Have not seen anyone talk about this for a long time but it is incredibly important, do you want to know what difference it makes if you move up just that extra place in the rankings?
Well it may shock you to realise that you could get over 3 times more traffic just by moving up one place from 2nd to 1st.
Last year when the AOL search data was released there was a post on earnersforum where the number of searches were calculated and from that you could work out the exact difference from a data set large enough to be pretty accurate to work with.
Total Searches:9,038,794
Total Clicks: 4,926,623
Click Rank1: 2,075,765
Click Rank2: 586,100
Click Rank3: 418,643
Click Rank4: 298,532
Click Rank5: 242,169
Click Rank6: 199,541
Click Rank7: 168,080
Click Rank8: 148,489
Click Rank9: 140,356
Click Rank10: 147,551
This data can then be interpreted and presented another way which was done a few posts down.
Number 1 receives 42.1 percent of click throughs’.
Number 2 receives 11.9 percent of click throughs’.
Number 3 receives 8.5 percent of click throughs’
Number 4 receives 6.1 percent of click throughs’.
Number 5 receives 4.9 percent of click throughs’.
Number 6 receives 4.1 percent of click throughs’.
Number 7 receives 3.4 percent of click throughs’.
Number 8 receives 3.0 percent of click throughs’.
Number 9 receives 2.8 percent of click throughs’.
Number 10 receives 3.0 percent of click throughs’.
Click Rank1: 2,075,765
Click Rank2: 586,100 = 3.5x less
Click Rank3: 418,643 = 4.9x less
Click Rank4: 298,532 = 6.9x less
Click Rank5: 242,169 = 8.5x less
Click Rank6: 199,541 = 10.4x less
Click Rank7: 168,080 = 12.3x less
Click Rank8: 148,489 = 14.0x less
Click Rank9: 140,356 = 14.8x less
Click Rank10: 147,551 = 14.1x less
Click Rank1: 2,075,765
Click Rank2: 586,100 = 3.5x less than ^
Click Rank3: 418,643 = 1.4x less than ^
Click Rank4: 298,532 = 1.4x less than ^
Click Rank5: 242,169 = 1.2x less than ^
Click Rank6: 199,541 = 1.2x less than ^
Click Rank7: 168,080 = 1.2x less than ^
Click Rank8: 148,489 = 1.1x less than ^
Click Rank9: 140,356 = 1.05x less than ^
Click Rank10: 147,551 = 1.05x more than ^
One thing of note here is that position 10 is pretty nice, better than position 9!
Other conclusions from the data were to be expected, like the top 10 is king and position 9 and 10 outperform being top of page 2.
Nothing new but it is important that rather than chasing new terms constantly or trying to be viral you stop, look at what your main keywords are, how you rank and devote a bit of energy into trying to move up one place, I did this recently and am a few thousand visitors per day better off for focusing on it.
Great Post.
I was hoping for something like that to be released and discussed.
I thought it makes a great difference and these stats prove me right.
I currently rank 30-50 for highly competitive webmaster resource keywords, so whats your advice on improving the position?
Ranking for the top webmaster keywords is tricky and is a very competitive area. Its just a thought but some people do well ranking for less competitive webmaster resource keywords, typos etc.
That’s the truth, it can be much better going after 2 or 3 less competitive terms than aiming too high for one.
And I think it worked for me on its own with some keywords for specific tools.
I actually use these metrics to estimate the potential traffic volume gains for new SEO clients. It’s not a precise science, but it gives you something to shoot for.
Actually this is a valuable point considering the number visitors I get from google. My blog in the top3 position through out the week and it jumbs to top during weekends and all my traffic comes during that time. I think i should start working with this fluctuations
I don’t disagree with the point being made, but a lot depends on who you are competing with. If you are trying to out-rank an authoritative site like Wikipedia, or heavily marketed site like eBay you may have problems.
There are many factors influencing this click through scheme.
I will enumerate just some of them: competition (like the guy above me mentioned), the way the title and description is built (a good and interesting title+desc may allow you to get more visitors than the results ranking above you, if they suck here), the relevancy of the result (at least in G, the results aren’t always relevant), and so on.
Your completely right Mike, have good copy for your title/description can certainly make your listing more clickable along with other factors.
I would agree to that. I do not always click the top position. I click the most descriptive that tells me the information in the results.
I find having the top 2 spots can be good too (nested results?).
I liked this blog lot of interesting stuff. Keep writing.
I found going from no.2 to no.1 for a certain keyword, caused traffic to increase by about 250 per day.
BTW, I like this blog, bookmarked for future.
Tejvan
I have a website that I want to revive. It was ranked very low on the search engines. Am I better off trying to write targeted ads myself or use a product such as Glyphius.
I’ve dipped in and out of the top 3 search engine rankings for certain keywords and have found that this is very much true.
If your in second place and you your competitor beats you to first with a random title and poor meta description you can’t help but grit your teeth and wait will the next re-index takes place!