How Will You Benefit From This?
We will break down the top 10 keywords of a niche online store and their positions and their traffic gains in this article. Then calculate on average how much traffic each increase of search engine ranking position (SERP) brought traffic in our case study.
The goal of the article is to provide some insight into the fact of how much Google Search traffic you can expect to gain going from the bottom half of the search results to the top results.
Another point is to make that a good SEO strategy and its implementation is a journey that provides an increased amount of traffic over time. Besides your website or online store, it also increases brand awareness across other channels, which in turn increases organic results.
We also wanted to give you insight on how much organic traffic you can achieve for a niche online store/website and provide a reference point so you can use it for comparison.
How Search Engine Ranking Positions Affect Organic Google Search Traffic Volume Potential
We discovered that the first position on Google search would gain, on average, 27.34% more traffic of the total search volume potential than the second position. The second position, in turn, increases, on average, 21.47% more than the third position.
When grouping keyword ranks into the following groups:
- Top 3 (18.09% of Search Potential)
- Top 4 – 6 (14.24% of Search Potential)
- Top 7 – 10 (5.41% of Search Potential)
- Top 10+ (2.43%)
The results get interesting.
As we can see, a keyword ranking between 4 – 6 and, eventually, it rises to the top 3, the difference is 27.08%. The increase is significant.
When a keyword eventually lands on the first page on Google (from the second page), its traffic of the search volume potential increases by 122.79%.
When looking at the results, we can see that the most critical group of keywords rank is the top 4 – 6 group. Going from 7 – 10 to 4 – 6 has a massive growth of 163.35%.
While the top 4 – 6 group is 27.08% lower than the top 3, we can assume that ranking for these positions can be easier than the top 3. It goes to show that your website doesn’t have to rank every time in the top 3 to gain significant traffic of the overall search volume potential to be worthwhile optimizing. Therefore a goal of reaching the 4 – 6 group should be essential in your SEO strategy.
How We Reached To Our Results Of The Effect Of SERP To Organic Google Search Traffic
We started by looking at the online store’s most recent top 10 keywords and then going back in time to analyze their positions and the search traffic the keywords brought to the online store.
We decided a year would be enough time to see the effects of positions on traffic. As a year prior, the implementation of SEO would’ve started. As much as this is a case study is about search positions, it’s also a case study for the successful application of SEO methods.
To clarify, we decided to exclude any branded keywords related to the online store itself as their performance is more affected by other marketing channels, such as social media, print, and online advertising.
While we didn’t measure the effect of branded keywords too much, their performance grew as the non-branded keywords brought in brand awareness.
Google Search Traffic Volume Potential
Another point we wanted to include was the correlation between Google Search keyword volumes and search positions. What we did was, we used Ubersugget’s search volume estimations to calculate a baseline of what a rank one should or could achieve.
While the search volume estimations are never perfect, it still provides new data to ponder about, and a point of view.
For measuring the total search volume of the keywords in the charts, we took the search volumes from the most recent month, and we used the same data for the previous months, which is not ideal. But it makes the comparison easier.
There are many factors in play, especially within different niches on how people search, and eventually, click. For example, do they click on ads on average more or less on different keywords? Especially in this niche, people would click on ads more than on other non-shopping related keywords, which is something to consider.
In our case, clicks on ads only affected mostly five out of ten keywords, but still, it’s a huge chunk of wasted traffic potential that you might need to boost with ads to gain the same effect.
Learn more about search engine marketing (SEM)
The Case Study Subject: A Niche Online Store
To understand the first page Google statistics, we need to understand the case study’s premise, especially the subject of it: The niche online store.
In our case study that lasted one year and tracked the performance of 10 top keywords of a niche online store, we concluded an overall increase in monthly organic Google Search traffic of 308% with an average position of 2.59 in Google Search. Monthly conversions from organic traffic increased by 608%
By the end of the year, the niche online store had 10 000 monthly users and 50 000 page views a month. The acquisition report of Google Analytics for the store is the following:
- ~ 50% Organic traffic
- ~ 20% Social traffic (Mostly Facebook Ads)
- ~ 15% Paid Search
- ~ 13% Direct traffic
- ~ 2% Referral traffic
Like many online stores, seasonality also affected the studied online store here. In essential dates such as the holidays or Black Friday, the traffic did increase while SERP positions stayed relatively the same or even dropped.
The online store was one year old before the collection of SERP data. During the acquisition of SERP data, we implemented search engine optimization tactics to maximize Google Search traffic.
The top 10 keywords we researched represented, on average, 18.27% of the total organic traffic throughout the year. At first, it served 10.84% of the total traffic, and by the end, it served 17.21%% of the overall search traffic.
The chart below shows the top 10 keywords, and it’s relation to total traffic by month.
In the beginning, the average position for the top 10 keywords was 12.16, with only two keywords reaching the third position, which brought the most traffic. By the end, the average for the 10 keywords was 2.59.
The chart below shows the development of the Google Search positions of the online store by month.
Reaching First Rank on Google
For the most time, the niche online store was between rank two or three, in its most impactful keywords. Not until we implemented simple changes to the SEO strategy during month nine wasn’t until we reached the first rank on Google on that specific keyword.
We realized that most of the main keywords targeted the online store’s home page, which wasn’t the case earlier. Through the data, we saw that change occurred a month prior.
We took the necessary steps to optimize the home page and turn it into a more actionable landing page to increase user activity and serve the main keywords as best as possible.
An opportunity also arose from doing a proper competitive analysis on the competitor’s website and how well their SEO was currently for the same keyword we wanted. We realized soon that we had an opening to compete harder, and we did.
Impact Of Increased SERP On Branded keywords
During the year, branded keywords made 12% of all organic traffic for the niche online store.
At the beginning of the year, branded keywords made 16.83% of all organic traffic. If we look at data year after, the change was the following: branded keywords made 10.31% of all organic traffic.
Depending on your goals, the decreased percentage of branded keywords might not be ideal. Still, the increased rank position on Google Search did; however, double the amount of branded keyword traffic.
All in all, the higher the top 10 keyword ranks you’d have, the more potential your branded keywords also have for raising your traffic.
Conclusion
While it’s relatively evident that ranking first on Google will get the most traffic potential and actual traffic to your website, the exciting thing is the relation of the top three to the top six keywords.
It just goes to show that investing in SEO, won’t always be about being first to gain necessary organic traffic to make a niche work for you. Albeit, reaching the top three should be the goal of any SEO strategy, and winning even a few keywords (with the most search volume) brings your online business to the next level.
The most critical part is to get your website to the first page on Google. Then optimize and wait, and optimize again.
It’s essential to keep track of your best-performing keywords at all times in your strategy. The faster you realize any missing traffic (By understanding your organic traffic potential), the quicker you can fix it and maintain a healthy level of organic Google Search traffic.
Take the data we extracted, measure it against yours, and see if our results came near to yours.
Never stop improving your SEO to gain those most wanted positions, no matter the keyword.