traffic or position?

[Navarone]

Hi all

When concidering web site page position vs traffic, can one say that pages that score high page position will have higher traffic results? I think they would go hand-in-hand. What approach have some of you more learned than I take when discussing this with your clients. Personally, I think I would be more intrested in my web site traffic then what page ranking I have.

What do some of you have to say?

Thanks

Navarone

[MazY]

I have a golden rule that a position alone is worth absolutely nothing if it doesn't increase traffic. I think you wil find that view shared.

A high-ranking position will inevitably bring increased traffic, as long as the search phrase that the ranking reflects was well researched at the start.

If that research fails then as your message reflects, one is almost doomed to see no significant increase in traffic as nobody is ever looking for it!

[Kal]

Yep, I agree with Maz, especially about the qualified traffic issue. There was an old statistic out there (Forrester Research I think) that stated the top 30 search listings received around 90% of total search traffic. I would imagine this is still pretty current, perhaps with the gap narrowed to the top 10 or 20 listings now.

If you're not in the top 20, you probably won't be found, BUT if you are in the top 20 for phrases that aren't searched on, you won't be found either. The key is to target search terms that are popular AND relevant to your audience. Flipping the coin - there's no point getting thousands of visitors if your site doesn't offer them what they were looking for either. Your click-away rate will be enormous and sales conversion rate poor. Instead seek out those niche search terms that closely match your products and services but also get searched on regularly. :thumb: