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MozCon tickets are 90% sold out! Save $300 until June 30. Get your tickets now!
By: Dominick Sorrentino August 30, 2022


WHY IT'S GETTING HARDER TO RANK FOR SOME COMMERCIAL KEYWORDS (+ WHAT YOU CAN DO
ABOUT IT)

Search Engines | Keyword Research

The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of
hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Our inbound lead generation is highly dependent upon SEO — it’s how we get more
than 70% of our leads. So, naturally, we got a tad nervous when we saw some of
our top commercial landing pages dipping out of top-five positions for their
targeted search terms.

When we took to the SERPs to investigate who was unseating us, we discovered
something equal parts unsettling and interesting: Our high-value,
commercial-intent landing pages weren’t being displaced by competitors. They
were being ousted by business directories and “listicles” that rank or compare
multiple companies.

In fact, an evaluation of seven of our most important commercial keywords
demonstrates a 50% increase in the number of lists and directories in top-five
organic SERP real estate year-over-year (excluding SERP features such as People
Also Ask).

Here’s an example for the keyword “SEO content writing services.” The image on
the left is the SERP in 2022, and the one on the right is the SERP in 2021:


Notice the difference? The Featured Snippet, which we owned in 2021, is gone,
we’ve dropped to position 5, and there are now three lists in the top-5 organic
results where there used to be none.

We saw this again and again, and it left us with three questions:


 1. Is there, in fact, an intent shift happening here, where Google is favoring
    lists, directories, and company rankings (consciously or unconsciously) over
    traditional commercial landing pages?

 2. If so, what can be done about it?

 3. What does this mean for the future of SEO?

Let’s tackle them one at a time.


PART 1: ARE THERE MORE LISTS IN 2022 THAN IN YEARS PRIOR?

The answer: Based on a random sampling of commercial-intent keywords, yes. To
what extent and who is most affected are the key questions, though.

Let’s look at how we figured this out, and evaluate the evidence


FIRST THINGS FIRST: WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “LISTS” IN SERPS?

For our purposes, we’ll define a “list” as any Google search result that
compares, ranks, or evaluates multiple businesses. An example is something like,
“8 best coffee grinders of 2022.” A Clutch directory listing for “Top Content
Marketing Agencies” would also apply.

These could be off-site content from a third party writing about other
companies, or an on-site list in which the publisher shrewdly ranks multiple
companies, including their own. Here is NP Digital doing that very thing:

These different formats of “lists” are unified by a comparison-type commercial
intent.


SECOND: HOW DO WE SEE A SERP CHANGE OVER TIME?

If we want to see how SERPs have changed from one year to the next, we need to
be able to see what today’s SERP for a certain keyword looked like a year ago.

Here’s what the SERP for “mesh wifi router” looked like in 2021, based on Ahrefs
data:


THIRD: HOW EXACTLY SHOULD YOU COMPARE ONE YEAR’S SERP TO ANOTHER?

For it to be a fair assessment, I’d have to select keywords completely at random
and then see how their SERPS differ from 2021 to 2022. The problem with Ahrefs’
historical SERP data, however, is that it plays poorly with local search intent.

For instance, I noticed that the search for “Landscaping services” was showing
me results from Los Angeles.

I conducted most of this study from the literal opposite side of the country
(Portland, ME), and I most certainly never see Los Angeles-specific results when
I search for services here.

I noticed this with several other local-intent terms, like roofing for instance.
Why does it happen? I suspect it has something to do with how they scrape or
archive data to give their best estimate of what a SERP looked like at a point
in time. Regardless, this means that my selection of commercial keywords had to
be limited to terms that don’t have a strong local leaning.

Here is what that random selection of 25 keywords ended up looking like:

 1.  Content marketing agency
 2.  Moving services
 3.  HR Services
 4.  Website hosting services
 5.  Graphic design services
 6.  Email marketing services
 7.  Shipping service
 8.  Cloud migration service
 9.  Data center services
 10. Staffing agency
 11. Supply chain software
 12. Keyword research tool
 13. EHR system
 14. Architecture firm
 15. Cloud hosting service
 16. IT consulting company
 17. Accounts payable software
 18. Marketing consultancy
 19. Small business loan
 20. Affordable laptops
 21. Mesh wifi router
 22. Water pick
 23. Small coffee grinder
 24. Budget printer
 25. B2B lead generation service

So what did I do with these keywords?


