New website: check.

List of keywords you’d like visitors to search and find your site: check.

Searching Google to find your site for these keywords: nothing…

Your site is nowhere to be found. At least not without digging to the dark depths of the search results - which everyone knows is anything beyond page three of the results.

Just how good is life on the first page

More sophisticated search engines are providing more accurate results for searchers every day. And the more accurate results searchers receive on the first page, the less likely they’ll be to look to the second or the third.

Here’s a quick look at the click through differences based on your placement on a search engine’s pages:

• 62% of search engine users clicked on a search result within the first results page
• 28% of search engine users clicked on a search result within the second or third page

So, that’s more than half of users clicking on a result on the first page, compared to less than 30% for the second and third pages combined.

Moving to your coveted home on the first page

This is where the “not as exciting as magic” part comes in. As the Internet becomes the place for people to do… everything, it’s also becoming a priority marketing medium.

And while the natural search results are, in theory, unpaid, most of the sites in the top ten listings aren’t there by coincidence – or magic.

Whether a well-ranking company is paying with their time and resources (optimizing their site themselves) or with money (paying an Internet marketing company), they’re paying with something.

Seeing your site rank well in the search engines is a balance of knowledge, hard work, time, and strategy:

• Knowledge:
  Your site needs to be coded properly for the search engines to be able to find it.
  You need to implement the basic search engine optimization (SEO) strategies (keyword research, keywords in your site, links coming in to your site, etc.).
• Hard work:
  SEO is not a “set it and forget it” solution. You need to consistently build your site – both content on it and links coming to it.
• Time:
  Building links and content takes time. Consistency with your marketing efforts is a hallmark of SEO.
• Strategy:
  All the knowledge, hard work, and time in the world won’t make you an Internet marketing success story if you don’t back it up with a solid marketing strategy. In this sense, SEO isn’t much different than marketing in any other medium – you still need good ideas that your target market will respond to.

The factors of knowledge, hard work, time, and strategy aren’t as quick, easy, or catchy as a “set it and forget it” infomercial.

They’re certainly not as exciting as magic.

But in the end, these elements are the tried and true ways to get your site where you want it to be.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 10:15 am and is filed under Search Engine Optimization, Homepage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.