80-95% of traffic comes from first page ranking

New data from iCrossing proves what many SEO professionals have known since the inception of search engines – a brand’s position on search engine result pages is everything.

Internet users trust that search engines will provide them with the best and most relevant results first and this is reflected in their search behavior. Many users tend not dig too deep into search results and instead rely on the first few pages presented.

Well, when I say “first few pages” what I really mean is the first page as it continues to drive the most traffic to websites. iCrossing‘s recent report says that just over 95% of all traffic received by the 10 clients they chose to study was captured by the first page of search results.

The number of click-throughs from pages 2 and 3 of search results were significantly less.

To illustrate – of the 8.9 million non-branded visitors tracked in the study just over 8.5 million came from the first page of search results (95.3%), just over 232,000 came from page two (8.7%) and around 180,000 came from page three onwards (1.7%).

iCrossing’s report, “The Importance of Page-One Visibility” (.pdf) also confirmed what other studies have previously found regarding searchers’ use of multiple keywords as opposed to just one or two.

According to Collin Cornwell, Vice President, Natural Search, iCrossing, “In order to compete for today’s sophisticated online consumers, brands must have a deep understanding of how users arrive at their website, and the tools and know-how to optimize their site to stay in front of the consumer at every step of the purchase cycle.”