It’s also been a given that being in position number one in SERPs for your chosen keyword is the place to aim for, and that page one is better than page two. This will lead to much higher click-through rates for your website, and therefore more visitors.
However, have you ever wondered how many click throughs you would get if you ranked number one for a keyword, instead of number three? Or what percentage of people bother browsing through to page two of the search results?
Well, Searchlight Digital have got a hold of the data of over 36 million searches, across a whole range of topics from a high number of users, and the picture that it presents is pretty interesting.
I won’t put the entire data set here, because you ought to check out their post for the full low-down, but here’s a sneak preview of the top five:
| Rank | Clicks | Click % | Delta #n-1 | Delta #1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8220278 | 42.30% | n/a | n/a |
| 2 | 2316738 | 11.92% | -71.82% | -71.82% |
| 3 | 1640751 | 8.44% | -29.18% | -80.04% |
| 4 | 1171642 | 6.03% | -28.59% | -85.75% |
| 5 | 943667 | 4.86% | -19.46% | -88.52% |
Here’s our review of the more salient points raised by this information…
Over 40% of searchers go to the #1 result
This is the most compelling evidence I’ve seen that demonstrates the importance of hitting that holy grail of SEO - #1 in Google SERPs for your keyword. If you do so, you’ll get nearly as much traffic as the other 9 sites ranking on the first page!
75% of searchers click somewhere in the top 5 of SERPs
Basically, if you can’t hit the number one ranking, then you want to be somewhere in the top 5 - only a quarter of people searching look anywhere outside of this. Obviously if you’re in a position to get multiple listings within the top 5 of SERPs then you are really dominating the competition.
The first page get’s 90% of the click-throughs!
That’s right - 90% of searchers never see results 11 onwards… With this kind of volume staying on page one, then to me this means that ranking even on page two is not much better than page 4, 8, 16, or 320 - with only 10% of traffic being shared out between results 11 and 11,000,000 there’s not much to go around!
Randomly, position 10 is better than position 9 in SERPs
The only random result thrown up by the data is the fact that you are 0.14% more likely to receive a click if you rank 10th as opposed to in position #9. I guess this is the semi-psychological effect of the result in #10 standing out a little more from the rest of the results. I wouldn’t bother putting effort in to dropping a position if you do rank in 9th though - better to aim higher!
Does this data reflect your own SEO experiences? Do tell!
Dang - now I know why my ‘oh so proud’ achievement of ranking #6 isn’t really paying off!
Just another five places to go…
Ha! I have a client who’s site has been stuck in #9 for their most competitive keyword for a month…
Looks like this is the worst possible place to be and still rank on page one.
So, do I work harder to promote, or ease off a little bit to drop a place?!
Really useful info - will have to check it against my visits / number of searches carried out each month