Traffic Vs. SEO

Is traffic related to your SEO?

[netgene]

Here is my dilema..

I've spent hundred if not thousand of hours doing SEO and a few thousand dollars too, to find myself now in the top 10 positions in google,yahoo and msn for my top 5 keywords plus a few 20 - 30 secondary keywords..

Great news.. right? However my traffic went as high as 300 visitors a day... thats the bad news. We are talking here about really popular words.. i hold top 10 positions in two kewords/phrases ... however i see my competition with 30k-70k visitors a month for one and 100k - 300k for the other. (Figures gathered from Compete and information directly from the webmaster who would not disclose his 'secret')

So.. My question is.. what is the secret? My sites are very attractive, well positioned, useful, good organization, fast servers, good images, nice designs, lots of info on both...

What is the secret to jump from 300 visitors, to 3000 a day?

My dilema is that, I've managed to position many more sites into the top of the search engines, and I keep getting the same results, regardless of the industry..

They all promise great traffic, and after months of SEO, I hit this wall.

All help will be appreciated.

p.s: I am not including any PPC figures since both real estate and furniture companies to which i have personal knowledge of their inner workings, they don't do any paid adv.

[edited by: engine at 6:56 pm (utc) on Feb. 4, 2008]
[edit reason] No specific keywords/phrases, thanks [/edit]

[mblyman]

In your post you mention that your competition is getting 30K-70K visitors ... and you are only getting 300 visitors a day = roughly 9,000 visitors.

I'm guessing that your competition is also ranking for more popular keywords, and not just the 'specific keyword'

Do you know how many keywords they rank in the top 10? Also there is a significant difference in the amount of traffic if you are sitting in the 1, 2, or 3 positions then if you are lower then 3 in the SERPS.

I guessing this is the case for both.

[edited by: engine at 6:57 pm (utc) on Feb. 4, 2008]
[edit reason] no specific keywords, thanks [/edit]

[netgene]

Yes, I am not on top 3... i am on top 10.. ( 5 - 10 actually)

Do you really think a difference in the first page would make a difference of 500 - 700 more visitors a day? thanks

[mblyman]

The data is a little dated in the following links but it can give you an idea of the difference in volume of traffic based on where you are on page 1.

If you look at

you can see the data released by AOL back in 2006 shows that (at least on AOL in 2006) the number 1 position received 42% of clicks whereas the number 10 spot received only 2.9% of clicks

Using the little position clickthrough tool you can see what type of traffic you might receive if you moved from your current position to perhaps the #1 spot.

According to the tool if you moved from #6 to #1 you should see an increase of 960%...

So if you currently only get 300 visits a day you could expect in the neighborhood of 2880 visits per day if you went to #1!

This aligns rather nicely to what you mentioned earlier that your competitors are getting 30K - 70K visitors a month.

This data I'm sure is by no means precise but rather helps to understand the lift in visitors based on where you currently lie on page 1 of the SERPS.

Going from #2 to #1 is very significant...

[edited by: jatar_k at 8:25 pm (utc) on April 24, 2008]
[edit reason] no urls thanks [/edit]

[MadeWillis]

I'd have to agree with mblyman. If searchers are able to fulfill thier needs within the top 3 results, why scroll down further?

However, I've been in position 3 (on Google) for a keyword with several thousand queries/day and traffic was fairly low considering position and the keyword. Over time I dropped to page 2. I have rewritten the title for this particular page to encourage click-through and am now sitting in position 8. I am currently getting 10x the traffic I was when in position 3. I expect my position will move back up to top 3-4 by within the next month or so.

[netgene]

Interesting information! I never imagined so much diff between 3 and 7 ...

Regarding title text..

#2 (The one i know for a fact his traffic is around 40k)

<snip>

And this is me..

<snip>

Def.. his is mor appealing than mine.. now i would feel afraid to change it and loose my serp.. but its a good point..

[edited by: tedster at 10:53 pm (utc) on Feb. 22, 2008]
[edit reason] No specific keywords/phrases, thanks [/edit]

[MadeWillis]

You may also want to consider rewritting your product descriptions if they come from the manufacturer. Everyone and their brother would be using the same description and you'll never rank for most of it.

[londrum]

descriptions don't carry any weight when it comes to working out your serp position anymore anyway - the algos discounted them a long time ago.
notice how his description is a call-to-action. he hasn't got many keywords in there. whereas yours is full of keywords. you want to give people a reason to click.

[egurr]

I was going to say the same thing. The other description has a call to action and "competitive pricing" which would you click?

[howardam]

I agree with londrum. Also, your competition is probably getting traffic from A LOT of more long-tail terms too. Those can be amazingly effective at driving more traffic.

[libertines]

Some time ago, Enquiro conducted a heat mapping eye test experiment to study the behaviour of search engine users. The results demonstrated that when consumers search their click behaviour is mainly distrubuted between the top 3, with 80% of the traffic being obtained by the top three placements. 57% of the clicks go to the first positioon so this may support why your competitors are getting sooo many visiotrs in comparison to you!

Good luck with your quest :0)

[purplesoda]

You should also consider that your competitors should have started early before you. :)

[v9designbuild]

It's a little bit vague. If I were to actually see the sites, their positions and how they have been optimised it would give me a lot more insight into the problem. The top three is where you should be headed but raw data would help.