CREATIVE PROGRAMS AND SYSTEMS

The value of SEO

06/01/2010

Some days ago, Chitika, a search based online advertising network, published some new numbers about the value of a listing on Google. They analyzed a sample of 8,253,240 impressions across their network in May, 2010. The first result in Google gets as many visitors as position 2-4 combined

"In order to find out the value of SEO, we looked at a sample of traffic coming into our advertising network from Google and broke it down by Google results placement. The top spot drove 34.35% of all traffic in the sample, almost as much as the numbers 2 through 4 slots combined, and more than the numbers 5 through 20 (the end of page 2) put together."

Result number 10 gets 143% more clicks than result number 11

"The biggest jump, percentage-wise, is from the top of page 2 to the bottom of page 1. Going from the 11th spot to 10th sees a 143% jump in traffic. However, the base number is very low – that 143% jump is from 1.11% of all Google traffic to 2.71%. As you go up the top page, the raw jumps get bigger and bigger, culminating in that desired top position." Here are the numbers:

Google Result

Impressions	Click Percentage
1	2,834,806	34.35%
2	1,399,502	16.96%
3	942,706	11.42%
4	638,106	7.73%
5	510,721	6.19%
6	416,887	5.05%
7	331,500	4.02%
8	286,118	3.47%
9	235,197	2.85%
10	223,320	2.71%
11	91,978	1.11%
12	69,778	0.85%
13	57,952	0.70%
14	46,822	0.57%
15	39,635	0.48%
16	32,168	0.39%
17	26,933	0.33%
18	23,131	0.28%
19	22,027	0.27%
20	23,953	0.29%

How to judge the financial value of your Google rankings

A number 1 ranking on Google is great but it won't help your business if it is for the wrong keyword. To judge the value of a keyword, you can do the following:

1. Start a Google AdWords campaign for the keyword, select "exact match" and point the ad to the page on your website that is most relevant to the keyword.
2. Track the impressions and the conversion rate of the ad. To get useful data, you should track at least 500 clicks.
3. With that data, you can make a guess about the value of a visitor that finds your website through that keyword.

For example, your ad might have had 10,000 impressions during a week and 200 visitors have come to your website. Six of them purchased something of your website and the total profit was $500. That means that the average single visitor who finds your website through that keyword is worth $2.50 to your business ($500 / 200). The 10,000 ad impressions in a week can create a click-through rate of 34.35% (see table above) if you have the number 1 ranking for that keyword. That means that you would get about 3,435 visitors per week. Based on the average value of $2.50/visitor you would earn $8,587.50 per week or $446,500 per year just with a single keyword. That is why businesses love search engine optimization.