First page search results are something that most businesses today strive for but even if you make it onto the coveted first page, you’re not guaranteed online success. Here’s why:

1. The top position on Google generally receives 42% of the clicks on the page.  That’s great, but the second position only gets 6% of the clicks.  If you’re happy to be on the first page, say around #8, you’re getting very few clicks.  Let’s face it, if you’re not in the #1 position, you’re missing out.

2. If you’re lucky enough to have achieved that top position on the first page of the search results, you still might be missing a lot of the potential clicks if your title and description are poorly written.  The title and description are found in your code and they are the two things that determine what your listing on Google will say.  Picture Google’s listings.  There’s a blue link, followed by a couple lines of black text and then the green URL.  The title is pulled from your code and is used as the big blue hyperlink in the Google search results.  Then the description is used right below the blue link to make up the two lines of black text in your listing.  If your listing is poorly written, people will skip your top listing and click on the #2 or #3 listings.  All of that work to get your site to the top of the first page in Google and for what?  It’s all worthless if you can’t get people to click on your listing.

3. Conversion rates on your site are also critical.  If you are able to get people to click on your listing but you lose them after they hit your site, then you still have problems.  In all actuality, there are so many points in the process where you can lose a customer and you have to pay special attention to each one to assure that you keep the customer.   And it doesn’t even end after the sale.  You stand to make a lot more money in the future from your existing customers so don’t make the mistake of looking at your sales process as a beginning to end type of thing.   It needs to be seen as a continuum with no end.

Hope that helps.

Chadd Bryant