How Would You Like To Increase Your Traffic by 34.35%?
I recently stumbled upon a search engine ranking report from Chitika, an online advertising network, that focused on answering one question: how valuable prime search ranking positions really are.
Although the report was published a while ago, I believe that little has changed since then, and the following results are definitely something to pay attention to.
Of course we all know that it’s great to have #1 Google search engine ranking for your keyword.
But how much is it really worth in terms of traffic generation?
According to the data from the Chitika network, it’s worth a great deal – double the search engine traffic of the #2 spot, to be precise.
Let me put it another way:
The #1 Google search engine ranking spot gets as many visitors as positions 2-4 combined!
To come up with these impressive numbers, Chitika analyzed a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across their network.
“In order to find out the value of SEO, we looked at a sample of traffic coming into our advertising network from Google and broke it down by Google results placement.
The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample, almost as much as the numbers 2 through 4 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together.”
Search engine ranking #10 gets 143% more clicks than #11.
“The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page 1.
Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143% jump in traffic. However, the base number is very low – that 143% jump is from 1.11% of all Google traffic to 2.71%.
As you go up the top page, the raw jumps get bigger and bigger, culminating in that desired top position.”
Here are the search engine ranking numbers:
|
Google Result
|
Impressions
|
Click Percentage
|
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,834,806 | 34.35% |
| 2 | 1,399,502 | 16.96% |
| 3 | 942,706 | 11.42% |
| 4 | 638,106 | 7.73% |
| 5 | 510,721 | 6.19% |
| 6 | 416,887 | 5.05% |
| 7 | 331,500 | 4.02% |
| 8 | 286,118 | 3.47% |
| 9 | 235,197 | 2.85% |
| 10 | 223,320 | 2.71% |
| 11 | 91,978 | 1.11% |
| 12 | 69,778 | 0.85% |
| 13 | 57,952 | 0.70% |
| 14 | 46,822 | 0.57% |
| 15 | 39,635 | 0.48% |
| 16 | 32,168 | 0.39% |
| 17 | 26,933 | 0.33% |
| 18 | 23,131 | 0.28% |
| 19 | 22,027 | 0.27% |
| 20 | 23,953 | 0.29% |
Show Me the Money!
I admit, having a number 1 search engine ranking on Google is very exciting and all, but if you are ranking of the wrong keyword, it won’t help your business much.
How do you know when it’s worth to improve google ranking?
To determine that, you can do one of the following:
Test your keywords with Google Adwords
- Start a Google AdWords campaign for the keyword, select “exact match” and point the ad to the page on your website that is most relevant to the keyword.
- Track the impressions and the conversion rate of the ad. To get useful data, you should track at least 500 clicks.
- With that data, you can make a guess about the value of a visitor that finds your website through that keyword.
For example, your ad might have had 10,000 impressions during a week and 200 visitors have come to your website. Six of them purchased something of your website and the total profit was $500.
That means that the average single visitor who finds your website through that keyword is worth $2.50 to your business ($500 / 200). The 10,000 ad impressions in a week can create a click-through rate of 34.35% (see table above) if you have the number 1 ranking for that keyword.
That means that you would get about 3,435 visitors per week. Based on the average value of $2.50/visitor you would earn $8,587.50 per week or $446,500 per year just with a single keyword.
Getting Market Value figures in Market Samurai
If you already own a copy of Market Samurai, the task of gathering all this info becomes even more of a breeze.
This data is gathered under you Keyword Analysis Data in Keyword Research tool.
Here are the numbers we are interested in:
• SEO Value (SEOV) – This is the maximum total value of traffic that the #1 ranked web page for this keyword (based on search results) is likely to receive – per month.
• Adwords Value (AWV) - This is the maximum total value of traffic that the #1 ranked advertiser (in Google Adwords) is likely to receive – per month.
In both cases, Market Samurai is taking the Market Value benchmark to the next step…
…by breaking down the Market Value number into how much #1 ranked web site will bring through organic SEO and Google Adwords respectively.
If you don’t have Market Samurai, I would recommend you get a copy – it will save you a lot of time (and money) doing market research and give you access to a lot of really powerful keyword research tools.
Image credit: ICanHasCheezburger.com
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19 Comments
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Targeting wrong keywords absolutely not helpful to drive traffic. It is a very good idea to test the value of SEO. Thanks for the share.
