Many people will chase a page 1 ranking for specific keywords without ever really understanding why they want to rank for that keyword. In this blog post I will attempt to provide some data to support what a Page 1 ranking for a hhigh volume relevant keyword is worth as well as what a Page 1, Position 1 ranking means to your business.
In addition to the SEO work I do for Traffika, I do SEO on a number of personal sites as well as test sites that I will build to test link building strategies or markets. The data that is provided below comes from these sites and not from client sites..just so you know.
I am going to show you what the impact of securing a #1 ranking in Google was for one of my target keywords.
The Myth of Page 1 Rankings
Before we start I need to take a moment to discuss the myth of page 1 rankings. The standard pitch by unscrupulous seo firms is that they will rank your website for 100 keywords and will guarantee page 1 rankings for these keywords in the search engines. What they fail to tell you is that:
- They select crappy keywords around which there is very little search volume and relevance
- They also include rankings on obscure search engines that provide little in the way of search volume.
In our work whilst we may optimise a website to rank for a specific number of keywords, that is to draft custom title tags and meta descriptions targeting those keywords, we will typically focus our link acquisition efforts on those keywords that display those characteristics of high search volume and relevance so that when a high ranking is achieved for that keyword, the site should see increased site visits and goal conversions.
So the key takeaway is yes, page 1 rankings are important but you need to ensure the keywords you choose to rank for have sufficient search volume to make the effort worth while and are relevant to your business or offering.
The Value of Google Rankings
We all chase Page 1 rankings but the real gold in them rivers is to be had in the top 3 spots. SEOBook.com has a great summary of Google Ranking Value and the key graph that you should be looking at is the pie chart of AOL’s leaked Search Data that shows the traffic by google rank.
Traffic by Google Rank
Of course since July of 2010 Google is now showing this data for free in Google Webmaster Tools.
The Data
I run a niche ecommerce website with my partner which has # 1 rankings for several of its target keywords. However one keyword was firmly stuck in the #2 position for a long time. In the last three weeks the ranking for this keyword phrase moved into the #1 position from #2.
Here is some of the key data around the keyword.
Keyword Search Volumes
- Phrase Match Monthly search volume – 12,100 searches
- Exact Match Monthly search volume – 2,400 searches
Immediately I know that the difference between the phrase match and exact match volumes indicates that there are a large number of other long tail searches that include my keyword phrase. So hopefully by ranking for the main phrase we will pick up some of the other phrase matched search volume as well.
Source: Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Keyword Rankings
The target keyword recently moved to #1 and has been there for three weeks as per the Raven Tools rank tracking table below.
Keyword Rankings
Source: Raven Tools
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is an awesome source of data on how your site is performing. In addition to all of the technical information it provides, of real value is the data it now provides on impressions and click throughs down to a keyword level at various rankings.
Stop for a second and think about that. Google is now giving you information about how well your keywords are performing at different rankings!
In my Google Webmaster Tools account I looked at the data from 25th July 2011 to 5th August 2011 which was the most recent date that was shown. I wanted to see what the change in daily average impressions and click through rates was for the time after the ranking movement as compared to the time before.
- Impressions were up 11% to 1000 impressions
- Clicks were up 67% to 150 clicks
- The Click through Rate was 17% now that the site was in #1.
Next I reset the date range to the full month to give me more data on the activity across all of the ranking positions for this keyword. The table below covers the month from July 6th 2011 to August 5th 2011.
Click Throughs at different ranking positions
The big takeaway from this data is the click through rates at the various positions. You can see that in position #2 my site was being displayed only 900 times for a keyword that is searched on 2,400 times a month (Exact match) and that it was only getting 90 clicks.
With this data I can make a more accurate assessment of what I am willing to spend to improve my rankings.
Google Analytics
As best I can determine the #1 ranking was achieved on 25th July 2011 and from the traffic report below you can see that this date signals a general increase in the number of visits for the target keyword.
#1 Ranking on 25th July 2011
Looking for more specific data I then analysed the numbers comparing the two trading weeks after the ranking increase, that is from Monday July 25th to Sunday August 7th to the previous two trading weeks, that is from Monday July 11th to Sunday July 24th, ensuring I was comparing apples with apples to see what the numbers showed.
Google Analytics - Detailed Data
So we can see that the result of moving the ranking from #2 to #1 is:
- An increase in visits to the site of over 34%
- An increase in the number of pages per visit of over 12%
- An increase in the number of new visits to the site of over 7%
- An increase in the CTR from 10% to 17%
- An increase in the time on site of over 1%
- A reduction in the bounce rate of over 27%
With this data at hand you are better able to make a determination of what you are willing to spend to get to #1 and what it might be worth to you. This type of data guides us in our seo work for clients as to which keywords we should be focusing out link acquisition resources on.
At the end of the day SEO is a resources game, whether that is your time or money, and you need to be making educated decisions where to invest both.
Hopefully this post has given you some insight into this process. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to comment below.
