What’s Wrong With #1?
The goal is far too small and it’s unlikely to get you what you want.
It’s not because it’s such a bad goal. It’s simply that the online world has become overly fixated on too narrow a goal. SEO companies have basically dedicated their entire marketing message to this.
And, unfortunately, most business owners and professionals have uncritically accepted that this IS the goal.
Why settle for #1 if you could have the whole page?
Remember Who Your REAL Audience Is!
Let’s stop and think. The ultimate goal is not page rank. The real goal is getting people to find you, engage with you, and ultimately become your customer, client, or patient, right?
Okay, so let’s take a big step back from what your SEO guru is telling you to focus on. Let’s go back to the most important set of eyeballs in the entire equation. Yes, that’s right, your customer!
Let’s assume you’ve succeeded and you are sitting right there at the top of Page One for the most important keyword phrase for your business. Do you really believe that your ideal customer is ONLY going to click on the first result?
Here’s the reality based on research:
90% of the public is going to go online to research the products and services that solve the problem they are currently experiencing (2010 research by BIA/Kelsey reported by BizReport.com)
And that was 2010, so the number is even higher now.
You know this, at least at a gut level, or why would you care about trying to rank well in the search engines?
Okay, but here is the statistic to which you REALLY want to pay attention:
According to that same study, those consumers who went online to research their problem (you know… the problem your business or practice is perfectly qualified to solve), those consumers visited an AVERAGE of 7.9 different websites!
This is why only focusing on page rank is such a mistake.
Great, you’re #1, but your prospect is NOT going to click on just your site. With an average of 7.9 clicks, you’ve got serious competition.
Have You Looked At The Rest of The Page?
Step back and look at the page as a whole (and remember to look at it from the prospect’s perspective).
You may have paid ads at the top and bottom, as well as down the right side of the page. But more importantly, even if you’re #1, you’ve got at least nine other organic search results right down the middle of that page.
Who’s occupying those other nine slots? That’s right… it’s your top competition going head-to-head against you for that very same keyword phrase. You and nine others hanging out with a consumer who’s about to make 7.9 clicks worth of research.
Okay, So What’s A Better Goal?
What if you could dominate the entire (or at least a major portion of) that search results page?
Again, look at this through the eyes of your ideal potential client, customer, or patient researching their problem on the web. If they found your expert information about the solution to their pain in 5-8 (or even all 10) of the organic search results, would that be impressive to them?
You bet it would!
You would become the immediately recognized authority on that keyword phrase. But let’s be more accurate. You would be the immediately recognized expert authority on the solution to the pain being experienced by this person.
It’s Time To Think Outside The Website
In order to dominate most if not all of that top search results page, you have to think beyond your primary website. If all of your great content is in the same place, Google will lump it all into one single slot on the results page.
However, if you take your great information and distribute it far and wide onto lots of other web locations… you see where this is going, right? Now Google indexes your expert information over and over again. And if you have a large volume of content tied to that critical keyword phrase, each piece is indexed as unique content appearing at a different web location. And now Page One of Google is all you, all the time!
Video Is The King of Content
Video increases the likelihood of a front-page Google search result by 96% with proper page optimization (Forrester). Video is easy to share, so it gets around. But there’s no need to wait for someone else to share it.
There are lots of online video sharing sites. YouTube is #1, but there are many more. When you create a great video message and upload it to 10 video sharing sites (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Google+), you’ve just created 10 unique URL links for Google to index. If you create 10 video segments and upload them to 10 video sharing sites, you’ve just given Google 100 unique URL links to index.
Google owns YouTube. Google has research showing that the searching public prefers watching over reading. Google’s entire business model rests on giving people what they want when they search. If you produce video tied to your most important keywords, you will out-rank your competition because they are spending all their time trying to just optimize one single website.
So, stop trying to rank #1 for your website. Think bigger. Think outside the website. It’s time for you to get into the moving picture business!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7612736