Hi all, I am struggling with this question, I have a site www.printrates.com that has been on the first SERP for keywords like "photo printing", "digital photo printing" and "photo prints" Looking at overture these keywords together have more than 1MM searches a month - so I thought I'd get quite some traffic to the site. I am seeing however only a few tens of hits that come in from these words. For example looking at overture for "digital photo printing" and "photo printing" together has more than 1MM hits a month, so I assume Google has at least the same anount, 1MM. I checked accrossed multiple data centers and the site is first place in almost all of them. So I calcualted 1MM a month is 33K a day. Now if I deduct non US traffic, lets say 75% is removed, that is still 8333 searches a day. As first place shouldnt I see like at least 10% CTR? that would be 833 hits a day - I see nothing even close to that numbers. Ideas? what as I doing wrong? Thanks!
I am using Analytics and also looking at server logs and I also track the impressions from AdSense (set a separate channel for the homepage) - so I am pretty sure my numbers are correct (i.e. the low traffic numbers). Ideas? I am clueless, very frustrating.
I assume we're talking about SERPs on Google, right? If so, then I have no idea. Those seem like they'd be popular enough words and you should get plenty of traffic. If the site is poorly designed or slow to load, then it may explain short timespans of visitors, but otherwise I have no idea. I'd love to hear more ideas and what the answer is, if you ever find it.
usasportstraining - yes this refers to Google SERP (I guess Google is so popular that I totally ignored to mention it was google ) As for site loading etc - site loads fine but again as you said a poor site design can explain why users bounce or dont spend time on the site - but the site just does not get the traffic it is supposed to for the SERP and keywords. Any ideas how to "debug" this? I am pretty sure I am not the only one with this problem.
I think your numbers are off. I took a look on Wordtracker, and I don't see anywhere near the million searches a month you expected. For Photo Printing and Digital Photo Printing only show 250 searches a day, or 7,500 searches a month. On top of that, only the #1 site can expect to get 10% of the clicks, and even that's rare. #1 Usually gets around 8% of the clicks, #2 gets around 5%, and it gets worse from there. Want to see how many searches you're actually getting. Create an adwords account, and you'll see the number of impressions for your terms. Good Luck.
The tracker i got shows both photo printing and photo prints getting around 125 hits a day and digital photo printing around 100. If I were you i would continue targeting these smaller search terms.