We’ve touched before on why your business doesn’t need SEO. The main point being that while you don’t need to be listed in the organic search rankings, there really is no better way to get traffic to your site.
Lets look at what people do when they search, what our mentality is and what we click on while digging into some juicy statistics! (Relax, this will be nothing like a college statistics course.)
A big factor is that when people search, 80% of the time they click in the organic search results and only 20% of the time do they click the paid ads.
The old 80/20 rule.
(Click to enlarge)
So you can pay to be in the ads, but depending on your market, you not only might be paying through the nose, but sometimes it’s hard to even get enough clicks. Some niches just don’t generate enough traffic. Meanwhile organic results are sitting there saying, “Heya! We’ve got 4X the clicks over here, come play with us!”
On top of that, 75% of searchers never go beyond the first page of results. And as mobile and tablets become more prevalent, we believe that number is going to go higher. Less people are going to take the time to dig deep and look on the 2nd and 3rd pages of results.
Part of that may be the the ever-increasing demands for our attention and our attention span growing less and less as a society. Another reason might simply be that people rely more and more on Google to give them better results (which Google really is constantly improving at).
So you want your site to be listed on the first page, but even better than that, you’d like to be the top result, right? Hell yes, you would! But let’s look at why that is – because the statistics don’t lie. This chart shows just how many people click on the 1st result compared to the 10th. (Bear in mind that this is for just one search term, but the overall averages are close to these numbers)
56% of people click through the 1st result, 13% on the 2nd and almost 10% on the third. Beyond that you get down below 5% click-through rate (CTR).
Beyond the 5th result the click-through rate drops dramatically – to under 2% each
(Click to enlarge)
Obviously if you want more traffic, you want to be listed higher in the results.
Many people think that because Google lists you higher that your site is more valuable, that your brand is better than the rest. While we realize that’s not always the case, the pure fact is that’s the general perception. Plus, you get more clicks; that’s pretty cool too 😉 If you want to dominate your market, or even compete in it, you need to be in the top results.
A great SEO can help your site become more valuable, more relevant to your target search terms. As we like to say, it’s not about gaming the search engines – it’s about making your site better and more useful to your target audience, which in turn makes Google and Bing like it more.
