Ranking 3 in google but no traffic

[Lett]

Semrush, scroogle, marketsamurai, google - all those show that my rank is either 1 or 3 for my keyword.

Google webmaster show that my average rank for keyword was 3.

The keyword has more than 20'000 exact match searches per month. Yet, even ranking 3 i have only 4'400 impressions in a month. Even worse, my CTR is 5% so i got only 210 clicks while being on 3th place or better with search term that has more than 20000 exact match searches every month.

The search term isn't seasonal, it had 15k-25k searches every month for the past few years.

With such a little traffic i make very little money, and i am very confused because i though i should get more traffic. I just don't get it.

Also, my website is a little more than 6 months old, it has more than 5000 backlinks in yahoo explorer, while i can't outrank amazon which has just 7 backlinks. Now i am adding backlinks and writting more articles (more pages) by hoping that this will help me ranking.

So, basically, i have two problems - i am getting almost no traffic and i can't outrank amazon which should be easy to outrank as i have heard.

I am so confused, i really hope somebody could explain why i am getting no traffic and why i can't outrank amazon. Please help me someone.

[awarum]

when you search for monthly searches, make sure the results are for your location. I have seen keywords that get 20k searches per month in UK but 0 in USA.

Instead of just text in your meta tag description, try to add some thing that makes you listing stand out.. Price, trial offer, discount coupon etc.

keep in mind that these days automated bots are searching Google for rank tracking and competition tracking, so tons of traffic is simply bots.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

Clearly people are not finding what they are looking for.

Rewrite your Title and Description Tags so it invites them to click through. Then make sure you know exactly what pages they hit, how long they are on them, and where they leave.

With this information you can rework your approach to what you are selling.

And Keyword Tools are only estimates and only as good as the Databases they pull from. Google has the most data... use Google.

[Easy Cash]

Isn't it simple?

If you type your keywords into Google and your page comes up 1 - or 2 - or 3, and you still get minimal traffic,

No one is actually looking for the keyword.

Keep it - but move on.

[Diysolar]

Hi, its really funny also . page rank 3 but no traffic???

[seolbs]

Check where you are ranked with this tool:
seoserp.com/web_tools/google_top_1000_serps_checker.asp

[Turtlet]

These figures are just estimate. It is a number game. More websites you build, more traffic you will get in total. Rely on just one website usually will not achieve what you would expect

[dburk]

Hi Lett,

I would say your confusion comes from unrealistic expectations. Lets break things down and compare them to some known averages, shall we?

You say your average position #3 in the search results, right? So let's use the known statistics for the average CTR of position #3. The best data to ever be publicly released (leaked AOL data) shows that, on average, position #3 receives about 4.6% CTR. You are reporting 5%, so that puts you slightly above average. No apparent problem there.

Now the number of impressions could be different than you expected for a number of reasons. In your post you did not mention if the search volume of 20k was global or local search volume. If it was global volume then that could easily be the reason you are seeing fewer impressions than you expected. There are other possible causes such as variances caused by personalized search results as well as geo-targeted local searches.

[Mike12345]

Try to search more keywords or long tail keywords for website promotion.

Thanks

[JFVJ]

I am also having big problems. Hope i can borrow your thread.

I have 3 pages on first page of google for different keywrods. My first keyword has about 900 searches a day ( I am in Position 2 for this keyword). My second keyword has about 1100 searches a day (I am in position 2 for this keyword). My third keyword has about 8000 seaches a day (I am in postition 4 for this keyword).

According to "AOL's Leaked Search Data" they say that second position should get about 10% of the traffic. keyword1 traffic * 0.1 = 90; keyword2 traffic * 0.1= 110. So from here i should be getting arround 200 unique visitors a day.

Position 4 gettes arround 2.85%. Keyword3 traffic * 0.0285= 228
So my total of unique visitor should be about 448 unique visitors a a day, the problem is that i am only getting 10-20 unique visitors/day.

This is the first time i have pages in the first page of google. Is it normal to get so bad results from it?

The keywords are about kitchen utensils, so they are not seasonal.

Thank you very much

[JFVJ]

I am also having big problems. Hope i can borrow your thread.

I have 3 pages on first page of google for different keywrods. My first keyword has about 900 local searches a day ( I am in Position 2 for this keyword). My second keyword has about 1100 local searches a day (I am in position 2 for this keyword). My third keyword has about 8000 local seaches a day (I am in postition 4 for this keyword).

According to "AOL's Leaked Search Data" they say that second position should get about 12% of the traffic. keyword1 traffic * 0.12 = 108; keyword2 traffic * 0.12= 132. So from here i should be getting around 240 unique visitors a day.

Position 4 gets around 6%. Keyword3 traffic * 0.06= 480
So my total of unique visitor should be about 720 unique visitors a day, the problem is that i am only getting 10-20 unique visitors/day.

This is the first time i have pages in the first page of google. Is it normal to get so bad results from it?

The keywords point for different pages of one site. They are related to kitchen utensils, so they are not seasonal.

