How many visitors does a high position in the search results generate?
Absolute figures are not available, it depends entirely on the amount of people who are actually searching for something. An approximation or percentage is available, the CTR or click-through rate: how often do internet users, on average, click on a link in the results list, in relation to the position.
For organic search results
For a webpage that takes first place in the organic search results, this will be around 35%, so out of a 100 people that perform a search with a webpage ranking first place, 35 people will click on the first link. Second place gives a CTR of around 15%, tenth place a CTR of 3%. The higher your webpage ranks in the results, the more visitors it will receive.
1 Research figures from Chitika – 2010
For Paid adverts – Google Ads:
However, a free tenth place in the list of organic search results provides a CTR comparable to the CTR of a paid Google Ads advert. According to Google, a CTR of 1% or more is a good result for an Ads advert.
The positioning of the advert is important – first place (8% CTR) is better than fifth (1% CTR) and the average CTR of a Google Ads advert is around 2.5%.
2 Research figures from AccuraCast
If you consider the CTR of Google Ads to be low: the CTR of advertisement banners on web pages, once regarded as the ultimate way to advertise online, is a very poor 0.2%.
CONCLUSIONS:
- Your website is better off reaching the first page of the organic search results; the other pages will deliver fewer visitors.
- The higher your website is in the top 10, the more visitors it will receive.
- Google Ads generates fewer visitors compared to a place in the top 10 of the organic search results, but offers a practical – and expensive – alternative
- to get your website on the first page.Let’s discuss hard figures, as percentages can sometimes be a little vague:
If there are 10,000 searches in Google / month for a specific keyword and your website holds first place, this will generate 3,500 extra visitors.
If you have a Google Ads advert for the same keyword, best-case scenario this is displayed 10,000 times / month on the first page of the search results, but will generate only 250 visitors.
Next blog post: what content-related elements of a web page are important for Google?