2. SEO Press Releases Pretty much anyone involved in internet marketing and SEO will agree that the main aim of effective SEOis to get your page ranked at #1 on the first page of Google search results.Long tail keywords can help you get there. But why is #1 so important? Couldn’t we just settle for getting a page to #2 or even, say, #7 and still benefit from a load of traffic? After all, it’s not that easy getting to, and staying at, #1. Well, here’s why #1 is so important. If you consider the relative numbers of clickthroughs on the first 10 positions on the first page of Google, you’ll see why the coveted #1 spot must be the goal when you are optimizing your long tail keywordsfor search engine results. Basically the numbers are as follows: For the average given search query on Google the #1 spot yields 36% of all clicks, #2 yields 12%, #3 yields 10%, #4 yields 8%, #5 yields 6% and so on down to ten with diminishing results all the way. If you’re on Page 2 or later, results will not be great to say the least! Let’s imagine you’re lucky enough to have your main long tail keywordreceive 5000 total searches per month in Google. Using the statistics stated above, if you were at #1 in Google you should expect around 1800 visitors per month to your page. If your site is optimised for conversion you could see some pretty good results from that. However, if you’re at #5 in Google you’d probably only receive 300 visits. That’s 1500 potential visitors lost from dropping just a few places down the front page of Google. If you’re selling a product at a profit of $10 a pop you just waved goodbye to up to $15,000!!! Even if you’re building a mailing list, that’s an awful lot of potential subscribers to be missing out on. That’s why being #1 is so important. Look at it this way. Imagine it’s a hot summer’s day on the busiest beach in a busy coastal resort. Would you rather be selling ice-creams from a stall right there on the beach or from a shop 5 blocks back? Where do you think you’d sell the most? For your site to be successful you need to get it in front of as many people as possible and you can’t afford to miss out on visitors by your long tail keyword being ranked anywhere other than #1 in the search results. Even the drop-off from #1 to #2 can be massive! One interesting side issue that was recently reported is that short, tough to rank for, terms receive only half as many click-throughs as do long tail search query results. This is no doubt the fruit of Google’s Panda update. And this is something every website owner, developer and SEO person in the world should take note of. Long tail keywordsearch optimisation is probably the future of SEO. Article by Tim Bodman at www.seoprstar.com
