views.

 

[davidcronk]

I'd have to see the video but 300K could be a lot of reasons. Check the channel average, could be organic. But could also be so many other things.

A lot of it is random. I put a 2 minute video up on how to use one of these things and it got 83,000 views.

I'd say its organic for sure judging by his other videos. Just making the point that traffic is there in a niche that is very uncommon and also a difficult monetisation - this guy sells merch.

 

[Corey]

There's definitely something inorganic going on with this one I would say:

Could be it got linked by an influencer.

 

[davidcronk]

There's definitely something inorganic going on with this one I would say:

Could be it got linked by an influencer.

So that video is the Lithuanian guy that I mentioned and they have taken his content and ran their own dialogue.

Maybe the sustainability and natureconservation tags are a goldmine and its gone viral to ecowarriors once it got some traction.

But you're right not at all organic. Be interesting to see how many of the 28k subscribers came from the 2.4 mil views.