While moving forward with your online marketing efforts, have you ever stopped to ponder…how much is it really worth? Of course you have. Any half-way descent marketing manager continually asks this question – i.e…If I do A, will I achieve B?
More specifically in search engine optimization (SEO), does ranking really matter? As you continue to pour thousands of dollars and hours into SEO campaigns to achieve the golden #1 position, it would be great to know if its really paying off.
Well, should you be one of the thousands of marketers optimizing your site for Google…it looks like #1 is the place to be – a recent report by Chitika says so anyway. Actually, the top spot is double the traffic of the #2 sport as displayed in recent research on their network.
To find the value of search rankings, Chitika, who is a "full service online advertising network," analyzed select Google traffic coming into their network and broke it down according to results placement.
This research just shows what most marketers have been speculating…being #1 on Google is the magnum opus of a search optimization campaign. Besides new efforts taking place with social networking, competition for # 1 on the world's leading search engine represents a large part of online marketing budgets.
"Obviously, everyone knows that the #1 spot on Google is where you want to be," says Chitika research director Daniel Ruby. "It's just kind of shocking to look at the numbers and see just how important it is, and how much of a jump there is from 2 to 1.
Even though all search engines aren't created equal, the overall idea of these stats can be translated to the likes of Yahoo and Bing: holding the top spot represents a large increase of traffic.Regardless of where searches are taking place, most search behavior is the same…Page 1 gets all of the action with Page 2 (as seen in the results) being the outcast of search results.
Here are some of the key stats derived from the report:
- The top spot sent 34.5% of all traffic in the selection…as much as spots 2 through 5 combined. As well as slots 5 through 20 together.
- The biggest spike is from positions 11 to 10 at 143% (top of page to > bottom of page 1)…even though the actual jump is rather low – from 1.1% of search traffic to 2.71%.
- Position # 1 received 34.5% of all traffic with #2 receiving 16.96% of traffic..and #3 coming in at 11.42%
Vidal & Associates Internet Business Consultants and Real Estate Marketing
Leo J. Vidal, JD, MA, CPA, President
Author of "Top Secrets of Quick Home Sales" and "How to Set Up an Automatic, Endless Leads Program Online"
www.fsbo.forsalepropertiesonline.com
Toll Free Phone & Fax: 1-800-535-4072