 1. Determined whether more lists are showing up in 2022, 2021, or 2020 SERPs. I
    simply counted the number of “lists” in the SERP in 2022 and compared it to
    the years prior.

 2. Determined whether more lists are ranking in the top five organic listings
    in 2022, 2021, or 2020. I did this, again, by counting the number of lists
    for each year that appear in the top five. The point here is to see not just
    if there are more lists in SERPs, but whether more of them are ranking
    higher in 2022.

Note that I did not count SERP features, as I was primarily concerned with the
actual listings.

Disclaimer: This is by no means an exhaustive or completely conclusive study.
It’s really more of a random sampling, or a “head count.”


FINALLY: WHAT DID THE RESULTS SAY?

Let’s look at the numbers. Below is the total lists from the 25 SERPs I looked
at:

Overall, there was an 8.5% increase in the number of lists between 2021 and 2022
(and the difference between 2020 and 2021 is nominal).

That might not seem groundbreaking, but the sample size is not insignificant: I
looked at approximately 200 total listings (using 25 keywords, most of the SERPs
had nine or 10 listings).

So that 8.5% increase carries some weight.

Things get more compelling when we look at the top five results:

The number of lists in the top five positions increased by 35.5% from 2021 to
2022. In this case, our sample size is a hard 125 listings, since we counted the
first five organic results for every single one of our 25 keywords.

Again, not a nail in the coffin, but it is meaningful.



IN SUMMARY

Here’s what we know:

 * 2022 had more lists than 2021 and 2020.

 * 2022 had double-digit percentage gains in terms of lists in the top-five
   results over both 2021 and 2022.

 * But, 2021 actually has slightly fewer lists than 2020.

 * And 2021 saw a decline in lists in top-five results of nearly 12% from 2020.

Here’s what it likely means:

 * Overall, the number of total lists and top-five lists has trended upward
   since 2020, with the latter trending upward much more significantly.

 * Pulling from this data pool, there is sufficient evidence showing that lists
   are more dominant in the top five positions on SERPs for commercial keywords
   in 2022 than either of the preceding years.

Here’s what it does not mean:

 * That this trend is universal. After all, we left out local intent, which is a
   big deal for some companies. The data seems solid for non-location searches,
   but we can’t evaluate what we can’t reliably see (local-intent commercial
   searches).

This is what it all looks like visually:


So why the slight dip from 2020 to 2021? It reads like a blip in what is
otherwise an upward trend, but we can only speculate. Three years of data, while
not bad, isn’t enough to conclusively signify a long-term trend.

However, it’s more than enough of a change to affect any company that relied
heavily on those top-five positions in 2021. If you’ve seen this change (like we
have), you know how much it can hurt.

Which brings us to:


PART 2: WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT?

The answer: Get listed in relevant directories, make your own lists, and
infiltrate others’ lists.

Again, we’ll go one by one.


1. GET LISTED IN RELEVANT DIRECTORIES

If a directory is outranking your landing page for an important commercial term,
you want to be on that directory, and as high up in it as possible. Invest time
and energy into sourcing the reviews needed to improve your rank.

For several years, we more or less owned the number one spot for “content
marketing agency.” Today, we’re ranking third, and we are only one of two
commercial LPs on the entire SERP.

The number one spot is now held by Clutch. When we saw Clutch coming for us in
2020, we ramped up our efforts to acquire more reviews on the platform. This got
us ranking highly in their directory.

The result: It’s one of our top sources of referral traffic and the top source
of conversions from referral traffic.

Before pursuing paid options with business directories, I’d recommend doing
everything possible to bring your organic ranking up, as many directories use
organic rank as a tie-breaker in their “bidding.” I’ll add one extremely
important note here: You never know which directory will be the next big winner
in the SERPs. Sure, target most of your reviews for the ones that sustain a
strong presence, but also scour the web for directories that list your
competitors, but not you.

Link intersect tools from the likes of Moz can help you do this, and it’s so
worth the time. Another way is to just explore SERPs of some of the relevant
keywords in your industry.

