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Searches: 40,000 Monthly... Traffic: NOTHING! This is really disturbing...

by John Atkins
15 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've been doing a lot of keyword research lately.

I find good keywords that bring in a considerable amount of traffic
and I build niche sites that target those keywords.

Yesterday my blog got ranked 2nd for a 3 word keyword that
gets approximately 40,000 searches monthly.

As usual, I used google's keyword tool to check it out.

Global monthly search volume: A bit over 40,000
Local Search volume september: A bit over 90,000

Checked the competition and it was slim.

I jumped on it like a hungry dog. Uploaded some content
and did some serious backlinking.

The keyword got on the first page in no time, and it's
currently ranked number 2.

I estimated that I would get at LEAST 200 uniques
every day from the 2nd place.

But, to my amazement, I got nothing!

I started to get paranoid, so I checked the keyword
on other places such as market samurai.

According to market samurai, the keyword gets approx
1,300 searches daily . And it also showed me that you
can expect over 500 uniques daily if you get 1st on google.
The 2nd I presume (which is me), will get about the same.

So yeah, according to these tools, the keyword does get
a good amount of traffic.

BUT... it clearly does not, because I'm there and I'm not getting
any.

So my questions are...

Has anyone ever experienced something similar?

Maybe these tools are not that accurate?

I always use these tools and "usually" their data is pretty
accurate.

So how come that the data for this keyword is way
off scale?

Maybe there's a mistake?

Or maybe I'm just being impatient, and maybe I'll get a lot
of traffic in the upcoming days?

Actually I'm impatient because usually I start to get traffic
immediately after I land on the first page of google for the
keyword that I target.

It's been 24 hours now and I still haven't seen any traffic...

Anyway, if you have any idea of what could've happened
here, or if you had a similar experience, pls share.

Thanks


NOTE: You should know that the keyword is not seasonal.
#disturbing #monthly #searches #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author arttse
    If you want to check the accuracy of google's search volume for a keyword you should set up an adwords campaign. You only need to do this for 7 days and bid an amount that will get you on page 1 for that key word. The aim is not to get hits but to count the number of impressions you receive. After 1 week you should have a very good idea how many searches a particular keyword is searched in Google.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Atkins
      Originally Posted by arttse View Post

      If you want to check the accuracy of google's search volume for a keyword you should set up an adwords campaign. You only need to do this for 7 days and bid an amount that will get you on page 1 for that key word. The aim is not to get hits but to count the number of impressions you receive. After 1 week you should have a very good idea how many searches a particular keyword is searched in Google.
      Yeah I was thinking about that.

      But even if I do it and find out that the keyword doesn't bring
      in any traffic. I would still be perplexed by the fact that google's
      keyword tool and MS showed much different results :/

      Thanks for the help
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      • Profile picture of the author Frank42
        I always set up adwords campaigns, its the only true reflection if that keyword is getting good traffic. Also another good indicator is if there are adwords on the side it means people are making sales or clicks.
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  • Profile picture of the author Voasi
    Couple of things:

    - Did you use Google and have it selected as "broad"? You need to make sure that's always selected at "Exact" to see how many times it's searched.

    - If you're logged into your Google account and are always doing the same searches and clicking on your website, you'll start to move up because of this. Google takes your searches and websites you click on and averages them inbetween the other sites that they've ranked.

    - Lastly, it could be just at THAT datacenter that you've gained those rankings which is showing up on your searches. Once (if) it propagates throughtout the entire network, then you'll see the clicks/traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author kingside
    I don't use Market Samurai but I'm relatively sure it just scrapes the Google Keyword Tool for keyword research, meaning your results would always be the same (just roughly divided by 30).

    These tools are wrong all the time, always cross check your results with another keyword tool that gets it's data from a different source. I usually use keyworddiscovery to cross check, I think it's more accurate than the Google tool too.

    Originally Posted by IM Headlines View Post

    So my questions are...

    Has anyone ever experienced something similar?

