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I am wondering if we can all put down some benchmarks we use based on our experiences.
For example, I have read (in a Marketing Sherpa publication) that, if one gets a top 3 listing on any keyword in a major search engine, they can expect to get 10% of the number of searches on that keyword in traffic to their site. Is this a reasonable benchmark? What has everyone's experience been?
Some specific questions:
1)What is the average CTR on top 3 ("natural") search engine listings across the major search engines?
2)What is the average CTR on top 10 ("natural") search engine listings across the major search engines?
Best,
Lorraine Frost
it depends enormously what market your site is in, the age groups, the numbers of people searching, the type of product/service - everything...
Also, when you get to page 1 (or certainly top 5 in my experience) its the title and presentation of your sites listing that will draw them in, and because of that you can see more traffic at number 3 than at number 1, if number ones' is messyly written or too heavily optimised...which one would you visit:
www.Widgets.com/widgets/widgetindex.htm : widgets, widgets and more widgets at widgets.com - for all your widgety widgit needs (blue widgets,red widgets,fluffy widgets)
or
www.GreatWidgets.com : Welcome to the home of widgets. we deliver all sorts of widgets at unbeatable prices strait to your door next day!
the first example would most likely be no.1 - if he gets away with the spam...but no. 2 would see more visitors who wouls stick around their site longer...and make more money!
hope that helps!
Harley
The only time you can really target any kind of placement like "top 3" or "top 10" is with Overture / Google paid listings. Natural SEO isn't like shooting fish in a barrel :)
However, it is helpful to know that people will click more often, on listings that are higher up on the page. The sooner they see the listing *your skills* put there, and not the listing put there by *somebody else's SEO skills* then the better *your clients* will do.
Getting the figures of links presented / click through, sounds like you want IMPRESSION data for SERPs.
Who cares, and why would this be important? I'd worry more about making your title more like
*click me know, widgets for sale online******
instead of
long repetative keyword stuffed phrase that gives nothing of real value here.
I know I'm not answering the question, because the fact is, nobody can answer it with authority, except GoogleGuy, and other SE reps. Until they step up to the bat, why not work on something productive? :)
I also believe that anyone who has done SEO acorss many sites, for a few years is capable of providing an answer that would be useful, to a point. And, being able to aggregate a number of such answers, I think, would yield something insightful.
What I am asking is for a benchmark, and marketers are often driven by benchmarks in their pre-campaign calculations, as they should be. We've all heard benchmark figures regarding reponse rates to telemarketing efforts, open rates on acquisition email campaigns, clickthrough rates on newsletter sponsorships, clickthrough rates on banner ads and AdWords listings. Are these figures useless? No. Are they indicative of how everyone will perform using these media? Of course not. But, they are still tremendously useful. Think about banners: Yes, some banners are better than others and will achieve a higher CTR, but the banner ad is what it is as a marketing channel and so any marketer banking on systematically achieving a 5% banner CTR will be sorely let down by his results (probably, no matter how well he crafts his banner ad).
What I'm hoping to find out from people is this: You used Wordtracker to find out that keyword X gets 10,000 searches/month in a given engine, and targeted it. You subsequently ranked in the top 3 for X on that engine (or top 10), and you got some traffic. How many of those searches do you end up getting per month in traffic? 1%? 2%? 10%? That is the question.(From this you, in effect, have the CTR for that listing; traffic from term X/predicted searches on X in Wordtracker = CTR).
Thanks again,
Lorraine
7Search has this on their keyword query frequency research page (http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx)regarding probable CTRs attached to top ranking listings in their engine.
They say:
"Depending on your ranking, the following percentage
of searchers will visit your site. (This is an estimate)
Rank
1st. 2nd. 3rd. 4th. 5th. 6th. 7th. 8th. 9th. 10th
% of traffic
7% 3.75% 2.5% 1.75 % 1.25% 0.75% 0.60% 0.50% 0.40% 0.35%"
Are these realistic benchmarks for "natural" search listing in engines larger like Google and MSN?
What has been the experience of those in this forum?
Lorraine
It really depends on how relevant your page listing is. I've been #1 on a great high traffic term, but received a measly 3% clickthrough. And I've also had surprises of up to 15%. And yes, #1 will generally provide more clicks than #2, which will generally provide CT's than #3.
But once again, link placement and exposure is only part of it - relevancy is also a key factor to high CTR and ROI.
probable CTRs
probable means conjecture. That's not in any ballpark.
It's not possible to gather these stats without the actual logs from the major search engines, and that is not going to happen.
The only thing you can be sure of is to make a daily (day,week,month, your choice) graph of your listing position, then correlate it to the clicks your logs say you received from the search engines.
Beyond that, it's all guesswork.
A good or bad description can make or break CTR, so the precise positioning on the page is not just the important factor.
From my experinces with Overture and Google PPC, I'd put that sentence in lights. We've run ads that get 25% CTR and ads that bomb out below Google's 0.5% threshold. I have one client right now with two very different Overture campaigns created by two different teams.
One team is struggling at 1% CTR over 8 ads and the other is averaging nearly 5% CTR over 10 ads!
Copy writing skills are really important in both meta descriptions and PPC ads. Important enough to hire a pro if no one on the team has already developed the skills, I'd say.
Yes, the answer to this question is "probably" beyond the scope of this forum. The above answer is entirely subjective, and based on my server logs and reports. No two logs are alike, I dare say.
There's a big difference between #5 and top 3, especially #1 - but there's no way to tell ratio-wise because we have no access to info on impressions for the SERP.
There's a big difference between #1 and #3 with traffic for any searches with the natural listings, even when the title and description are the same.
