How important is your Google ranking?
In August of 2006 AOL leaked millions of search records. A few sleuths in the SEO industry went through this data to look at click data by ranking. Donna Fontenot shared the relative click volume of lower ranked results relative to the top ranked site.
Consider this:
- Ranking Number 1 gets 42.1% of clicks.
- Ranking Number 2 receives 11.9%
- Ranking Number 3 receives 8.5%
- Ranking Number 4 receives 6.1%
- Ranking Number 5 receives 4.9%
- Ranking Number 6 receives 4.1%
- Ranking Number 7 receives 3.4%
- Ranking Number 8 receives 3.0%
- Ranking Number 9 receives 2.8%
- Ranking Number 10 receives 3.0%
You can assume that the percentages are similar for Google rankings, although pay per click (sponsored listings) are reported to get about 27% of all clicks. This is because in PPC you can run an ad and entice the click.
So, a #1 Google ranking means that you could get 30% of the overall search volume for the term. In some cases this means a lot of traffic.
After the number 1 spot, you can expect to see 5-8% of all searches clicking through to your site. Doesn’t sound like much, but for a term that gets 20,000 searches per month, it means that you could get 1,000 – 1,600 clicks if you are in the top 2-5 spots. If you were paying for these (like the PPC ads), this would could cost you $1-2000month… for just one term.
You can see how important the Google rankings are, and why it’s considered the Top 10 Nirvana.
If you’d like to see how to get to this nirvana, just give us a call, or fill out a request for a site review… we’ll show you how we can get you there.
