Expected increase in traffic?

[thebloke]

Guys

This is a kind of random question. By optimising a website so it goes from page 12 on google to page 1 - is there an accepted industry average that says by what percentage the number of unique visitors will increase?

I know this is a how long is a piece of string kind of question but my 'superiors' want me to put a figure on this and, other than sticking my finger in the air and saying '50%' or some other random figure I thought I'd see if there is a rule of thumb that is generally accepted as being true. Ish.

I don't think me writing 'lots' will cut it really.

[Lori99]

Well it depends on what keywords you are using to show up on the first page. If you are selling 'widgets' and show up in the number one position on the first SERP for the keyphrase 'wide silver widget' thats great news, but only if your target audience is actually searching for that phrase and using it in the search engines. It depends on the number of times that phrase is actually typed in.

I was once told by someone on the phone at Overture that with pay-per-click advertising, when your ad is in the first position you should expect a 5% click-through rate and a 2.5% click-through rate in the 2nd position. My experience has been higher than 5% for the majority of my keyphrases for pay-per-click. But without using pay-per-click services, its a bit tougher to track those figures from the organic search results.

[brian.mark]

Going from page 2 to page 1, we found an increase of 370x (yes, 37000%) for one of our keywords. We seem to either land on page 1 or nowhere any more, so I don't have any other keywords to compare that to.

Brian.

[taskman]

I have a pat answer for the sales-jerks who call me on the phone and say, "We can get you #1 position on Google, guaranteed!" My answer is: "Already got it!" [click]

The problem is, as Lori99 said, your Google position depends on exactly what is written. My Orange County directory position is #1 if you type "fish tacos orange county" but I'm #2 if you type "fish taco 949" and nowhere to be found if you type "fish taco 949 orange county".

It doesn't do you any good whatsoever to have a #1 position (or #1 page) if nobody types the keywords in the right combination to get to you.

For the same reason there can be NO correlation between how many calls you get on Page #1 versus Page #12. To take the extreme examples, if you have nobody typing your keyphrase at all, you go from zero to zero. If you have 50,000 people typing your keyphrase, but 17 acceptable destination sites between page 1 and page 12, you might see your click-throughs going from zero to 50,000.

Google position is not a good yardstick. Paradoxically, you should strive to have a #1 Google position with as many keyphrases are applicable. But a better measure of success is Google click-throughs.

What your boss is trying to do is like counting the number of people who walk past a retail shop to figure out whether the shop is in a good location. He needs to understand that 1/ how many people walk in the door is a better indicator, and 2/ an even better indicator is how much money is in the register at the end of the day.

So you would not rent that theoretical shop if it were somewhere no one would go (page #12 on Google). But there is a lot more to capturing business (click-throughs and purchases) than being visible (page #1 on Google).

Your boss needs to understand that Page #1 is just Step #1. And Page #1 is not even that if no one uses the keyphrase that you are testing.

[deelerdave]

The first part of this equation, how many searches are done for your keywords can be estimated using googles adword tools. Then you can estimate the chance a searcher clicks through to the next lower page of SERPs as 10% or 5% or 1% or some % to be determined. Then the chance they click through position 1 as 5% as another poster mentioned, 2.5% for P2 etc.
Such a model at least gives you a logical basis for pulling numbers out of the air, and can be calibrated by experience.

Deelerdave

[Serrbiz]

I agree with the others. It's all about the volume of searches for your particular key term.

For a good barometer of search volume related to keywords, try the Overture (Yahoo) keyword suggestion tool.

http://inventory.overture.com/d/sear...ry/suggestion/

Type in your keyword and it shows suggestions, but also the search volume from the previous month. Overture serves content to Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista, etc. Since Google is still top dog, you can pretty much double those numbers.

If you are in the top ten for your keywords, you can pretty much expect about a 2.6% - 5% click through rate.

IE.

One of my search terms is New York Apartments.

Overture shows the following.

11857 new york apartment

Double it to include Google.

23714 searches per month for that keyword phrase alone. There are others of course.

The site in question is only marketed through SEO. We have top ten in Google, and MSN. Last month, according to our log files, we had 496 visits from the search term "New York apartments" and 134 for "New York apartment". (Yes, plural forms do matter.)

This translates to 2.6% of the Overture / Google search volume.

In April we averaged 536 unique visits a day. So, one top keyword phrase is good, but it's only 2.6% percent of the pie as it were. We get tons of traffic for other terms related to it. NYC apartments, Brooklyn rental apartments, etc.

So, when optimizing keep in mind the following.

Content is King (so long as it's SEO'd.) Every page is a potential point of entry.

Link Popularity is Queen - so long as it's from relevant sites.

Good luck with your SEO efforts.

Note: Note, if I paid for all of my traffic via PPC, it would have cost an average of $.75 a click in Overture. That translates to $12K a month. You see why good SEO is important.

Note: My site is NOT is usually ranked about number 4. So, I suspect the click volume would increase if it was number 1.

