How important is it to be “on top”?

In both Paid and Organic sections of the Search Engines – it’s all about top position.

The latest research from Compete.com offers some revised data behind the importance of your placement within the Search Engines results pages (“SERPs”). Although the impact of local listings isn’t specifically addressed, I assume they’ve included that into their definition of “Organic”.

Overall, 85% of all results shown are typically organic, with 15% paid ads. Overall, 55 percent of search engine results pages have ads. Regarding Organic; 53% go to the top listing. The second sees 15% of the action, the third 9%, the fourth 6%, down to 4% to round out the top 5.

Imagine your click-thru rates if your in position 7 or 8! You may as well be invisible, so local businesses need to focus on strategies that drive the highest rank possible in these organic sections of the SERP’s. One particular opportunity on the big three search engines is to focus on geo-modified keywords and local listings/maps.  

On the paid side, the research shows that 61% of paid search ads are displayed in the right sidebar. Yet these ads get just 13 percent of the clicks. Sure, you want to be on top in the right ad block; the top listing on the right gets 4 percent of all paid search clicks, while the second gets just 3 percent. The third listing in the top ad block gets more than double this, at 9 percent. The first listing at the top of the page gets an overwhelming 59 percent of all paid search clicks.

So, clearly an important position – but remember; it’s not ALWAYS about being #1! Local businesses often focus on this and forget about the overall R.O.I. of a paid search campaign. You need to “spread the love” and use many, many keywords, keyword phrases and long-tail keywords – while monitoring CTR’s, and ideally, the conversion rates for each keyword or ad group. Take a “portfollio approach”. Don’t get caught-up in being in the most expensive position, for the most expensive keyword. on the most expensive search engine.

You can download the entire whitepaper here.