August 11th, 2006
One Reason Why SEO Helps Bloggers… A Lot
If you had any doubts at all on the benefits of performing search engine optimisation (SEO) to gain top search engine rankings, the results from informal data analysis on AOL search query data leaked less that a week back will surely convince you otherwise. Why? ‘Cos there’s one heck lot of traffic waiting for you.
This has always been obvious, but until recently, there has never been any proof on how much extra traffic you get from moving a few spots or pages up the search engine results pages (SERPs) - especially for blogs already ranking within the Top 10 for their key search terms.
Now, we do. For starters, SEO Portal’s analysis on a sample of 7,752,953 clicks shows us that “…almost 90% (89,71%) of the clicks were on the first 10 results.” This means that just doing SEO to grab a first page slot in a key term (in context of your blog) can literally double, triple or even multiply by 10+ times the amount of traffic you get from search engines.
And even within the first page, there’s still a lot of traffic at stake. A few Earners Forum users (found via Jim Boykin) did some calculations on a sample of 4,926,623 clicks to show these sort of stats:
Click Rank1: 2,075,765
Click Rank2: 586,100 = 3.5x less
Click Rank3: 418,643 = 4.9x less
Click Rank4: 298,532 = 6.9x less
Click Rank5: 242,169 = 8.5x less
Click Rank6: 199,541 = 10.4x less
Click Rank7: 168,080 = 12.3x less
Click Rank8: 148,489 = 14.0x less
Click Rank9: 140,356 = 14.8x less
Click Rank10: 147,551 = 14.1x lessClick Rank1: 2,075,765
Click Rank2: 586,100 = 3.5x less than ^ (above)
Click Rank3: 418,643 = 1.4x less than ^
Click Rank4: 298,532 = 1.4x less than ^
Click Rank5: 242,169 = 1.2x less than ^
Click Rank6: 199,541 = 1.2x less than ^
Click Rank7: 168,080 = 1.2x less than ^
Click Rank8: 148,489 = 1.1x less than ^
Click Rank9: 140,356 = 1.05x less than ^
Click Rank10: 147,551 = 1.05x more than ^
Just moving up from say 9th place to 4th place more than doubles (2.12x exactly) the traffic you get (not that this is easy though).
‘Nuff said.
Update: In June, Chris Smith revealed some results pertaining to the difference of being No. 1 and No. 2 on Google (found via ProBlogger). The difference described is substantially less than what AOL data shows, but is still significant nevertheless (No. 2 receives 40% less traffic than No. 1).
2nd Update: It seems that there’s now even a Keyword Suggestion Tool that utilises the leaked AOL data. Found via SEO Scoop.
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6 Comments
August 11th, 2006 at 4:48 am
[…] Bloghelper has a useful post One Reason Why SEO Helps Bloggers… A Lot If you had any doubts at all on the benefits of performing search engine optimisation (SEO) to gain top search engine rankings, the results from informal data analysis on AOL search query data leaked less that a week back will surely convince you otherwise. Why? ‘Cos there’s one heck lot of traffic waiting for you. […]
August 11th, 2006 at 5:06 am
I’ve been living primarly off of search engine marketing revenue for years, but I’d still caution people to over-rely on SEO for blogging. It’s very tough to target keywords and remain conversational.
August 12th, 2006 at 8:33 am
A site where you can search this data is here:
http://www.datablunder.com/logitems/query/
August 12th, 2006 at 8:37 am
This is something I definitely agree with, but my advice here is really pointed towards bloggers that don’t place any priority (or too little of it) on SEO. Even simple things like rearranging titles, nice URLs and the like can have powerful postitive effects while retaining the conversational nature of your blog.
August 12th, 2006 at 8:40 am
ty: Thanks for the tip. The tool you referenced is chock full of individual stats, but I think it pushes a little too deep into detail to be very useful - unlike more aggregate-level tools like the one above.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:42 am
[…] One Reason Why SEO Helps Bloggers A LotIf you had any doubts at all on the benefits of performing search engine optimisation (SEO) to gain top search engine rankings, informal data analysis on AOL search query data leaked less that a week back will surely convince you … […]
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