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So let us say that, try as you might, the best you can do is page two or three on Google for several key words or phrases; what percentage of the traffic could one reasonably expect?
I cant give you the stats you are looking for, but what I will say is that if you are second or third in results and your description matches the keyword searched for then you are likely to get a large percentage of the position one visitors.
You need to sell your site if you are in search engine results. So if you are mixing it with other sites high up in the results, you need to address the text around your keywords that are being displayed in the results. I believe by addressing the relevant description showed in results you will gain a good amount of visitors especially if higher ranking sites dont address this.
Travis
P.S.It is always a nice feeling to be number one but dont drive your self to the looney bin over it.
for e.g. teens searching for mp3 will straight away jump to 4-5 page since they know the top 3-4 pages by heart.
I see tens of thousands of visitors per day on some terms where the page shows up number 11 on google. On others, it will be a few thousand with number 1 placement but only a few dozen with number 4 or 5.
The best places to be in general seem to be
Number 1
Number 2
Number 10
Number 11
There are a few cases where number 11 is better than number 10 but not enough to worry about.
Pages which show up on page three do not get enough traffic from search to even count.
If you have pages that far down, you need to be getting lots of traffic from places other than search engines. Relying on google for more than about 10% of your total site traffic is highly risky.
Overall, search is about 15% of our traffic and google is about 10%.
Site 2 - appears #9 (2-3 google referals/day)
Site 3 - appears #13 (0 google referals/day)....gets 2-3 referals in a month though
This travel related KW (some Hotel's name)is of very high ROI
I have a page that is #1 out of 3.5 million results for related a 3 word search.
It's meaningless. I've never seen that string in my referer logs. It just happens to appear on one of my pages.
Having a page title that grabs the searcher can also help. By that I mean one that makes it clear your page has what the searcher wants. And also has words that would appeal to who you are aiming at. For example, including "discount widgets" if you target the budget minded consumer, or alternatively "finest quality" if you are aiming at the market that is willing to pay more for the best.
So let us say that, try as you might, the best you can do is page two or three on Google for several key words or phrases; what percentage of the traffic could one reasonably expect?
I would say about 5% of the traffic that page 1 would get. However, you should *never* rely on one, or only a few, pages to bring in your traffic. Any less than 100 pages in a competitive market and you will not survive long term.
Keep expanding that type of content while working your way up on the big money keyphrases. It is also good insurance when a "florida" happens.
Having a page title that grabs the searcher can also help.
This is very true. Being above the fold (depends on screen resolution = 5-6 in my case) is important enough, but if their titles and snippets are vague, I will scroll down.
I am found mainly through page 1 (usually 1-10) of the SERPs but on occasion I show up on page 3 of someone set up to display 100 per page.
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Yes, #1 spot is the best and most coveted position. If you can get there, then it is good, but to answer the question - NO, it is not really necessary. It depends more or less on the necessity as well as the balance of your time & resources.
For example, you could end up spending 80% of your time trying to push your site up to #1 for the competitive keywords, but the reality may turn out that it yields only 20% of your potential income. Perhaps it is better to divert that 80% effort for something else more productive.
I think I would rather be 2, no one spam reports the second result, warranted or not.
Get a few more hits from the "I'm feeling lucky button".
How do you count that?
I have a site where the home page HTML title is "Widgets are a dangerous source of thingamajig, and can cause death!" With an actual exclamation point. Here, "widgets" is the trademark of a product a certain company makes that I want to warn the world about. Suffice it to say that anyone searching about widgets who sees that anywhere in a SERP is likely to want to click and see what the scoop is.
When you click the button it takes you direct to the number 1 result.
antrat thanks, I didn't knew that - my question was how do you find out in the logs? how many hits you got from that button.
Good question, unfortunately I don't know the answer :o(
widget i+am+feeling+lucky
