High ranking but low traffic, what gives?

[optimalwebinc]

One of our clients is in the top 3 spots on high volume keywords that get 20-70k hits in the US each month (per adWords keyword tool), but their daily traffic is in the low hundreds.  What's going on?

[AlanMosley]

Low conversion. Are the people searching for keyword looking for your client. UIf you own a quarry, ranking for stones may not help you as people searching for stones may be looking for the band the rolling stones.

does your serp look spammy?

[MalcolmGibb]

Your probably only going to get around 37% of the total traffic for that term in the #1 spot, there could be many factors that are affecting the traffic though such as meta descriptions and title. Your call to actions may not be enticing people to click. Have a look what the competitors are doing around the listings and try and test them and see if it results in an increase.

[optimalwebinc]

The queries have more of a educational intent to them.  The SERP is not spammy, we could do a better job I am sure though.

Just seems the numbers Google is providing seem way off.

[loopyal]

Brandon, You can't always trust what google tells you about traffic . Those numbers could be a long way off. Also, even if you think you have a good position, for some searchers, the positioning could be completely different.