    Maybe these tools are not that accurate?

    I always use these tools and "usually" their data is pretty
    accurate.

    So how come that the data for this keyword is way
    off scale?

    Maybe there's a mistake?
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  • Profile picture of the author vagabondette
    what tool is showing you your ranking? If you're doing the search yourself that could be WAY off.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi IM Headlines,

      I see what appears to be several problems with you data as presented.

      Global monthly search volume: A bit over 40,000
      Local Search volume september: A bit over 90,000
      When you see Local search volume far in excess of GSV it is an indication of strong seasonality, a major trend, or a lot of artificially generated searches. These are generally outliers and require closer scrutiny.

      According to market samurai, the keyword gets approx
      1,300 searches daily . And it also showed me that you
      can expect over 500 uniques daily if you get 1st on google.
      The 2nd I presume (which is me), will get about the same.

      So yeah, according to these tools, the keyword does get
      a good amount of traffic.
      These numbers seem to be a bit off from my experience. If we assume that 95% of the GSV is from your local region that leaves us with approximately 38,000 monthly, or about 1300 daily searches. The statistical average CTR for the #2 position is 6.48427% (based on leaked AOL data), which leaves you with an estimated 84 visits per day (not uniques). I don't know how you were able to "expect over 500 uniques daily if you get 1st on google", when statistically it should be less than 300 total visits with uniques being a subset of that number.

      Of course I'm using statistical averages based on the largest publicly available dataset, you can expect significant variance on individual keywords. I have to believe that you have either misused that keyword tool or it has a very significant flaw in the formula used to calculate unique visits.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kelly Verge
    If you're using Market Samurai, what is the PBR (phrase-to-broad)? This number shows the percentage of phrase-match searches to broad-match searches. If it's a low number, the search numbers could be skewed.
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  • Profile picture of the author Traffiker
    Can you tell us what the keywords are?
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Lam
    Are the results "broad" or "exact"? I'm thinking you based the results on broad, which is very inaccurate.
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  • Profile picture of the author promo_guy
    Personally I think arttse has got it right. I have to admit, I've not set up an adwords campaign to test this but I've read recently that this is a good indicator, better that the keyword tool most likely, and it makes perfect sense.

    As a matter of fact, before I buy my next domain, I'm going to emply the adwords method. As well, from what I understand, G's keyword tool is from the month prior and I'm never 100% confident in it.

    Who knows, maybe G inflates those numbers to inspire more Adwords ads and Adsense sites lol. Ya never know!
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  • Profile picture of the author LNSTRM
    The Google Keyword Tool's results are EXTREMELY bloated. Try the Google SK Tool. I've had it almost nail my traffic across three different sites.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by LNSTRM View Post

      The Google Keyword Tool's results are EXTREMELY bloated. Try the Google SK Tool. I've had it almost nail my traffic across three different sites.
      Hi LNSTRM,

      Please explain how you can make such a claim. Both tools work from the same dataset. If the data for one is inaccurate then the other has to be equally inaccurate. :confused:

      In my experience it is extremely rare for either tool to report inaccurate data. However, I have seen a parade of newcomers that never bother to take the time to learn how to use these tools to pull the data they seek.
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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    One key fact after stripping down the figures, is that as position one usually gets around 40% of the total clickthroughs, you are actually looking at less than 100 potential clicks a day.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Atkins
    Hey guys,

    First of all thanks for the help.

    The broad results are at 40,000 but the exact results are still at low 5 figures.

    Anyway, I've beaten the first 1 now and I'm on top. I'm seeing
    a little traffic at 50-100 uniques daily.

    There's a pretty big difference between the 1st and 2nd
    position I must say.

    With this rate, the traffic will amount up to 2-3K uniques monthly
    which is a bit lower than I expected. Anyway, that happens with keywords I guess.

    At least now I'll be getting a little extra side income on automation
    every month.

    Thanks again

    Cheers
    -Johnny
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