CTR's on Google's Top Positions

[bober]

I have been reading many articles and lots of SEO's seem to use Google CTR for the top positions as a indicator as to how much traffic you may receive.

It's something like:

Pos 1: 42%
Pos 2: 12%
Pos 3: 8%
Pos 4: 6% etc etc (can't remember of the top of my head but it's something like that).

Is this information not a bit misleading? I have yet to see someone with an info-graphic showing Google Ad's combined with Organic. Nearly every keyword now a days has an Adwords ad associated with it, so in theory Google Organic 1 is actually position 4 when there are 3 ad's running above it.

I have a keyword that is in position 1 on Google Ireland:
Broad match 2400 P/M
Exact Match 590 P/M
(stats from google keyword tool, again not totally accurate but an indicator).

On the Supposed Organic CTR basis discussed by many people the website/keyword in question should be getting 247 (50% of 590) visits when in actual fact last month it received 36 visits!

So what does this mean? Well to me anyway Organic Position 1 in theory is Position 4, give or take a couple % based on my figures 6% of 590 = 35 and that is pretty close to my actual 36 visits last month for a position 1 keyword.

To compete for google keywords traffic is adwords an essential part of online business? It would be interesting to get people's thoughts on this topic and how google adwords is shaping keyword seo.

 

[link8r]

CTR's differ from industry to industry and unique to each. Hubspot (Google owns a share via its investment vehicle) says a 70/30 split between ads and organics as an "overall". But some specific industries are 50/50 for example.

The problem with your hypothesis is that you're assuming that CTR is uniformal which it isn't. And the top position doesn't get all of the clicks. Every keyphrase has it's own CTR for each position and Google shows you that. The only way to determine yours is to monitor your adwords and organics for both. But being an SEO you [should] know that.

Yes, AdWords is critical for most online business. Why wouldn't it be - adwords and organics run on the exact same platform for the exact same user. People who click on adwords aren't any different from people who use organics results.

 

[mneylon]

Based on our experience a lot of people search by company name and will click on the ads as much as they'll click on the organic listings .. Not sure if GA can give me a nice graph or anything for that, but looking at the realtime stuff during office hours can be quite entertaining