Hi Ana,
Good article, percentage figures are probably right, but we must not forget that people often click on 2-3 different on the first page and then it is important that your title and description is well written and interesting, maybe they click on your website.
You are very right, Marbella: simply getting listed in first spot doesn’t guarantee the clicks.
Snippets do make a huge difference!
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Ana recently posted..TweetAdder: How to Get More Followers on Twitter Fast
Thanks for breaking this down. I think we all instinctively know that being on page one is a better than other pages but that’s a huge gap for 10th place over 11th. Eeks, 143% for one more spot. It also gives hope to those people who are ranking for super competitive keywords. For example, if a keyword gets 850,000 searches a month but you are feeling defeated at #7, you should still expect roughly 34k hits a month. Not too shabby
Amie Marse recently posted..Iconic company brands and how they are maintained
I’ve also read it somewhere that in certain markets, sites located in lower spots, although don’t get as much traffic, actually make more money from the clicks they do get, Amie.
Just goes to show that searchers who do look farther on the page are more targeted buyers.
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Ana recently posted..Banner Advertising: Viable Make Money Blogging Solution?
Hi Ana,
Market Samurai is the best IM tool in my box, saves me a ton of time researching and takes a lot of the guess work out of the equation. Great post as always
Thanks – Jay
Thanks, Jay.
I am a bit disappointed that their SEO competition feature doesn’t work as well since Yahoo Explore is down; hope they’ll fix it soon.
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Ana recently posted..Internet Marketing Tools
I am sure they will, there seems to be a new update every time I use it so one of these days they will sort it!
So much here to digest and put into practice, but I think I’ll start first with trying to get my #12 or #11 search results onto the first page of the Google results. I like the idea of 143% more traffic at #10 than at #11.
Brian recently posted..The Myth of a Giftless Christmas
Just getting on the first page is a great accomplishment, Brian – both for the traffic and our ego boost! LOL
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Ana recently posted..Why Traffic Generation Cafe Is Shutting Down…
Very cool to see these stats. I love me some hard core proof. And then I love me some tools like Market Samurai that deliver these stats in an easy way to consume because I’m lazy and don’t know how to research well on my own at all.
Lewis LaLanne aka Nerd #2 recently posted..13 Rules To Live My Life By In 2012 – What Are Yours?
I can certainly relate, Lewis; keyword research is not my favorite and Market Samurai definitely makes it a lot easier.
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Ana recently posted..CommentLuv Premium
I know I am most likely to visit the top 5. Occasionally I may look at 5 to 10. I very rarely get to page 2, and almost never go to page 3 and beyond.
I know some people have said hey I am on page 1 for some big long phrase or basically a sentence. It can depend, but most of the time I highly doubt someone is going to type that big long phrase or sentence in a search. It can be alright if they also rank for shorter variations of the phrase that would be more likely. Otherwise I wouldn’t expect too much out of that number 1 stop.
Overall I think the top 5 is decent as long as it is likely to be searched for and has some form of popularity.
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Ray recently posted..Technology and Lack of Communication
I agree, Ray.
Many of my readers come to me saying “yay, I am on the first page/spot!” And then I see what keyword they are ranking for… most of the times it’s the name of their blog or something like that. LOL
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Ana recently posted..Aweber Review
I agree, Ray.
Many of my readers come to me saying “yay, I am on the first page/spot!” And then I see what keyword they are ranking for… most of the times it’s the name of their blog or something like that. LOL
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Ana recently posted..Aweber Review
Great tips here! I’ve been trying to figure out how I can do Google Adwords correctly. I didn’t want to get the wrong numbers. The percentage seems to be accurate to me, and I like how Market Samurai makes life easier for me too.
Tim Ryan recently posted..5 Simple Ways to Stage Your Home
It makes sense that being on page one gets the most traffic because ppl just don’t want to spend time flipping through pages of results til they find something that quenches their search thirst…unless they’re me of course because I’ve been known to goto page 30 and beyond looking for stuff LOL!
Caleb recently posted..How To Get Your Site at the Top In Google In 7 Days Or Less (real case studies and software)
I am with you, Caleb – I always take my time to find the best info on the topic and not necessarily stop at the first page.
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Ana recently posted..Thesis Theme
This is nice information as there are many thing you have write about every single tip for the optimization and getting traffic for the site as a site only stay alive on traffic there are many people who stop updating there site cos of no traffic or less according to them. They need your this blog as an advice.
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