In mid-2021, our link building specialist spent literally five minutes getting
us listed in a directory called Growth Marketing Pro. As a result of those five
minutes, we’ve since earned over 1,500 users, and 46 conversions.

Just look at all the keywords that directory is on page one for — not to mention
some of that keyword volume:


It’s just such an easy win.


2. MAKE YOUR OWN LISTS

We’ve only recently begun exploring this option, and as you can see, position 14
is nothing to really brag about.

But we’re playing a long game. Our post about content marketing platforms went
live a few months ago. It hasn’t landed on page one yet, but our hope is that
we’ve created something that will build backlinks over time, and that we can
update and re-promote year after year. And each time we update it, we’ll
optimize the on-page copy to make sure it’s strongly positioned to succeed in
search.

As with most of the strategies referenced in this section, it’s still too soon
to attribute success to this, but it’s something to think about. If other sites
can create comprehensive lists that feature their own product, you can, too.
It’s just a matter of creating said list strategically, and then promoting it
and monitoring performance over time.


3. INFILTRATE OTHERS’ LISTS

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Or at least try by brokering your media
strengths in exchange for a spot on their page one listing.

We’ve had mixed success here. In some cases, the promise of a link exchange, a
guest blog post, or a guest appearance on our podcast were enough to get us
included on a strategic list.

Appearing on those lists is great, as it gives us more visibility on SERPs for
high-value keywords. But much to our existential chagrin, publishers have (on
more than one occasion) flat-out told us we need to pay to be listed on their
site. I’ll save the far-reaching, philosophical implications of this for Part 3
of this post.

For now, my advice is to add what we’ll call “referral SEO” to your existing
backlink efforts. Think of it as targeted brand mentions. Your targets are based
on what list is ranking for a keyword that is highly important to you. Once
you’ve earned your placement, keep an eye on your referral traffic from that
source.


PART 3: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE FUTURE OF SEO?

Answer: It’s complicated — and a potentially explosive subject.

Off the cuff, there’s a few big questions to unpack:


 1. As directories and lists capture more page one SERP territory, they’re
    looking to cash in. One publisher literally told us they’d consider putting
    us on one of their lists if we paid them $3,500. Does Google care about
    that? Worse, at what point does commercial SEO become a pay-to-play
    situation, whereby if you want your company on a SERP, you have to pay your
    way onto someone else’s page?

 2. When should you stop investing in certain commercial landing pages? Like I
    said, commercial pages are going extinct on the SERP for one of our most
    important keywords, “content marketing agency.” For now, we’re in position
    three. But we’ve seen all but one of our competitors get knocked onto page
    two. What happens then?

I can’t answer these questions confidently, but here goes:

I like to think the answer to the first question is that Google will catch on to
what’s happening here, and start penalizing lists and directories that are
presenting results based on who’s paying them, as opposed to what might actually
be the best, most meaningful result for that query. But I have no idea if or how
Google will do that.

For the second question, we’d have to shift our keyword target. At some point,
we may need to bow out and understand where we can’t compete with these
directories head-on, and assess whether there’s another keyword of equal value
that we should target instead.

My first answer is hopeful and tenuous, and my second opens the floodgates to a
whole lot of future work. But unfortunately, that’s the best we can do right
now.


THE FINAL TAKEAWAYS

Yes, there is some evidence that lists are now more prominent on page one for
commercial keywords.

Yes, there is something you can and should do about it — and as always with
organic SEO, you have to keep playing the game and run alongside the SERPs.
Improve your rankings in directories. Get listed in new directories. Make some
lists. Trade some backlinks. Get wily and start infiltrating some SERPs.

And no, we don’t quite know what this means for the future of SEO.

All you can really do is stay informed, stay data-driven, and keep updating your
strategies to have a fighting chance of maintaining some sort of presence on
page one for your most important commercial keywords.


About Dominick Sorrentino —

Dominick Sorrentino is Brafton's Brand & Product Director. He launched, and
oversees, a company-wide social proof and sales enablement program, and has
helped double Brafton's newsletter-subscription rate. His areas of expertise
include branding, sales enablement, web analytics and copywriting.


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