Why Fewer Clicks Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Less Business

by Cory Wasielczyk, Digital Media Strategist, Pink Dog Digital

In the old days, back before I had even dreamed of a career in marketing, Google’s rise was one of the best things to ever happen to the internet. Remember Ask Jeeves? Altavista?

I think most of us have forgotten just how janky search used to be before Google showed up and the ten blue links became a goldmine!

Why Google Doesn’t Feel the Same Anymore

As Google consolidated market share, they introduced a ton of new features. Many of those features were genuinely really helpful for businesses and users alike. I’m thinking of Core Updates that cracked down on spam, as well as the local map pack feature.

But there were also a lot of updates that hurt businesses trying to reach their customers, starting arguably in 2012 with the Knowledge Graph.

Before Knowledge Graphs, Google was basically a conduit. They were a middleman whose job was to get users to the website they wanted quickly and efficiently.

But the rollout of Knowledge Graphs was the first sign that Google wanted to keep users on its own platform instead. Featured Snippets, Google My Business, the failed Google+ social network, and now AI Overviews and AI mode all follow from the same idea: keep users here, on Google, not out there.

Understandably, that’s spooked a lot of small business owners (especially here in Baltimore) watching their organic traffic shrink. And it has only accelerated with AI Overviews/AI Mode. We’ve seen most of our clients with less traffic now than they did one year ago – even those who have diligently committed to a regular content cadence.

Less Traffic Doesn’t Mean Less Business

However, we’ve also seen another shift: clients are also reporting more business than ever, and we can trace a lot of that success to the SEO work we’ve been doing.

So, where’s the disconnect?

For me, it comes back to how our industry has reported success for years. The KPI we told clients to watch was traffic. More traffic, in theory, meant more chances to convert. More eyeballs, more shots at a sale. And we had plenty of ways to nudge that conversion rate up once people arrived: sharper copy, cleaner page layouts, clearer paths to the “buy” button.

But SEOs like me all optimized for traffic directly. We wrote broad content to capture high search volume keywords, not necessarily high-intent ones, since that was what showed up in our reports.

And once you’ve optimized for the metric itself, instead of what that metric represents, it stops meaning what it used to. There’s a name for this phenomenon: Goodhart’s Law – “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

For a while, we were able to overlook this because traffic kept going up. And hardly anyone questions a number that goes up.

But when AI Overviews and AI Mode appeared and started keeping users on Google, instead of sending them to your website, the number started going down. And, for the first time in many years, business owners started seeing traffic graphs pointing down. That probably felt to a lot of people like something was broken.

Here’s the thing though. Good businesses don’t measure success by potential revenue. They measure actual revenue. If traffic is high, but sales are flat, the traffic didn’t matter.

If traffic drops, but sales climb, guess what? The traffic still didn’t matter.

Less Traffic Could Mean More Qualified Traffic

Okay, so we’re seeing less traffic, but more sales. How do we account for this? There are a few theories out there.

The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that the users who end up clicking through to your site are further down the sales funnel and are more likely to make a purchasing decision.

The people who are just browsing, window-shopping, checking a random fact related to your industry? They’re the ones that you’re losing to AI Overviews. Now, don’t get me wrong: it’s still important to pay attention to how your business is showing up and being cited in AI Overviews and other AI search engines like ChatGPT.

But, honestly, most of those users aren’t in the market to make a purchasing decision… at least in the short-term.

Who’s left? Your mid and bottom funnel prospects that have real purchasing intent. This traffic is ultimately a lot more valuable to your business. If a user in this group lands on your website, you have a genuine shot at making the sale to them right now.

The bottom line is that, sure, traffic is down right now. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that traffic doesn’t matter at all. Instead, the traffic that’s left is worth a lot more now than it did before.

Okay, So What Should I Measure?

1) Conversions & Conversion Rate

Assuming that your business website has its Analytics tracking set up properly (we can do this for you), one of the best things you can do now is track your conversions and conversion rate. Track the actions that your business deems valuable: phone calls, contact form submissions, purchases if you run e-commerce. These are your direct signal that your website is making a difference in turning prospects into customers.

2) Qualified Leads

Is your business running a CRM or some other way to track the leads coming in? Qualified leads should be another critical metric to track.

If you’re not tracking this, now is a great time to start. Just about every business has a bad lead or two come through. When you measure how many leads are actually qualified, that gives you more information that you can use to make your website content better.

For example, if you run a firm that specializes in commercial clients, but you’re getting measurable lead volume from consumers, you may need to tweak your content to better capture that distinction.

3) Revenue and Revenue Attribution

Revenue and revenue attribution are the most direct metrics you can track. For e-commerce brands, this is something that you can have set up directly within Google Analytics.

For a lot of non-e-commerce brands, “is the phone ringing more?” is still the extent of the tracking. But if you’re pairing a CRM with call tracking, you can go a step further by connecting an actual closed deal back to the exact campaign, keyword, or ad that brought it in. That’s the difference between guessing and knowing.

Google Won’t Stop Evolving, But Your Business Won’t Stop Either

Google isn’t going to slow down or stop evolving. Their latest I/O announcements made that clear, with another wave of AI-driven features on the way. They’ve got over 90% market share in search right now… so, like it or not, your business and website will have to evolve alongside it if you want to be seen online.

However, I truly believe that small businesses in Baltimore, and across the world, are in a much stronger position than they think they are.

Think of any gigantic, global brand. How hard do you think it is for that brand to change their entire digital marketing strategy to evolve alongside Google? Sure, those brands have tons of budget and resources at their disposal. But they’re also mired in bureaucracy – those brands need an entire committee to approve changes to websites and content and all of that.

Global brands are like the gigantic freighter ships that take an hour to turn around. Small businesses are like the light, nimble sports cars that take the curves of the road ahead with grace and eagerness.

That’s the real advantage small businesses have: not just the flexibility to turn quickly, but the flexibility to stop chasing the wrong numbers and start pursuing the right ones.

Let’s Make the Most of Your Traffic Opportunity

Here at Pink Dog Digital, we’re truly committed to helping Baltimore SMBs navigate the ever-changing world of online search. From boosting visibility with AI optimization and SEO best practices to closing sales with paid media, we know exactly what it takes to build a content strategy designed to help your business grow.

Some of our services include:

• Digital Advertising
• Social Media Management
• Content Creation
• SEO & AI Optimization
• Web Design

Contact us at 410-696-3305 or email us at [email protected] for any inquiries or to book a service. You can also fill out our online Contact Us form to get in touch and schedule a free consultation.