Throughout 2014, Google made several advancements in their search engine and gave us some new reports in Google Webmaster Tools to see the results of those advancements.
Specifically, from within Webmaster Tools you can easily see when your website appeared in web search results, images search results, and mobile search results. During the first quarter of 2014, I started noticing retail jewelry websites appearing in image results more than ever before, and the Webmaster Tools reports started showing the same.
For the months of November and December 2014, I set up a special type of keyword tracking to take advantage of this new Webmaster Tools information, and today we can see the results.
The following information comes from the keyword data for more than 100 retail jeweler websites as measured from November 1, 2014 through December 31, 2014.
Impressions
This first pie chart shows the breakdown of how the websites were appearing in search results across the 3 types of search.
When you consider the number of jewelry photos on a typical website, it's no wonder that they appear in image results 75% of the time.
Organic Visitors
This next pie chart shows the percentage of people who clicked on a keyword they saw in the results.
13% of people are clicking from mobile search, 30% from regular search, and 57% from image search.
In this Nugget from last week, I showed you that mobile usage was at about 40% for the 2014 Holiday Season. That 40% was a measurement of the devices used, whereas the numbers above are a measurement of the type of search used. Obviously some people on smartphones are using google.com through the desktop interface instead of the mobile interface.
Keyword Analysis and Grouping
I organized the entire data set according to the keywords most found and added in a few of the keywords I've tracked in the past. This is the list I use:
* diamond
* diamonds
* engagement ring
* engagement rings
* fine jewelry
* jeweler
* jewelry
* jewelry store
* repair
* watch
* wedding
To further reinforce this bridal discussion I also included the word "bridal" in my research.
Web Search Impressions and Clicks
There's always a big difference between the number of impressions recorded for a keyword and the number of clicks. The impressions is the number of times a web page appears in the search results, even if the results are on page 2 where no one sees them.
The number of clicks is the true number of times someone clicked on your page.
According to the pie chart below, the number of impressions is greatest for the "jewelry" (21.35%) and "watch" (11.80%). The phrase "jewelry store" only appeared 5.17% of the time and the word "jeweler" only appeared in the impressions 1.54% of the time.
When reviewing the number of clicks to the web pages we see that "watch" only garnered 0.69% of clicks and the word "jeweler" shot up to 43.82%. The word "jewelry" was clicked on 14.97% of the time and the phrase "jewelry store" was clicked 2.32% of the time.
The keywords of "jeweler," "jewelry store," and "jewelry" are commonly associated with local searches according to these patterns:
The word "jeweler" is usually included in a search for a specific jewelry store's name, like "Perosi Jewelers." Other popular variations of the word include "jewelers near me" and "jewelers in {city name}".
The phrase "jewelry store" is usually included in a location search like "jewelry stores in Totowa". Other popular query variations include these:
* antique jewelry store
* {state} jewelry stores
* best jewelry stores
* diamond jewelry store
I found these two new keyword phrases popping into the mix this year on several sites:
* where is the nearest jewelry store
* jewelry store with layaway plan
A few years ago, it would have been unusual to see consistent long tail keyword phrases, but I'm seeing several plain English sentences across many websites. It seems like more people are learning that search results are a lot easier to find since Google Hummingbird was launched.
Small Drivers, Big Results
Did you notice the number of impressions for the diamond and engagement ring keywords in the above charts? They are very low:
Overall impressions for these keywords:
0.05% diamond
0.06% diamonds
0.06% engagement ring
0.02% engagement rings
However, when it comes to web clicks, these same phrases brought much more than expected:
1.37% diamond
1.60% diamonds
1.63% engagement ring
0.63% engagement rings
These numbers tell us that even a small percentage of impressions can still bring a reasonable percentage of people to your website. Inversely, even though the keyword "watch" had 11.80% of the impressions, it only brought 0.69% of the clicks.
Analyzing the impressions helps you if your website is getting ranked in Google. Analyzing the clicks helps you understand which keyword topics are bringing people to you.
You might not need to chase the "engagement ring" phrase if that 1.63% of clicks is bringing a satisfying amount of sales every month. On the other hand, if your watch sales are suffering, then you need to figure out why more people aren't clicking on that phrase.
I still have a lot of keyword data to share, and I'll show you the mobile results in the next Daily Golden Nugget.