[johngroup]

Typical of the sites we follow:

From page 2 > 1 we've seen a increase of 10-20x.

The 11th position (typical of page 2) tends to generate better clicks than 10th position due to it top-of-page (for most) positioning.

On page 1 a move from position 5 > 1 an increase of 3-5x was seen.

[kerer99]

Originally Posted by taskman

I have a pat answer for the sales-jerks who call me on the phone and say, "We can get you #1 position on Google, guaranteed!" My answer is: "Already got it!" [click]

The problem is, as Lori99 said, your Google position depends on exactly what is written. My Orange County directory position is #1 if you type "fish tacos orange county" but I'm #2 if you type "fish taco 949" and nowhere to be found if you type "fish taco 949 orange county".

It doesn't do you any good whatsoever to have a #1 position (or #1 page) if nobody types the keywords in the right combination to get to you.

For the same reason there can be NO correlation between how many calls you get on Page #1 versus Page #12. To take the extreme examples, if you have nobody typing your keyphrase at all, you go from zero to zero. If you have 50,000 people typing your keyphrase, but 17 acceptable destination sites between page 1 and page 12, you might see your click-throughs going from zero to 50,000.

Google position is not a good yardstick. Paradoxically, you should strive to have a #1 Google position with as many keyphrases are applicable. But a better measure of success is Google click-throughs.

What your boss is trying to do is like counting the number of people who walk past a retail shop to figure out whether the shop is in a good location. He needs to understand that 1/ how many people walk in the door is a better indicator, and 2/ an even better indicator is how much money is in the register at the end of the day.

So you would not rent that theoretical shop if it were somewhere no one would go (page #12 on Google). But there is a lot more to capturing business (click-throughs and purchases) than being visible (page #1 on Google).

Your boss needs to understand that Page #1 is just Step #1. And Page #1 is not even that if no one uses the keyphrase that you are testing.

Well said. You should write an article on this and submit it all over the internet - your post makes you almost half way there! :)

[ozchris]

here is a link to a PDF presentation on SEO which quantifies their experience:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/p...seo-itzone.pdf

on the page "why high rankings matter" they suggest if you get to page 1, after one month it is 30% beneift. Or something like that.

I just found this and am still reading it....

[wow4u]

Your post is one which I can relate to as I just experienced a downgrade in google!!

Before I continue I agree with the comments that the type of site you have could also determine a traffic decrease or increase.

But here is a true case for you.
One of our sites, Words of Wisdom 4 U!
http://www.wow4u.com
has been number 1 on google for at least the last year. When you type in "words of wisdom" we were #1. But this last week, for whatever reason, we have dropped to number 4.

Our traffic has been cut in half!! So your 50% figure applies to us going from a #1 position to a #4 position.

Hope this helps.

[thebloke]

Thanks guys! What a great response!

I've just done a search using the Overture tool Serrbiz suggested. Our primary key phrase is 'motorcycle insurance' which was searched 57576 in the last month.

Our entire site gets an average of 15000 unique visitors per month but most of this traffic is generated by PPC, affiliates, ad banners etc.

[MtraX]

This spurs me to talk about 'results of SEO' a bit. I often tell my clients that they shouldn't expect a top 10 listing, but can expect a surge in traffic. Usually their traffic increases by about 500+ percent(on very low or unlisted sites) which is a fair result. Obviously it always depends on the demand out there for the keywords and it depends on where they were before you started your SEO.

I can understand that the traffic from top ranking positions can vary greatly. This is in fact quite interesting. 50% drop from number 1 to 4, wow! It just shows you the importance of trying to get to number 1! It would be interesting to see the graph of SEO/Ad spendature vs ranking though. That would give us an idea of what the highest cost effective ranking would be. (Won't that just make our clients SO happy?!) It obviously changes per keyword, but there must be some kind of research like that?

MtraX

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by MtraX

It obviously changes per keyword, but there must be some kind of research like that?

The research you're asking for is done by Comscore. I don't remember what their report cost, but it wasn't exactly cheap. They show some samplings from the reports at SES each time, and the results are dramaticly different based upon position in both ads and organic. It was in the neighborhood of 60, 30 and 10 for the top 3 spots both organic and paid, then the traffic drop wasn't as drastic. Of course, since many people click more than 1 result, the total is well over 100%.

That would lend itself to losing 1/2 your traffic by dropping from 1 to 2, or doubling your traffic by going from 2 to 1. The factor is even higher from 3 to 2 or 2 to 3. 3 to 1 would be a 6x boost in traffic by that chart. Of course, it varies by keyword, but this is what they were saying were averages. It varied by search engine as well, but that was part of the paid report that I didn't buy.

There is indeed research being done, but you'd have to pay to see the detailed results, which rules out many of us on WPW.

Brian.

[netsnets]

A lot also has to do with where on page 1 you were and where on page 2. i've found the biggest difference is being in the top 5 or 4 where your site is above the fold..

[MtraX]

Hi

Thanx for the info. That's quite interesting. Time to get cracking again to try and break the top 5!!

Regards
MtraX