It’s hard to know when searchers are succeeding by actually finding what they are looking for, but it’s easy to know when they are not succeeding. When a searcher gets no results on the page, or when they don’t click any of the results, or when they quickly go back from a page to the search results, we know that they did not find what they are looking for.
When instead, the searcher gets results, clicks on a result, and doesn’t come back, we’ll cautiously call that a search success. By reducing these obvious failures, and increasing these successes, you are improving the number of searches that can lead to a conversion, which is the whole point.
Success rate is a measure of how often searchers can access and then remain on your page. So, if your success rate is low, there are three things for you to improve:
- Results Rate. If your keywords are not producing search results, that’s the place to start, by checking out “Why Doesn’t My Page Appear in the Search Results?”
- Click Rate. If the keyword produces search results, you might need to make it more likely to be clicked. To learn how to make pages more attractive to searchers deciding where to click, check out “How Do I Optimize My Page’s Clickthrough?”
- Failed Search Rate. Ensure that the searcher stays on your page after they click. If your pages generate a lot of failed searches, learn what to do by reading “How Do I Improve My Page’s Failed Search Rate?”