If you are looking to increase your traffic, finding keywords that your are getting traffic from, but don’t have top 10 ranking should be one of the first places to look.  Using some admittedly outdated statistics I am showing the approximate click through rate of search results based on position.  I have also included a few scenarios on percent traffic gained when moving up a few positions. 

 Don’t put too much emphasis on the numbers as the search environment is significantly different today than even a couple of years ago.    However from a very broad standpoint, there are some interesting factors to consider.

The two critical areas where you can see biggest gains in traffic is 1- movement in the top 4 positions and 2 moving from the second page to the first page.  If you are in the top 4 positions on a keyword, you should be commanding a good share of the traffic, but more importantly the return on any effort to move up further in the rankings is huge.  Conversely you have a lot to lose by slipping even one position.  Going from #2 to #1 results in a 250% increase in traffic.   Whether you are fighting to stay # 1 or pushing to get there – the stakes are high.

But another area where you can make significant gains is moving from the second page to the first page in rankings.  You could increase your traffic by over 350% on a search term by going from #12 to #10. This is a lot easier to do than moving from #3 to #2.

When I look at my traffic and ranking reports I try to find search terms where my client is ranking on the second page AND getting some good relevant traffic.  These are potential search terms where a huge increase could result with fairly modest effort.  If we are ranked #12 on a search term that is currently getting 100 visits a month, then by pushing it to #10, one should get at least 250 more visits.  That could be 2-6 more orders if it was an ecommerce site. 

What is the best way to find these keyword opportunities?  Your Google Webmaster account is a great source.  It gives you all the keyword searches that your site is showing up in, what your average ranking is and your average click through.  Another good source is your Google analytics, or other site analysis tool.  Look at all the keywords that are bringing traffic to your site.  Plug the keywords into Google search and see where you rank.  Any keyword where you are getting traffic and ranking on the second page should be looked at for optimization.  Sometimes all is needed is to add a better content, or modify the title tag.

I am not suggesting that this consideration should take over your existing strategy, but you may find some “low hanging fruit” by looking at the second page.