The E-Commerce Times conducted a poll from March 25, 2019 – April 1, 2019. When asked, only about 4.32% of people say that there’s enough information on the first page of the SERPs to meet their needs. About 14.05% say they found things on the front page to be rigged. Another 25.41% said that even when they found what they were looking for on the front page they still looked further to see what else was available – 20% simply wanted to see more. The good news is that 36.22% were willing to look deeper.
These are some interesting results since they lie in sharp contrast to the standard SEO pitch that says, “You have to be on the first page.” Now we’re seeing that people click past the first page, even if that’s only a small percentage of people who do so. So, while you still want to strive to see your business on the first page, the billions of results that don’t end up there are still valuable – albeit less than the front-page results.
The Importance of Being on Top
It isn’t impossible to make your way to the first page if you’re willing to do a lot of work to get there. For instance, to get on Google’s front page your website must be relevant, and its intention must be quite visible. It’s also important to answer your visitors’ questions so you don’t get pushed off the front page. Due to this set up, visitors rarely dig deeper either.
A few other things you should do to appease Google include:
- Focus on being a solution, not a result. This goes back to answering questions and providing information your visitors are looking for.
- Make your website mobile friendly. Mobile surpasses desktop when it comes to using the internet today. As such, you must take your user’s screen size into consideration and make sure your website is performing well.
- Make your website local friendly. Here you need to know your audience. Since Google focuses heavily on a user’s location, almost every listing has an opportunity to be seen. To do this you must understand and utilize local SEO.
Google’s Dominance in the Search Industry
We know Google dominates the search industry today. This may leave you wondering about getting ranked on other search engines and directories. There are plenty of reasons you shouldn’t ignore them though.
As you look at the other search engines that exist today (e.g. Bing, Duck Duck Go), remember that in recent years striving to be on the front page of one search engine won’t impact how you rank on another search engine. This is because each search engine has its own algorithm. However, if you do the following you will be fine on all of them:
- Work to get relevant links from other websites to yours – especially important if and when you want to show up on Duck Duck Go
- Make sure your content answers your visitors’ questions and addresses their needs
- Make sure your content is accessible and easily understood by machines
- Avoid using no-SEO-value URLs and instead make it easy for search engines to find your content – this is especially important when you want to get ranked well on Bing
Now that you see this is something you need to do for your business’ website, you’re probably wondering how you’ll ever find time to do it since you already have so much going on. Fortunately, you don’t need more time in your day, you just need to partner with the Affordable SEO Company. In doing so you’ll be taking your business to a whole new level of success.