What do you reckon - is SEO worthwhile? I am looking to find CTR of the top 20 positions of the organic Google search .com. I have found a few studies and it doesn't look good.....if you are not 1st 2nd or 3rd you can forget about it any traffic worth talking about. Aparrently CTR for Google organic is: Pos 1: 42% Pos 2: 12-16% Pos 3: 8-11% Pos 4: 5-6% Pos 5-10: 3-5% So unless you can get into the top 3 you might as well spend your time playing with Adwords. or.... can this info be inaccurate. Check these studies: http://www.redcardinal.ie/search-engine-optimisation/12-08-2006/clickthrough-analysis-of-aol-datatgz/ http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/new-study-explo.php here's the study which the second article refers too http://www.cs.cornell.edu/People/tj/publications/joachims_etal_05a.pdf Let me know what you think.......
I think those studies are quite generalized. For some keywords the top 3 results may not always be what people are looking for. It just depends on who is already ranked #1 - 3. I get steady traffic from a lot of keywords that we are not top 3 for. I think for some niches people would be more inclined to dig deeper into search results. A impelling page title and/or meta description could drastically skew those numbers. Ideally you should be aiming for top 3, but you can still prosper if you are on page 1. If you can get to page 1, you likely know what you're doing and know what you need to keep doing to get to the top 3. For most people AdWords isn't much of an option since you have to pay high prices for each click. It is a much better idea to invest that money into resources/services that can help you get to the top 3.
Maybe they are right but for me they aren't. There are also other factors involved like domain name, page title and desc which bring more clicks.
I totally agree, but surely only for highly searched terms.........obviously if a keyword's exact search is 10,000, 4% of that is a steady stream....but what if you are targetting more specific words, and you are 5th on page 1 - its a bit gutting not to get all that traffic and being only 2 away
many seo companies guarantee top 10 google - but is that really a quality guarantee? should it not be top 3?
The seo companies that make such claims are usually shady. A lot of the time they will just get you top 10 for a phrase that gets extremely low search volume. They are preying on people who don't know any better. An seo company can't really guarantee top 3 though. For some keywords that would just be too difficult. It is a bit disappointing to be stuck near the bottom of page 1. You are close enough to smell all that traffic, but you don't get to taste much of it until you do enough work to be top 3. Usually I won't settle for a ranking unless I can crack the top 3.
Does anyone know of any other research that suggests that CTR is different than..... Pos 1: 42% Pos 2: 12-16% Pos 3: 8-11% Pos 4: 5-6% Pos 5-10: 3-5%
In most cases, the study is okay. However in more specific searches, being in the top 10 (first page) of results could bring you traffic.
That could be true. But, you can beat those no. 1 - 3 position if your site is in the top 10, by putting on more attractive and appealing title.
Yeah, but even if you were Position 5-10, earning 3-5% of search traffic, if you have a subject that is searched millions of times in a month you will still get a very nice share of traffic. You just have to decide, based on how many visitors search your keywords monthly, if trying for a good search position is actually worth it.
I think those numbers are accurate. The one thing that could help is if thesites above you have terrible descriptions. You could see your CTR increase above those numbers.
Yes totally, if your meta really is appealing to the search you should get clicked on more - but the study should have that contained in it - so on average 42% of clicks are on first place.......i can't believe it - when i search i suppose i always click on 1 but i normally always click on 2,3,and 4 especially if the site I look at isn't for me and i go back to the search page I suppose i might refine my search as well, so after touching on 1st place i will change my keyword for search....hmmmm
People, I think the research gives you a general idea of user behavior in G. It's only natural that you are most likely to click on the first site suggested, then you move on if you are not satisfied and so on, but you probably won't look thru page 14. This just means you need to keep on working hard, that's all (with appropriate keywords and blah-blah-blah) And one more thing: there can be no guarantees in SEO, Rumble.
Any SEO company guaranteeing anything is a fraud. They're probably the kind of company who pulls the wool over computer-illiterate customers' eyes by ranking them for a 4-word long tail keyword that gets no traffic.
i'm not sure i agree about the fraud..... If you pay a painter to finish painting your house for your wife's birthday - if you agree NOT to pay him/her unless it is finished in time for the birthday, whether he can or can't do it at the time of the guarantee is, for me irrelevant Either way - fraud or no fraud - there are such things as SEO companies, and it is massive business, and if i paid them to get me to the top of google, i would want a guarantee that they did their job, or do what they said they would do (surely), or even better get me more traffic than i could get, for the price, from adwords (minus perhaps a 30% click fraud rate) However, after this report if they offered me top 10 (even for the keywords I chose) I probably would say can you guarantee me top 3? i wonder how many would offer a guarantee for that......
Nothing in SEO is guaranteed*. It's like guaranteeing yourself that you'll win the lottery by next month. * Unless it's for a long tail term that isn't high profile