petestein1 - 9:29 pm on Dec 17, 2009 (gmt 0)

I'm hoping the community here can dip into their experience and give me a rough sense of some numbers.

A particular page of my site has settled in as the 4th result for a specific Google search. In return for being #4, I get certain level of traffic (Nothing to get too excited about, about 60 entries a day.)

(By the way, the traffic coming in on this search is pretty great -- the bounce rate is a staggeringly low 11%. That's good, right?)

Here's my question:

What kind of search traffic could I expect if I were able to fight my way up to position #3, #2 or #1?

I ask because I'm trying to turn the site into a viable business. While I was hoping that Google would auto-magically send all sorts of traffic my way, it's now clear to me that I'm going to have target specific terms and work to get well-respected links into those pages using the appropriate anchor text.

I know there's no exact answer -- and I know my mileage may vary dramatically -- but I'm hoping that enough people will weigh in here to give me a sense of what to expect.

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can give me from your past experience and happy holidays.

Peter