There is a very old joke that is popular amongst SEO professionals that says that if you want to bury a body somewhere nobody will look, you should bury it on the second page of Google’s search results.
There is a lot of truth to this statement – how many of us ever look beyond the first few results we get when searching for something? It’s a good reminder that ranking high on Google is important. And with the right approach and strategy, it’s also possible.
According to research undertaken by online advertising networks into online ad impressions via page referrals on Google searches, the very first Organic result that appears on page one gets a third of all the traffic. The second result gets a fifth. From there, the percentages decline slightly – however as expected, the first page of results gets 92 percent of all traffic.
If you’re a small to medium business the above statistic can seem disheartening. After all, how are you supposed to compete with the big brands of the world on your limited budget and without worldwide recognition? The answer is simple and lies in how people conduct searches. It’s possible for even the smallest business to rank highly for certain search results, provided they are location specific, have highly relevant content and abide by Google’s best practice guidelines.
Today’s modern consumer rarely makes an important purchase by walking off the street and into the nearest shop that catches their eye. They will undertake extensive online research into local providers prior to setting a foot outside their front door. This is where Location Based SEO comes in.
Serious customers know that by searching for ‘hairdressers’ they will get pages of international results that aren’t relevant to them. However, if they search ‘Hairdressers St Kilda’ they will be presented with a list of hair salons in the area. Ranking highly for these two terms together is possible for any business, provided they are willing to invest some time and effort into the necessary SEO techniques and work with the right digital marketing partner to implement them.
With such a tool at your disposal, ranking first place will cease being a fantasy and start becoming a reality and you will see just how much it pays to come first in search engine results.
