How much is a Google top ranking really worth to my client?

• How can one calculate how much a #1 ranking, or #2, etc ranking would be worth to a client in Google? This is especially important if there is no PPC data available, how could one approximate the possible revenue a high rank could bring for a certain keyword? I need something to really sell my services to my clients. Any suggestions?

Answer: That's not an easy question to answer. It depends on a number of factors including the following:

• The competitiveness of the target keyword?
• The overall traffic possible from the target keyword?
• What the conversion rate of the client site is on the target keyword (how many visitors does it take to convert into one sale)?
• What is the value of each sale from that target keyword?
• Where did the client initially rank for the target keyword and where do they rank now?

This is not an exhaustive list, but you can see that it's not easy to quantify in simple terms how much a Google top ranking may be worth in the scheme of things.

However, there is some detailed research information available that provides some general overview of how much more traffic a #1 ranking can achieve over a lower ranking on the same results page in Google.

For example, the graphic below shows the distribution of Google traffic by ranking position:

As you can see on this chart, a #1 ranking in Google results in an estimated 42% of all the possible traffic generated by a specific keyword search. This drops precipitously as you move down in the rankings on the page. By the time you get to positions #8, #9, and #10, you're getting only 3% of the total possible traffic for any given keyword search.

In other words,