Question:

I’ve recently started getting involved in Online Marketing solutions for my company’s website, and I think I’m starting to get to grips with the search engine optimisation side of things.  I’m a bit worried though as I’m only just getting going and I imagine it will be a while until I make it onto the first page of Google.  Should I be freaking out or is there some value to being on pages two or three as well?

Thanks

Tim, Cambridge

Answer:

Hi Tim,

Good news - you can stop freaking out right away!  There is certainly a school of thought that says that unless you’re on the front page of Google you and your Online Marketing solutions are going nowhere – however it is a school of thought I personally disagree with.

The reality is that whilst spots 1, 2 and 3 on Google’s first page are the best real estate to have, spots 4, 5 and 6 are not necessarily the second best. In fact, some would say that spots 1, 2 and 3 on page two are probably a better position to find yourself in.  The truth is, so many searchers skim the top of the page, don’t find what they’re looking for and move onto page 2, and then again onto page 3, that there’s no real way of knowing exactly which spot will get you the most clicks (only your analytics can answer this for you).  This theory is of course assuming that page 2 is the second page that they click on, when in fact the first three pages they look at might well be page 1, then page 4 and then page 14.

Everyone has their own habitual way of searching; there are those who don’t trust the first page as they believe everything on it is part of a corporate contest, whilst there are those who are too lazy or too busy to look further than halfway down the page.  It’s about as easy to predict how people will search as it is to predict British summertime so, rather than spending time trying to work out which position in which page you want to be in, I would spend your time making sure that your Meta Tags are as effective as they can be.  That way, whichever page you happen to be ranked on, when a searcher passes their eye over the results they will see your entry and say “ah – exactly what I want!”

Learning how to tweak your Online Marketing solutions does not mean securing yourself the top spot on Google.  But as long as your Meta Tags and your page are well optimised, there is no reason to freak out – there are many pages in most Google searches and almost all of them represent traffic of some kind.

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