How Much Traffic Does Each Search Engine Results Position Expect?

The answer to this is hard to find.  I remember early on in my SEO days looking around for how much traffic I could expect from the different rankings. It was difficult to get a straight answer and when there were straight answers they varied from person to person. The problem is that each spot on the first page of the search results is not always going to get the same amount of clicks. In fact, they can be wildly different between different searches.

What are the typical clickthrough rates of the different ranking spots?

1 – 30-45%

2 – 10-20%

3 – 5-10%

4 – 3-5%

5 – 1-3%

6+ – 1% or less

I’ve had wildly different clickthrough rates (both better and worse) than these listed, but most of the time, they will fall within the range I gave. I’ve also seen different data that shows the 5-10 spots all getting about 2-5% each. My experience has shown me that this is high, but it could certainly be true for your keywords and site. The gist of the data is still the same whether you use my numbers or someone else’s — the top 3 spots get faaaaar more clicks than all the other spots combined. Furthermore, the top spot gets about 2x the clicks as the 2nd spot.

What does this data mean for us as search engine marketers?

We want the #1 spot badly. The number 1 spot is worth about 2.3x the number 2 spot, 5x number 3, 8.75x number 4, 17.5x number 5, and at least 35x as much as anything 6 and beyond. Unless, it is a high-traffic term, getting to the 6-10 spots doesn’t do you a lot of good. I would rather have 1 top spot than 20 spots at 11th.

It is critical that we believe that we can get you to the 1-3 spot area of a keyword before we work on it. If the top 3 spots are taken by major domains like Wikipedia, CNN, etc and the keyword doesn’t get searched a lot more than 10k/month, then it is probably not worth your time and money to pursue that keyword.

The ease with which you move up the rankings usually corresponds with the difference in clicks you expect. In other words, you get exponentially more clicks as you move up the rankings, but it becomes exponentially harder to move up. For example, moving from the 20th to the 5th is usually easier than moving from the 5th to the 3rd.

There is also more variability in the quality of the sites as you get to the top. Sometimes there is a  HUGE gap in quality from the 2nd to the 3rd spot. Getting that 3rd spot will be much, much easier than the 2nd spot. Sometimes there is no huge gap. Usually, this is when the keyword has poor competition and a #1 ranking becomes possible within a reasonable time frame.

Can I increase my click-through rates without increasing my ranking or the term getting searched more?

Many factors:

•     How attractive is your page title is
•     How attractive is your page teaser text is
•     How attractive is your domain is
•     How bad your other competitors are in the stuff above
•     Whether or not you also have PPC ads on the same page — multiple exposures to your brand at once.

The two biggest are having an attractive title and teaser text. If you have these down really well, you will get a lot more clicks.