What percentage of searchers go to page 2 of any Google result?
Sometimes I meet a business owner that has done a little research, changed a few things on his/her website, and is really proud of being on the second page of Google for one of their industry’s terms. But how many Internet searchers actually go to the second page of a Google result?
The Internet has definitely cultured a great bit of impatience, particularly when it comes to finding information online. We want the right information, and we want it now. Searching the Internet through search engines like Google, Yahoo! or Bing (or the thousands of other choices) will usually yield good results, but they aren’t perfect.
On average, only 11% of Internet searchers go to page two of a SERP – search engine result page. So ranking on page one gives you nearly 8 times the amount of traffic that a page two ranking will give you.
Even worse – only 3% of that 11% go to page three. That means that a page three ranking is virtually useless. While it may bring you a visitor or two a month, it’s not doing you much good.
Spiders on the Web
The average ‘stale’ website gets visited (aka spidered) by the search engines every 4-6 weeks. Since the website hasn’t changed in a long time, there’s no real reason for them to come by every week and check for new content.
This is pretty typical of businesses. They get a website:
- because they heard they needed one
- because their competition has one
- because all the cool kids have one
There’s no thought put into the website beyond the fact that they needed one, and in most cases business owners didn’t even put much thought into who they hired to do it. Total waste of huge opportunity for revenue growth.
Getting to Page One
Since the average website isn’t going anywhere fast, getting the search engines to take notice of it can take some time. A lot of time. If you started making changes to your website today, there’s a high possibility that the search engines won’t even notice those changes for up to a month and a half. Even then, noticing and doing something (ranking you higher) are two different things. If you’ve optimized your home page for the term blue widgets, and currently you aren’t listed in the top 100 results (10 SERP pages) for that phrase, a move into position 89 isn’t really doing you much good, is it? Sure, it’s a step in the direction you want, but it’s not producing any traffic. So how do you get to page one?
Ah, that’s the golden question, isn’t it?
The way to a page one result is through constant and consistent pressure. Blogging weekly will increase the search engines’ awareness of your website. They’ll see that ‘movement’ and start to visit your website more often. They’ll start to rank your site because there’s real information (content) that’s valuable to their searchers.
That change, along with link building, onsite optimization, and a ton of other things will get your site moving in the right direction – up! But don’t think it’s a one time or quick fix. If you do, you may see some very short term rankings, but you’ll fall right back in the no-traffic-pit.
Why Most SEO Contracts are Long Term
A good SEO will require (at minimum) a six month contract. Personally, I won’t take anything less than a one year commitment from a new client. Why? Well, just like I said earlier – six months of work might get you to page three or two of a term. It’s still useless unless you’re happy with sitting at 11% of your potential. I’m not happy with that. A one year commitment tells me that the business owner understands that they are investing in a long term strategy, not a short term bandaid.
Want to find out more about Search Engine Optimization for Small Business? Contact me and let’s talk!
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