Thank you very much

[dburk]

Originally Posted by JFVJ

I am also having big problems. Hope i can borrow your thread.

I have 3 pages on first page of google for different keywrods. My first keyword has about 900 local searches a day ( I am in Position 2 for this keyword). My second keyword has about 1100 local searches a day (I am in position 2 for this keyword). My third keyword has about 8000 local seaches a day (I am in postition 4 for this keyword).

According to "AOL's Leaked Search Data" they say that second position should get about 12% of the traffic. keyword1 traffic * 0.12 = 108; keyword2 traffic * 0.12= 132. So from here i should be getting around 240 unique visitors a day.

Position 4 gets around 6%. Keyword3 traffic * 0.06= 480
So my total of unique visitor should be about 720 unique visitors a day, the problem is that i am only getting 10-20 unique visitors/day.

This is the first time i have pages in the first page of google. Is it normal to get so bad results from it?

The keywords point for different pages of one site. They are related to kitchen utensils, so they are not seasonal.

Thank you very much

Hi JFVJ,

First, let me ask you where you are getting your data from? The Leaked AOL data shows position #2 getting fewer than 6.5% CTR, not 10% and position #4 gets 3.3% CTR, not 6%. Are you using "exact match" search volume data, or "broad match" data? Are you using Local search volume data, or Global search volume?

You say your search volume data is reported in searches "per day", however most tools report this data as searches "per month". If I apply the statistical averages to your search volume data, and assume it to be "monthly" rather than "daily" volume, we see that the average daily traffic would be about 13 visitors per day. That puts your traffic much nearer to the average statistics.

Additionally, AOL's leaked data shows search volume and clicks for all searches, not just unique visitors. So if you allow for this difference and for the wide range of varying results we see across different keywords you might be right in the ball park of normal expectations.

[JFVJ]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi JFVJ,

First, let me ask you where you are getting your data from? The Leaked AOL data shows position #2 getting fewer than 6.5% CTR, not 10% and position #4 gets 3.3% CTR, not 6%. Are you using "exact match" search volume data, or "broad match" data? Are you using Local search volume data, or Global search volume?

You say your search volume data is reported in searches "per day", however most tools report this data as searches "per month". If I apply the statistical averages to your search volume data, and assume it to be "monthly" rather than "daily" volume, we see that the average daily traffic would be about 13 visitors per day. That puts your traffic much nearer to the average statistics.

Additionally, AOL's leaked data shows search volume and clicks for all searches, not just unique visitors. So if you allow for this difference and for the wide range of varying results we see across different keywords you might be right in the ball park of normal expectations.

Hey there dburk,

I got the data from here: How Much Money is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business? ( you have to scroll down a little until you find a pie chart)

I am not really sure if it is broad or exact phrase but i think it is broad because i search without the quotes.

About the daily searches, i took that data from the Google Keyword Tool. i searched USA local and since they shows traffic per month, i divided that number by 31 to get the traffic per day.

Please anyone, if you can give some tips, would be great. I think it is very weird to have pages on first page of google and getting very little traffic. Especially when my keyword3 is #4 in google and has about 246.000 searches a month( about 8000 searches a day).

Thank you

[trinacolon00]

Maybe the keywords you use doesn't really suit your website and it make sense your website doesn't satisfy the needs of the searchers as of my websites it really needs rebuilding, I might hire some people to do the work while my SEO is building backlinks on my domain.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by JFVJ

Hey there dburk,

I got the data from here: How Much Money is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business? ( you have to scroll down a little until you find a pie chart)

Okay, I see where you made a mistake. That pie chart shows you how the percentage of clicks are allocated over the top positions, not the CTR. You get click through rates by dividing the number of clicks by the number of searches, not the number of clicks.

so for example position #2 got 586,100 clicks out of 9,038,794 searches.
586100/9038794 = 0.0648427 Or ~ 6.5% CTR

Originally Posted by JFVJ

I am not really sure if it is broad or exact phrase but i think it is broad because i search without the quotes.

About the daily searches, i took that data from the Google Keyword Tool. i searched USA local and since they shows traffic per month, i divided that number by 31 to get the traffic per day.

Please anyone, if you can give some tips, would be great. I think it is very weird to have pages on first page of google and getting very little traffic. Especially when my keyword3 is #4 in google and has about 246.000 searches a month( about 8000 searches a day).

Thank you

I believe your problem here is that you are likely using broad match data from Google's keyword tool. That data is not the data you were looking for, it includes search data from many different keywords combined.

What you need to use is exact match only data to get search volume for the single individual keyword you are targeting. Look for the match type option and set it to exact match.

[JFVJ]

Hi Don,

Thank you very much for all the explanation. I was searching in broad so that was my problem.

Fabio

[h4b]

I guess no one really has a good answer for this dilemma. Posted a thread on the same issue and it was deleted. 300k monthly hits for a very targeted keyword related to publishing, clearly written meta tags and title, first page of google position 5 and only about 15 hits a day. Even with a 3 percent ctr should have at least 9k hits a month.