How much traffic will I get if I rank #1 in Google?

We all know that ranking on the first page of Google for your chosen keywords will vastly improve your traffic as opposed to ranking on the second or third pages; but how does each incremental place that you rank on the first page affect your traffic?

If you rank position 5, how much more traffic could you expect to receive by ranking position 4, 3, 2 or even first place? If you knew the potential increase in traffic to your website, you’d know whether it was worth hiring an SEO firm to boost your rankings to gain that coveted #1 spot. Google naturally protects information like this, so we could only speculate on the increase in traffic… until now.

AOL recently released figures on CTR (click through rates) for the different positions in their index. The figures were sufficiently high enough to be considered accurate and thus can be expected to reflect traffic levels across most search engines, Google included.

So what are the results? What does being ranked #1 as opposed to #10 mean to your traffic?

According to AOL’s results, if you rank position #10 and received approximately 147,000 clicks, you can expect an increase of over 1,928,000 clicks. That’s almost 2 million extra visitors for ranking #1, an increase of 1,400%!!!

Obviously if your traffic levels are more modest, and you only receive 200 visits per month for being ranked #10 in Google you can still expect a 1,400% increase for being ranked #1 – which would take your 200 visitors per month to a more profitable 2,800. That’s a lot.

So what is #1 worth to you if you already rank #2? Beating your nearest competitor to the top spot can make all the difference and transform your traffic. These figures show that being ranked #1 as opposed to #2 will increase your traffic by 3 1/2 times, that’s 350% more traffic, just for moving up one place! So if you’re ranked #2 and your competitor is #1, they’re probably getting 350% more traffic from that keyword than you are.

One interesting result to come from these figures is that being ranked #10 actually gets you marginally more traffic than being ranked #9. I’m not suggesting you aim to drop a place if you’re ranked #9 of course, but it does show you that being ranked #10 isn’t the end of the world.

The placements in the middle of the front page show just as drastic a difference, as being ranked #1 will net you more than 10 times the traffic than if you were ranked #6.

What should I do next?

What this all shows you is that just a little improvement in your SE rankings can net you massive amounts of additional traffic. Make a note of where you rank in Google for your chosen keywords and then have a look at your stats to see how much traffic you’re receiving for that keyword.

This table will show you how much traffic you can expect for each first page placement on Google compared with ranking #1

You can see from this that ranking #8 - #10 shows little difference in traffic, but it starts to rise very steeply as you move up the rankings.

Once you’ve analysed your stats to see what your current traffic levels are in relation to where you rank you’ll be able to determine if it’s potentially profitable to use an SEO firm. There’s no point ranking #1 for keywords that no one is searching for, or if your potential traffic would be too low to warrant the expense.

Incidentally one nugget that also emerged from these figures is that 10% of all searches result on clicks on page 2 of the results. Page 1 isn’t the only place to be, you will also get traffic from a second page placement.

Darren
SEO Programmer

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6 Comments

1. Is there any data concerning the percentage of visitors that will click natural listings in comparison to PPC sponsored ads?

   How much increased traffic can a site expect by having 1st page natural rankings plus PPC, compared to PPC only?

   Comment by simon June 16, 2007 @ 7:27 am

2. Hey this is very interesting, thank you, I’d be interested in seeing, what the numbers were for ranking on page 2 and 3, again thank you.

   Comment by CanzDesign July 18, 2007 @ 11:47 am

3. Whoops I didn’t see that last comment, I’d still like to see how the numbers stack up.
   You make a very good point about not bothering to optimise your site if #1 rank would still only get you minimal results, I but remember that.

   Comment by CanzDesign July 18, 2007 @ 11:52 am

4. Hi CanzDesign, the figures for click through rates on page 2 and 3 weren’t made available sadly, I’d imagine though that the scale of the graph would be very similar to page 1 however, with the figures reduced by a factor of 10.

   Simon, that’s an interesting question about CTR on Adwords compared to organic results. I’ll look into that for you and may blog on the subject in future.

   Comment by DarrenJamieson July 19, 2007 @ 3:57 pm

5. You really sure rank 1 has that many more clicks. I rank 10th and receiving about 10 clicks from a certain keyword.

   Comment by ps3 August 13, 2008 @ 1:19 pm

6. Hi PS3, yeah those figures are accurate. When dealing with numbers as low as ten clicks it won’t be as quite as accurate, but with higher volumes you can expect these figures to stack up.

   Comment by Darren Jamieson August 13, 2008 @ 5:33 pm

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