markling
Posts: 2071
Joined: 13 Jun 06
Trust:
13 Dec 06 8:51 pm
The numbers you get from these tools should always be used as a guide. It's more about the relative popularity of the search term than the actual figures. You're always going to get more traffic on a word with 60,000 searches/month than you will with one that has 2000/month.
That said, have you given your pages meta descriptions? Google pulls these out and uses them in the search results. If your descriptions are unappealing, (or simply less appealing than the competition) that may account for lower-than-expected traffic.
Otherwise, if we look at the maths: 60,000 searches in Yahoo MIGHT equal about 120,000 searches in Google, divided by 30 days per month equals ABOUT 4000 searches per day. ASSUME that these people never leave page 1 of the SERPS, then assume that they're all searching *for the first time* and haven't already seen your site. Also assume that they're not looking for a particular site that they can't remember the name for. Divide the 4000/day by the 10 results per page, = 400 uniques per day. Weight that a little in favor of the top ranking sites, and yes, you might expect to be receiving more traffic.
But there's a hell of a lot of assumption going on there.
I understand your frustration if you think this means you'll never get more traffic from your search term -- after all, it doesn't get *much* better than 3rd in Google. I would work on your meta description. Make sure it's relevant and enticing. Then start working on your other keywords.
Regards,
Mark
