Easily Increase Search Engine Traffic by 400%?

[AndrewHansen]

Hey Warriors,

If you're in the process of trying to generate search engine traffic, this nugget of information might be of interest.

There have been plenty of studies like this, but in case you haven't seen data like this before, check out the image below...

It shows the distribution of click traffic amongst the front page of a set of search results...

Distribution of Clicks on Google’s SERPs

In other words, the difference between a number 1 and a number 2 ranking in the search engines, is more than 400%.

Remembering that the only 2 ways you can increase sales on your websites are to a) increase traffic or b) increase conversions, the thought of increasing your traffic (and hence your sales/revenue) by 4 times with such a seemingly simple move should be the source of excitement.

The question then, is how can we use this knowledge?

Let's play out 2 scenarios...

If you're pursuining search engine traffic; if you have an active SEO campaign, it's very likely that there are a few keywords, perhaps very long tail, that you have front page rankings for and that are bringing you traffic. You'll be able to find out as much looking at your traffic statistics.

Let's say you find a few keywords like the above. Let's say you focused the link building that, if you're in the midst of an SEO campaign you're hopefully doing anyway, to those few pages until you reached number 1 for those keywords? Imagine if you increased your targeted traffic by 400% on 2 or 3 different keywords... Would that make a difference to your revenue?

And the thing is, how hard is it to take one of your pages from somewhere on the front page, to number 1? Depending on the keyword and the competition, it may not be hard at all. In getting to the front page you've probably already done the hard work.

Or another scenario...

If you know your metrics, you probably know that there are certain keywords you get traffic from that bring more sales than others ie, that are more high converting than others.

Are you getting as much traffic as you can from those keywords?

While it's something you should be doing anyway, focusing more of your link building on those pages and those keywords should and could be paying huge dividends. I know I've been guilty of having a post or page get to page 1 for it's keyword, then leaving it to start focusing on getting rankings for another keyword... when instead, had I kept the focus on that initial post and keyword until it got to position 1, I could have increased my MOST targeted traffic by 400% with minimal extra effort.

It's pretty interesting right?

Definitely something to be more concious of as we strive for more and more targeted traffic.

[TheKeys]

Woah.. that is pretty interesting. Who would have thought.. 400%.. oh my!

[Tron2k]

those are pretty interesting results!

[davidfstyles]

Hi Andrew, thanks for the post.

I've also heard that a double-listing doubles your organic traffic as well.

What I've found however, to get a double listing I need to have two different pages from the same site ranked on the same page for the keyword. Then Google gives me a double listing.

[woodymcgrath]

400%? Wow...I always thought the percentage was much much smaller. Thanks for sharing

[AndrewHansen]

Sure David, similar for double listings.

If you think of it though, 1 listing at number one is the same as a double listings at position
2 and position 3 (at least according to this data)... In fact, one number one listing is better than a quadruple listing at positions 2, 3, 4 and 5 (those only adding up to 30% of the traffic where as position one takes 56%!)

Crazy huh??

Andrew

[EmmaA]

Thanks for the info Andrew, but if you read the comments of the study you'll some REAL holes in the assumptions made about this study:

1) The participants were given the search terms (they didn't choose them and as such were not really searching for themselves.) They knew they were part of a study, the whole setup was under false circumstances.

2) The test number was a tiny 26 participants. This is nowhere near enough to be considered any kind of average.

3) The author of the blog post confesses "I estimated the percentages from fig. 2" because there were missing clicks. Wow that's not science!

4) When people are really searching for something, they don't just click on the first link they see! How many times have you opened up multiple tabs from the results page. Or gone back when you couldn't find what you are looking for?

And finally the last straw for me: this was done in 2006 - 4 years ago. Our searching habits change over time.

Everyone assumes the 1st place of google gets most of the traffic. But lately I'm beginning to think that results 3-5 get the eyeballs. Purely from my own searching habits and my website stats (no science I'm afraid just total opinion).

[ricsale]

Hi

This is probably old news to some but Google has started to present impression and click-through data in the Webmaster tools system.

So you can now see the direct effect that ranking position has on the traffic to your site.

Quite interesting viewing.

Rich

[SimonHarrison]

Originally Posted by AndrewHansen

Remembering that the only 2 ways you can increase sales on your websites are to a) increase traffic or b) increase conversions,

Hi Andrew,

How about :

c) Optimize your sales funnel to include (more) upsells / downsells.
d) Generate back ends products.your own or JV' based.
c) Add continuity
d) Build a better lead magnet.
e) Increase the quality of traffic prior to hitting the site.

It's pretty interesting right?

.

Yeah, it was, good post.

[SeanyG]

Emmaa,

Even if the the exact numbers are flawed (I'm not saying that they are) the points made by Andrew in this article are still true.

Google has said that the #1 spot gets significantly more clicks than #2 and it drops exponentially from there.

Regardless of how the study was done Andrew's point is a great one, if you've already done the hard work and gotten yourself ranked on page 1, keep focusing your link building on those terms to get you to #1 because the #1 spot drives a ton more traffic (100% more, 200% more... 400% more.. it doesn't matter).

Originally Posted by EmmaA

Thanks for the info Andrew, but if you read the comments of the study you'll some REAL holes in the assumptions made about this study:

1) The participants were given the search terms (they didn't choose them and as such were not really searching for themselves.) They knew they were part of a study, the whole setup was under false circumstances.

2) The test number was a tiny 26 participants. This is nowhere near enough to be considered any kind of average.

3) The author of the blog post confesses "I estimated the percentages from fig. 2" because there were missing clicks. Wow that's not science!

4) When people are really searching for something, they don't just click on the first link they see! How many times have you opened up multiple tabs from the results page. Or gone back when you couldn't find what you are looking for?

And finally the last straw for me: this was done in 2006 - 4 years ago. Our searching habits change over time.

Everyone assumes the 1st place of google gets most of the traffic. But lately I'm beginning to think that results 3-5 get the eyeballs. Purely from my own searching habits and my website stats (no science I'm afraid just total opinion).

[AndrewHansen]

Haha Simon, you're right. I suppose under a loose definition I'd put those things you mentioned under increasing conversions (in other words, increasing the dollar revenue per visitor/customer you receive), but yes, they certainly are legitimate and important.

Emma,

Those are very good points, and it seems the data from this particular study does have it's flaws.

Btw, there's results of a related, perhaps more in depth study here:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/03/prweb213516.htm

I think at the end of the day (like Sean said), even if it's not 400%... even if it's 200%, or 100%, the point that there's an enormous advantage that can often be obtained with a relatively low level of effort, by pushing for that number one ranking instead of settling for front page, is an important one.

Andrew

[FWHaskins]

Nice to know thanks