email: ebobnar at gmail.com

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January 25, 2006

On Ranking for Search Engine Optimization

A few days ago in SEW forums, Jill Whalen posted on clickthrough rates from ranking 2nd for [search engine optimization] in Google. I often wondered what the reward was for that coveted spot, and her post gave some interesting details:

Well, I get on avg. (according to my google analytics) anywhere from 100 - 160 visitors a day from Google on my number 2 ranking for the phrase search engine optimization.

KeywordDiscovery predicts that phrase gets 71,762 a day across all search engines. (I doubt those are real searches though.)

KD shows the number of US Overture predicted daily searches to be 2,808. I forget how to do the math to figure out the clickthrough rate for that, but I figured those numbers might help you determine what you're looking for.

More interesting to me though is the conversion rate on my phrases. Although, that phrase definitely pulls in the most visitors, its conversion rate as measured by how many people fill out an info request form, sign up as a member of my forum, or purchase my Nitty-gritty guide, is pretty poor overall as compared to other phrases.

When I look at the data from mid-November to date, I had about 6000 visitors for that keyword phrase, with just under 1% (.92%) filling out my info request form. Only .25% became forum members, and .1% purchased my guide.

On the other hand, the phrase search engine optimization service brought in only 45 visitors over the same time period. But it converted into info form requests at 2.22%. (It appears I'm number 3 for that in Google.) KD claims there are 652 Overture US searches for that a day and 1,194 overall searches predicted per day in their main database. (I doubt either of those are even close to being accurate though based on my data.)

Then there are the very specific phrases such as search engine forums, which of course converts great in terms of signing up new forum members. (10.09%) (It doesn't get any info requests though.) It looks like I'm number 3 in Google for that. Keyword Discovery's database predicts 17 searches a day for that. That's actually a pretty accurate prediction as I seem to get on average of 10 - 18 or so clickthroughs a day for that one.

I guess the point of all this is to illustrate that it really depends on the keyword phrase in question, as well as the accuracy of the keyword research tools. Some phrases are going to be way skewed due to automated search queries to the engines, as compared to others.

The direct financial award from ranking second for [search engine optimization]? Not that much, apparently.

The respect that comes from kicking butt on a phrase lusted after by probably 99% of SEOs? Priceless.

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