So every website owner and his SEO expert talk about Google ranking. It is practically the objective of every Internet practitioner to achieve top Google ranking for the keyword that he is targeting.

But what exactly does a top Google ranking translate to?


It’s all about the numbers. After all, the aim of most search engine optimization projects is to attract more visitors to the websites. And this is where the search volume for particular keywords becomes analytically important.

If you are a website owner and you are practicing SEO, your keyword research should have given you a clear idea of the search volume that your particular keyword/s can bring you. And is you do your SEO right, then you may eventually achieve that much-coveted top Google ranking.

So what happens if you eventually achieve that goal of top Google ranking?

Top Google Ranking Equals Volume

If you did your keyword research right, then you should already be expecting an increase in traffic compared to before you performed your SEO for your website. And if you did your keyword research right, you should have an idea as to how much increase in volume would be coming from the results of Google searches for that particular keyword.

Let’s say that based on your keyword research, the particular keyword that you are targeting brings in 8,000 exact searches per month in Google.

If you are able to take the number 1 position in Google for that keyword, then industry estimates suggest that you should be getting around half or 50% of the 8,000 exact search volume per month. That is equivalent to 4,000 visitors to your site who searched your target keyword in Google.

The top position really gets the lion’s share of the traffic when it comes to Google ranking.

The next 25% goes to the number 2 and 3 positions. That’s around 1,000 visitors for each of the second and third placer in the Google ranking. Still quite a sizeable amount, but significantly smaller when compared to the Google ranking topnotcher.

The remaining 25% goes to the rest of the search results. That includes positions 4 to 10 of the first page in Google ranking, plus the rest of the search results from the rest of the pages.

So, as you can see, we can easily conclude a number of things from these figures.

First, the least that you should aim for when conducting an SEO project is to be able to achieve a Google ranking in the first page.

Second, it is better to aim for the top 3 spots in Google ranking for the medium term goal of your SEO project as the top 3 positions get 75% of the search results.

And ultimately, aim for the number 1 spot for your keyword as this is where the bulk of the volume goes.

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