Evaluating Ranking vs. Traffic

[JustaWizard]

Question:

Would you say that if you have very high ranking (1st page & 2nd page) for a keyword but not particularly high traffic, would you say that this is PRIMARILY an indication of the keyword not being a particularly hot market?

The numbers: 1600 exact match searches/month, ~35 unique visitors per day. That translates to roughly 2% of the searches going to my site.

I realize other factors include if searchers like the title or description they see, thus influencing them to click...

...but I thought I'd get your input and opinions, thanks!

David

[mikemcmillan]

On thing I have found interesting is the relationship between your ranking on a search engine page and the percentage of click throughs to expect for the particlular search term. Do a search for "Click Through Rate Search Rankings" and you can find similar data, but a good page is...

Click Through Rate By Search Rank

As you can see, just being on the front page of the SERPs doesn't guarantee you will get tons of traffic. The #1 spot will get over 40% of the click throughs, while the #10 spot will only get 2-3% (if this data is correct).

So yes, getting to the first page is good, but you really must get close to the top of the page to hustle in the traffic. And, the difference between being at the bottom of page one and the top of page two is enormous.

[IM Headlines]

Originally Posted by JustaWizard

Question:

Would you say that if you have very high ranking (1st page & 2nd page) for a keyword but not particularly high traffic, would you say that this is PRIMARILY an indication of the keyword not being a particularly hot market?

The numbers: 1600 exact match searches/month, ~35 unique visitors per day. That translates to roughly 2% of the searches going to my site.

I realize other factors include if searchers like the title or description they see, thus influencing them to click...

...but I thought I'd get your input and opinions, thanks!

David

The keyword is not a high traffic one, or your title is not good enough to attract visitors. You must make your title stunning.... how?
Just say to yourself, if I see something like this will I click on it?
Also take a look at the titles that the big guys are using

[RichardLegg]

The numbers: 1600 exact match searches/month, ~35 unique visitors per day.

1600 searches a month is around ~53 searches per day.

So if you're getting ~35 visitors per day, that seems like a pretty good CTR to me.

Richard

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by RichardLegg

1600 searches a month is around ~53 searches per day.

So if you're getting ~35 visitors per day, that seems like a pretty good CTR to me.

Richard

Oh crap! You're right! How embarrassing!--I was comparing apples to oranges... THANKS! :-)

David

[Brent Crouch]

The average CTR by search position that mikemcmillan linked to was from my site. The results were mined from a data released by AOL. I couldn't believe how much of a difference moving up one result could make, but in my experience the data is accurate.

But remember the data is just an average. Like a-marketing said, you can still make a significant difference by changing your title. On average, being #1 will get you 42.3% of the clicks. But if you write a bad title, chances are you'll get much less than that.

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by Brent Crouch

The average CTR by search position that mikemcmillan linked to was from my site. The results were mined from a data released by AOL. I couldn't believe how much of a difference moving up one result could make, but in my experience the data is accurate.

But remember the data is just an average. Like a-marketing said, you can still make a significant difference by changing your title. On average, being #1 will get you 42.3% of the clicks. But if you write a bad title, chances are you'll get much less than that.

Thanks Brent: you know, just observing people searching when I can reveals that people do tend to lost patience quickly "below the fold" on the first page, and 2nd page patience is that much reduced.

Thanks!
David

[Brent Crouch]

Another factor I didn't think of was the relevance of the results. If I'm searching for information, I'll go as far as I need in order to find it. If I can find it in the first few results, then I'll go no further. However, I've made it all the way to page 8 to find what I'm looking for in rare cases.

I think the lesson here is to write your page for search users and not search engines. You have to be relevant for the terms you are targeting.

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by Brent Crouch

Another factor I didn't think of was the relevance of the results. If I'm searching for information, I'll go as far as I need in order to find it. If I can find it in the first few results, then I'll go no further. However, I've made it all the way to page 8 to find what I'm looking for in rare cases.

I think the lesson here is to write your page for search users and not search engines. You have to be relevant for the terms you are targeting.

Hey Brent - I think you hit the nail on the head, the key word (pardon the pun) is relevance... I've done the same searching for what I'm looking for.

I've gone I-don't-know-how-many-pages deep looking for what I'm really looking for and not finding page, after page, after page...

Seems that maybe Google knows what they're talking about when they say provide relevant content, eh? ;-)

THANKS!
David

[Brent Crouch]

Hi David,

Speaking of being relevant, I wonder how much Google is using data they get from Google Analytics to determine search rank. They can easily tell how long a visitor spent on your site, how many pages they looked at, etc. Forget back links, keywords in title tags, and keyword ratios, there is no better tool to determine relevancy than Google Analytics.

I'd love to know if it is used in the latest Google algorithm

[JustaWizard]

Originally Posted by Brent Crouch

Hi David,

Speaking of being relevant, I wonder how much Google is using data they get from Google Analytics to determine search rank. They can easily tell how long a visitor spent on your site, how many pages they looked at, etc. Forget back links, keywords in title tags, and keyword ratios, there is no better tool to determine relevancy than Google Analytics.

I'd love to know if it is used in the latest Google algorithm

Yeah, good question Brent. I do subscribe to Matt Cutts' RSS blog feed (go to mattcutts.com then click on his blog link if interested) and I also get RSS feeds from Google Analytics updates and from Google Webmaster.

That said, I do recall bounce rate and time on site coming up in the discussion -forgive my fuzzy memory, but as I recall (hey, I could work for the government with my bad memory, eh? ;-) they said that those factors MIGHT weigh in on a sites authority for the simple reason that a high bounce rate COULD indicate that one's site did not deliver on its "promise" in the title and description, and that ostensibly time on site could indicate a lack of relevance.

One of the things that seems to be going on, as we talk about relevance, is the idea that Google in particular wants to continue its mission to be #1 in Search (confirmed by CEO Eric Schmidt on a recent Charlie Rose) and that they're looking not just to provide pages that match keyword searches, but to try to take Latent Semantic Indexing a step further and provide MEANINGFUL results to searchers.

All THAT said, it would appear that if one simply plays by the rules and actually provides relevant unique content (and, Matt Cutts confirmed in a recent video that Google is NOT anti-SEO as evidenced by their "basics of SEO" pdf they have) one could likely do well in the Google results.

Whew! THANKS!
David

[Daniel Molano]

Originally Posted by RichardLegg

1600 searches a month is around ~53 searches per day.

So if you're getting ~35 visitors per day, that seems like a pretty good CTR to me.

Richard

Pretty damn good CTR, the average would be around 50%.

If you are getting anything above 50% of the keyword's potential then you are doing something right.