Understanding the value of higher organic search rankings

Understanding the value of higher organic search rankings

Search Light Digital has written an interesting article highlighting the percentage of clicks each organic search ranking is likely to get. The results exclude PPC data and take into account 19,434,540 clicks from 36,389,567 searches. The main findings of the study are:

1. The top search result will get around 42% of total natural search clicks.
2. Second place will get around 12% of clicks, followed by 8% for position 3, 6% for position 4 and 5% for position 5.
3. The top result on page two will only get 0.7% of total clicks

Therefore, if your site is not in the top three results for your relevant search phrases, there is a good chance you won’t be clicked on at all. You need to optimise your content, title and description tags for the relevant phrases that you want to be found by. Nearly 50% did not click on any search result at all, which further demonstrates how important it is to write effective titles and content.

It is also important to monitor and improve your online reputation by generating link bait and building links to your site: this will increase relevant traffic (if done correctly) and can help to improve your search results in the long run.

Also worth a read is an article by seomoz which takes into account PPC and natural search data. According to the study, 11% of clicks are on the top PPC result, and 39% of clicks are on the top search result. This is a good indication to be using advertising for immediate search visibility if your natural search rankings are not doing justice.