The difference in CTR between position 1 and position 10 on Google is significant!

Question: “Where is the best place to hide a body?”

Answer: “On page 2 of Google!”

That’s an old classic when it comes to SEO jokes. Very few users move on to page 2 of Google after making a search. The same actually applies to the lowest results on page 1. So you could also ask how long it would take before anyone noticed if the body was hidden in one of the bottom results on page 1 instead.

In other words, all the action happens at the top of the search results.

In this blog post, you’ll get a sense of just how much it matters whether you’re ranked number 1 or number 10 in Google’s search results. Both are on the first page, but it’s not always enough just to appear there – you need to reach the top positions to really notice a difference in traffic.

Source: Advanced Web Ranking, CTR Study, January 2019. All searches

Above you can see the percentage distribution of clicks (CTR) by position for all searches. The data is from January 2019, but remains stable throughout the year. The blue graph shows the distribution for desktop searches, while the red graph represents mobile searches. The graphs are quite similar, except for position 1, which has a higher CTR on desktop compared to mobile. Some factors influencing this may be that mobile is often used for research before a purchase, with the actual purchase then made on desktop. Also, position 0 (Google My Business, Featured Snippets, etc.) is often more dominant in mobile searches.

Source: Advanced Web Ranking, CTR Study, January 2019. Brand vs non-brand searches

The graph above shows CTR split between brand searches (blue) and non-brand searches (red).

As you can see, CTR is generally higher on brand searches, which correlates with the fact that users are more likely to know exactly what they are looking for in these cases. Advanced Web Ranking, who conducted the study, defines brand searches as those where the keyword is part of the domain name.

Source: Advanced Web Ranking, CTR Study, January 2019. Commercial searches

The above graph gives us an insight into how CTR is distributed for commercial searches. These are searches that include words like “buy”, “price”, etc. The graph looks much like the other graphs – it is especially the first result that receives the most clicks, followed by the other results in the top 3.

What kind of traffic can I expect?

Below, you can see an overview of how, on average, CTR is distributed across the different positions on page 1 of Google. As you can see, there is a significant difference in CTR between position 1 and position 10 – and therefore a big difference in how much traffic your website receives, even though you might think that being on page 1 is enough.

It’s also worth noting that while CTR is simply a percentage, another crucial consideration is the actual number of searches for each keyword. Ranking number 1 for a search term with an average of 10 searches per month and a CTR of 35% will give you 3.5 visits per month. If, instead, you rank number 2 for a keyword with 100 searches per month, a CTR of 15% will provide 15 visits per month on average. Therefore, it can actually be better to hold position 2 for a high-volume keyword than position 1 for a low-volume search.

However, if you are all the way down in position 10, you will experience limited traffic, even for keywords with high monthly search volumes. With 1,000 monthly searches and a position 10 CTR of around 1.5%, you would only receive 15 visitors per month despite the high search volume. If you can move up to position 3, with a CTR of around 10.75%, you would see your traffic increase sevenfold. Reaching position 1 with a CTR of around 30% would multiply your traffic by twenty.

In reality, you rarely have a conversion rate of 100%, so clicks are not the only metric to focus on. The conversion rate will also depend on how you define a conversion. For example, it is easier to get newsletter sign-ups than to achieve a completed sale.

Below, I have listed a couple of examples to illustrate the impact of your position on page 1 if your conversion rate is 5%:

Let’s take an example for position 10:

Monthly searches: 1,000
Avg. Position: 10
CTR for position 10: 1.5%
Conversion rate: 5%

From the 1,000 searches, you would receive 15 visitors per month.

Of those 15 visitors, you would achieve 0.75 conversions each month.

Let’s use the same example for position 1:

Monthly searches: 1,000
Avg. Position: 1
CTR for position 1: 30%
Conversion rate: 5%

From the 1,000 searches, you would now receive 300 visitors per month.

Of those 300 visitors, you would get 15 conversions per month.

The difference is clear in the example above. Instead of receiving one conversion every 40 days from position 10, you would achieve a conversion every other day from position 1. Now, imagine how much longer it would take to get enquiries if there were only 100 monthly searches instead of the 1,000 used in the examples above.

The conclusion is therefore straightforward:
If you’re considering whether it’s worth aiming for the top positions, or if you can settle for just being on page 1, even if it’s at the bottom, the answer is yes – it is worth aiming higher. Although it may take more resources to target the top 3, there are significantly more clicks and conversions to be gained than if you remain at the bottom.

About the study

The table and graphs above are based on data from Advanced Web Ranking, which each month, among other things, measures the importance of keyword positions. Depending on which graph you’re looking at, the study is based on up to 10,000,000 keywords from nearly 85,000 different websites. The study is international, so there may be slight local differences depending on which country you are targeting with your SEO efforts.