How much traffic will I get if I rank #1 in Google?
We all know that ranking on the first page of Google for your chosen keywords will vastly improve your traffic as opposed to ranking on the second or third pages; but how does each incremental place that you rank on the first page affect your traffic?
If you rank position 5, how much more traffic could you expect to receive by ranking position 4, 3, 2 or even first place? If you knew the potential increase in traffic to your website, you’d know whether it was worth hiring an SEO firm to boost your rankings to gain that coveted #1 spot. Google naturally protects information like this, so we could only speculate on the increase in traffic… until now.
AOL recently released figures on CTR (click through rates) for the different positions in their index. The figures were sufficiently high enough to be considered accurate and thus can be expected to reflect traffic levels across most search engines, Google included.
So what are the results? What does being ranked #1 as opposed to #10 mean to your traffic?
According to AOL’s results, if you rank position #10 and received approximately 147,000 clicks, you can expect an increase of over 1,928,000 clicks. That’s almost 2 million extra visitors for ranking #1, an increase of 1,400%!!!
Obviously if your traffic levels are more modest, and you only receive 200 visits per month for being ranked #10 in Google you can still expect a 1,400% increase for being ranked #1 – which would take your 200 visitors per month to a more profitable 2,800. That’s a lot.
So what is #1 worth to you if you already rank #2? Beating your nearest competitor to the top spot can make all the difference and transform your traffic. These figures show that being ranked #1 as opposed to #2 will increase your traffic by 3 1/2 times, that’s 350% more traffic, just for moving up one place! So if you’re ranked #2 and your competitor is #1, they’re probably getting 350% more traffic from that keyword than you are.
One interesting result to come from these figures is that being ranked #10 actually gets you marginally more traffic than being ranked #9. I’m not suggesting you aim to drop a place if you’re ranked #9 of course, but it does show you that being ranked #10 isn’t the end of the world.
The placements in the middle of the front page show just as drastic a difference, as being ranked #1 will net you more than 10 times the traffic than if you were ranked #6.
What should I do next?
What this all shows you is that just a little improvement in your SE rankings can net you massive amounts of additional traffic. Make a note of where you rank in Google for your chosen keywords and then have a look at your stats to see how much traffic you’re receiving for that keyword.
This table will show you how much traffic you can expect for each first page placement on Google compared with ranking #1
| Ranking Position | Traffic Level | |
| #1 | Ranking Position 1 | |
| #2 | 3.5 times less than #1 | |
| #3 | 4.9 times less than #1 | |
| #4 | 6.9 times less than #1 | |
| #5 | 8.5 times less than #1 | |
| #6 | 10.4 times less than #1 | |
| #7 | 12.3 times less than #1 | |
| #8 | 14 times less than #1 | |
| #9 | 14.8 times less than #1 (the worst place to rank on page 1) | |
| #10 | 14.1 times less than #1 | |
You can see from this that ranking #8 – #10 shows little difference in traffic, but it starts to rise very steeply as you move up the rankings.
This graph shows the number of clicks for the top 10 positions for a highly searched phrase. It’s pretty evident from this that ranking #1 produces fantastic results as opposed to the other placements on the front page.
Once you’ve analysed your stats to see what your current traffic levels are in relation to where you rank you’ll be able to determine if it’s potentially profitable to use an SEO firm. There’s no point ranking #1 for keywords that no one is searching for, or if your potential traffic would be too low to warrant the expense.
Incidentally one nugget that also emerged from these figures is that 10% of all searches result on clicks on page 2 of the results. Page 1 isn’t the only place to be, you will also get traffic from a second page placement.
Darren
SEO Programmer
Is there any data concerning the percentage of visitors that will click natural listings in comparison to PPC sponsored ads?
How much increased traffic can a site expect by having 1st page natural rankings plus PPC, compared to PPC only?
Hey this is very interesting, thank you, I’d be interested in seeing, what the numbers were for ranking on page 2 and 3, again thank you.
Whoops I didn’t see that last comment, I’d still like to see how the numbers stack up.
You make a very good point about not bothering to optimise your site if #1 rank would still only get you minimal results, I but remember that.
Hi CanzDesign, the figures for click through rates on page 2 and 3 weren’t made available sadly, I’d imagine though that the scale of the graph would be very similar to page 1 however, with the figures reduced by a factor of 10.
Simon, that’s an interesting question about CTR on Adwords compared to organic results. I’ll look into that for you and may blog on the subject in future.
You really sure rank 1 has that many more clicks. I rank 10th and receiving about 10 clicks from a certain keyword.
Hi PS3, yeah those figures are accurate. When dealing with numbers as low as ten clicks it won’t be as quite as accurate, but with higher volumes you can expect these figures to stack up.
my trademark chatropolis gets around 87 percent of our traffic. We have been around 15 years and nothing I do can get another keyword to get more than 5%.
I know this indicates great brand recognition but I think it also means we are missing out on a lot of people that don’t know us. Is there a way to start getting additional bookmarks and get more traffic from keywords. We have many good positions on other keywords.
I’m not complaining we have been in the top 5000 on Alexa and get 15 pageviews per visitor. I just want to reach new visitors.
I looked into this as I had heard you get 40% of the clicks if you are number one in Google.
For me it was more like 5-10% if I used the data from the Google Keyword Tool. Of my sites that are ranked number one in Google they got 5-10% of the clicks from the total number of people searching for the keywords those sites were ranked number one for.
I posted my findings on my blog: http://howigotrich.net/how-many-hits-do-you-get-when-youre-number-1-in-google/
This is great data, however when I analyse the Keywords “Online Takeaway”, the total local hits for July are 14,800… This would mean a number 3 position is worth 1,412 per month or 46 per day.
We are pretty new but well ranked, and receiving only 10% of that figure per day for this keyword. Most of our hits are coming from very specific area / restaurant searches.
Anyone know why? Where are all those hits ending up?
BTW, I created a really neat little Excel spreadsheet to calculate from the figures in this post.
Anyone want it, let me know… J
Hi Justin,
I would love to have a look at your spreadsheet. These figs are really useful to me in my local business marketing business.
I see your comment is 18 months old, but I hope you stioll recieve this request
this is interesting data.
however it seems to me that no one knows anything. Google keyword tool and wordtracker tool are showing data completely opposite from what it is.
I have a site that ranks number one on google, yahoo for a keyword which “supposedly” gets 130k monthly searches according to google keyword tool. and wordtracker shows it only gets close to 10 clicks a day (which is closer to the truth). seems like everyone just likes to talk numbers, but are they real?
Interisting article, what so important is google ? that made the diference between a good or poor trafic into a web site.
Interesting statistics. Our main keyword fluctuates between #2 and #7 in Google. All I know is that when we are ranked at #2, we get many times more traffic than when we’re ranked at #7. I don’t think the numbers are as dramatic as these findings present, but I agree that bumping up 3 or more positions can make a dramatic difference in traffic.
My website usually ranks #2 for one of my keywords. However, it takes a dip to #3 every once in a while. I definitely a notice in a decrease in traffic for this specific keyword. I would estimate that the difference is about 40% less, which is pretty close to what your numbers are. Thanks for a very interesting and unique article.
Just doing seo ourselves and will post back to confirm the findings of this post
I will also get #1 PPC posi for my KW and #1 organic and see which is clicked more
See you soon, hopefully with results…..
Hi Darren,
So I recently launched my site and I’m aiming to get it to rank on the first page for its URL, looking at your article it looks like I need to get in to the top 3 but has this changed since you wrote the article as its from 2007? Will the first page suffice?