so, here are some numbers and estimations.
to get your site in the top 10 for a given key phrase (2-3 words) it will cost you anywhere from $100/year upwards.
That's the best case scenario.
If you end up positioning your website in the top 10 for 50 key phrases, that's $5'000/year
Let's check with one of my programs to see if that's profitable...
to come even, I would need to sell 250 programs/year for this specific campaign.
250 programs sold = $5000 income
$5000 income would just cover the SEO fees
250 programs divides by 50 keywords = 5 programs sold / keyword
250 programs with a 0.5 conversion rate, that's 50'000 vistors/year
if the click through rate is 1% average - that's 5'000'000 searches
if the click through rate is 5% average - that's 1'000'000 searches
So, the numbers are clear... To get that type of result, my ad needs to appear in front of 1-5 million viewers in a year.
That's JUST to come even!
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Now, let's check some numbers from my adwords advertizing years:
in 2007 - peak year for that campaign - jealousy for men
- US and western world market
- ads impressions: 350'000
- click through rate average: 1%
- total clicks 5'000
- with a conversion rate of 1%, that would mean 50 sales
- $1000 income
- $800 advertising costs
now the worldwide traffic estimates are probably twice as high - that would mean 700'000 impressions but half the conversion rate to get the same number of sales.
So...
With this specific campaign, I don't even reach 1'000'000 impressions.
Yes, my ads were not showing all the time because of cost per click too high.
This means that the number of impressions could be way higher.
Suppose that it's double. We reach 1'5 million impressions.
In the same period, sold overall 161 programs - so that's around $3220 in a year for that specific program
this means that maybe only
- 50 sales = 1/3 of my sales came through adwords
- 1/6 maybe 25 sales organic results
- 1/6 maybe through my optimized pages
- 1/6 through my yahoo campaigns
- 1/3 left...
These are ROUGH estimations as I don't have the exact numbers.
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So, what is the conclusion?
That, a lot of my core keywords in my adwords campaign like overcome jealousy or dealing with jealousy did bring around 10'000 impressions/year and 200 visits.
Now, 200 visits probably generated 2 sales average with 1% conversion rate.
1 top keyphrase - 2 sales
Remember that I said earlier that to just come even, each keyphrase would need to sell 5 programs just to come even?
Well, here we go... through my adwords campaign, these top keyphrases achieved only 2 sales average or max.
Why would these numbers be higher for the organic searches?
Well, here are some possibilities...
- Organic searches have higher credibility so higher click through rate (many people don't even "see" the adwords ads!") probably double CTR compared with adwords
- Some of the keywords could perform way better than 1% CTR up to 30% for a top 3 rank.
- These searches won't only show up on google but on yahoo and bing too
- If I score top 10 for these 50 keyphrases, I will score high as well for a VAST variety of similar keyphrases - these similar
- worldwide rather than US and western traffic
so overall here are the visits increase expectations when we go from adwords to organic searches:
if 100% = number of visits on that 2007 adwords campaign
- Points 1 and 2 - 5X adwords visits (500%)
- Point 3 - 1X adwords visits (100%)
- Point 4 - 2X adwords visits (200%)
Let's round it up to 10X are all these are rough estimates anyway.
Now, if we consider the fact that the organic search traffic is worldwide (not just US and western), that ads another 50% more traffic to this equation.
However, it is better not take that traffic into account because it's conversion rate was very low in the past. This includes asia, africa and latino america and middle east.
so, let's take that traffic out of the equation for now.
I just want to make it easy on the maths.
10X more visits with similar conversion rates - that's 10X more sales
This would bring the sales numbers to 500 sales and $10'000 income.
500 sales means that each keyphrase brings in 10 sales/year.
So, that would make $5000 profit in that case if the SEO fees are $5000 for that year.
Again, its just a numbers game!
The only way to know for sure is to try out!
These are rough estimates and they could be 10X higher or 10X lower.
It's impossible to know for sure.