how many visitors per how many thousand local exacts

[fresh79]

What would be an acceptable level of visitors per thousand local exact searches...

here is the scenario, you have a keyword domain, lets say a .co.uk were aiming for UK market

that keyword gets 2500 local exact searches pm
what would you guys and girls be aiming for in terms of unique vistors pm if your domain was page 1 for that term?

50% of exact = 1250 uniques pm
75% of exact = 1875 uniques pm

Do you see what im getting at? does anybody have a "rule of thumb" for this?
I have a handfull of sites on page 1 and this month so far has seen pretty poor traffic - dont know if thats to do with the spell of hot weather??
Any thoughts?
Thanks

 

[fish]

I would imagine there are a few variables that would influence the number of visits to your site, e.g. like where on p1 of goog your site is ( if at the top then you increase your chance of a hit , there's some stats on the web about this somewhere).

Also, what's in your description? would that immediately attract someone to click on your link? (are you selling a product or service? does your description reflect this well?)

just some thoughts

What would be an acceptable level of visitors per thousand local exact searches...

here is the scenario, you have a keyword domain, lets say a .co.uk were aiming for UK market

that keyword gets 2500 local exact searches pm
what would you guys and girls be aiming for in terms of unique vistors pm if your domain was page 1 for that term?

50% of exact = 1250 uniques pm
75% of exact = 1875 uniques pm

Do you see what im getting at? does anybody have a "rule of thumb" for this?
I have a handfull of sites on page 1 and this month so far has seen pretty poor traffic - dont know if thats to do with the spell of hot weather??
Any thoughts?
Thanks

 

[Edwin]

http://www.redcardinal.ie/search-en...08-2006/clickthrough-analysis-of-aol-datatgz/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4045085.htm
http://www.seo-scientist.com/google-ranking-ctr-click-distribution-over-serps.html

The above use various sources of data to give a breakdown of clicks by position. None go much over 40% for the top position, and it falls off very very quickly after that. So even if you are #1 on a 2,500 a month search (and assuming the keyword tool is accurate) you won't get more than 1,000 visits from that. And if you're #4 you'd get about 150 visits.

Of course, since the above data was published, Google has muddied the waters further by including more and more stuff "above" the first organic results (e.g. maps, videos, images, more paid ads and so on) so in practice the numbers are almost certainly going to be worse than they used to be.

Note also that the CTR depends quite a bit on what visitors see when they're glancing at the search results i.e. if you have a compelling title/snippet combination you might boost your CTR a bit, especially if other sites look less promising. And vice versa - if you're ranking for a query where the other sites all around yours have very enticing titles and snippets, you're likely to see less than the "average" CTR (which is, never forget, an AVERAGE!)

 

[fresh79]

Top knowledge Edwin - thanks for sharing.

 

[Edwin]

It's also worth thinking about the long tail of search. You might be trying to rank for "bedroom furniture" (which gets 673,000 exacts). However, a huge number of different items of furniture go into a bedroom... and together, the searches for those eclipse the main "bedroom furniture" term like an elephant next to a mouse.

Just a handful of examples...
bunk beds: 246,000 exacts
double bed: 246,000 exacts
bedside tables: 74,000 exacts
headboards: 49,500 exacts

And bingo, you've balanced "bedroom furniture".

But each of the above (and the thousands of other items of furniture that go into a bedroom) has its own "long tail".

For example "pine bunk beds", "metal bunk beds", "white bunk beds", and so on.

All together, the searches that relate to "bedroom furniture" might add up to 1,000x or more the searches specifically for "bedroom furniture". And in fact, since the long tail is almost infinitely long, a single search for "white metal childrens bunk bed" won't show up on Google Keyword Tool but it will still be part of that "long tail".

So there's a huge opportunity to dig deep into the long tail, no matter how niche the starting point is. Almost any product has qualifiers (sizes, shapes, colours, textures, materials, etc. etc.) and there are often many different ways to describe the same product.

 

[vizzo]

As Edwin says, the long tail is often overlooked.
Often in valuing domains people here seem to focus on number of exact searches per month as per Google keyword tool.
I'm sure that is a very significant factor.
However my experience is that as well as looking at your main keywords you should try to develop the longtail. The long tail in a very popular, competitive keyword can earn you more than the exact matches of a less popular keyword.

 

[R1k]

I've tried to pay less attention to the google results and develop more of a feel for a domain.

For example I got HDLCD.org.uk to the top of page 1 Google UK results, but I was getting about 50 visitors per month. Complete waste of time.

I now look on a well known site that lists websites for sale and try to compare how many visitors they're getting with how many searches Google says there are. More often than not the results are surprising as some sites listed (who provide GA as proof) get more hits than Google shows searches.

I'm still new to this so I'm trying to balance domains that have niche/google match appeal, with domains that can be developed more as a brand/long-term project.

It's more fun with a bit of diversity.