Why Your Search Engine Rankings Matter [A Lot]

26 September 2017 Joanna

Think of a product you recently purchased. If this item was something you had not bought before, chances are you went to Google and did some research on the product before pulling the trigger. The vast majority of people using the internet utilize search engines to find out what they’re hunting for.

Google allows consumers access to such a wide variety of information for products, all at the tip of their fingers. While Google may dominate the search engine market counting for around 65% of search, Bing also gets some respectable action with 33% of search.
95% of search engine users don’t venture past the first page of results. This statistic means your website is essentially nonexistent to a massive amount of search engine users unless you can get your business on that first page of results.

Even if you are lucky enough to make it into the holy land of search engine rankings, the percentage of traffic you can be expected to vary dramatically the further down you fall on the page. If your website lands as far down as the fifth spot, you can expect to receive 6% of visitors who perform the search. If you are lucky enough to hit the top ranking spot, you can expect to see around 32%!

Let’s break down the two types of search

Paid Search

To begin, you must first understand the two types of search results there are. Paid search and Organic search. If you’re working in a competitive field, all of the results above the fold are going to be paid search results. You most likely won’t even be able to find an organic result without scrolling down the page. Companies will bid on how much they are willing to pay for each click they get from that search.

The most glaring positive result of using paid search is companies receive instant gratification. Once you set up an account as an advertiser on Google or Bing, you can start showing up on the first page right away. You can bid on keywords that you would like to show up for and the company with the best bid will typically earn that magical #1 spot. This is widely known as PPC (pay per click).

The downside of this is that paid search can be incredibly expensive for competitive fields. Not only is it expensive, but since you are bidding on keywords, it’s critical that you have extensive research on the people searching those keywords. If you keyword choices are too broad, you’ll end up squandering your PPC budget on irrelevant web traffic. Also if your terms are too narrow, your ad won’t show often enough to bring you quality visitors. The research needed for a quality PPC campaign is extensive and requires exceptional familiarity with Google. Hiring a Digital Marketing agency provides your business with a team that is working to do exactly that. Always choose an agency that is a certified Google partner.

Organic search

If your budget doesn’t have quite enough room for paid searches you can still use SEO to generate relevant traffic. When implementing Organic search into your SEO strategy, you’re not paying per click. Major search engines like Google and Bing use an algorithm to determine which websites will be the most useful to users. Those users typically trust organic results more than paid results, despite the fact that everything above the fold is packed with ads. People are more willing to rely on organic search results compared to paid searches because those results aren’t appearing simply because one company paid more than the others.

To simplify this, people are more likely to click through your site through organic search engine ratings. You achieve high organic search rankings by producing high quality, relevant content combined with proven on-page off-page SEO strategies that prove your website is providing users with real value and is answering their questions. However, don’t expect to see instant results like Paid search. Organic search requires a long-term strategy that could require months to start seeing results.

When hiring a company or contractor to run an organic search campaign you must also be vigilant of the overly-affordable people promising fast results. These speedy organic results- which you may actually get, come from spammy Google banned tactics. You will soon find your website delisted by Google, which is the equivalent of having your business moved into Siberia.

How do you get to the holy land of search results?

When it comes to getting your website into the search engine sweet spot, it is best to use a strategy that implements both types of search. It will most likely take some time to improve your website’s organic search ranking. This is why you should begin with an effective Paid search (PPC) campaign to bring new visitors to your website while simultaneously working to improve organic ratings. We highly recommend talking to a reputable digital marketing agency that can formulate the right strategy for your business and help out with development, design, and ad copywriting. Moreover, your marketing campaign will be way more successful if your website will be SEO optimized. Check out some fresh, but already popular SEO-friendly WordPress themes and a wide choice of SEO templates.