Forum Moderators: open
thanks guys
nermin
In some categories it is very difficult to measure how many visitors your competitors are getting, especially from SE's.
In some categories companies like Nielsen/Netratings publish the estimated total traffic to the major category leaders, but you can't easily deduce how many came from SE's.
You may also be able to use "Top 100" type sites to measure your popularity against some competitors, although the guys with the huge traffic usually don't take part in those types of programs.
You could also try some experimental searches at Wordtracker, Adwords and Overture to approximate the total possible SE traffic. Again these measurements are error prone.
I look at it this way, when I rank in the top 3 for every relevant search term I can think of....I probably have about 50% of the traffic that can be achieved....then I have to go away and think of some more possible search terms and target those!.....Increasing traffic from SE's never ends.
It becomes a balance of how much is left Vs how much effort is required to get those visitors ;)
1000 visitors per month would be very low in most of the categories I look at ... but not all. It depends on the topic area.
Don't know if you've read through this thread yet ...
Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com]
... if not, it might give you some ideas.
You're talking only about the directory clicks not the search, right? It's hard to compare these values without specifics (which are for good reasons not allowed). I have a #1 listing within one higher up, semi competitive category since more than three years and never received more than 350 visitors A YEAR! So in my eyes 1050 in one month is very very much. You see it's pretty relative.
Beside the popularity of a category it also depends on the title and description of a listing and how "polluted" the category is by ads and sourroundings ...