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The Importance of Ranking on Page 1 of the Search Engine Results

I keep hearing a lot of murmuring in the small business marketing community, talking about Google Adwords/PPC, and other forms of paid advertisement. The general consensus is that these are effective marketing techniques for small businesses, but in actuality, organic search results are where small businesses should be focusing your marketing efforts.

We’re already not the biggest fans of Google Adwords because their deceptive advertisements and how they suck money from bootstrapped small business, only to provide them with “impressions” and “clicks,” not “customers.”

After reading this post on SearchEngineLand.com, it’s even more apparent to me that small business marketers should be creating pages and optimize them with the long-tail keywords that relate specifically to your products/services. After all, long-tail keywords are the best option for small business marketers looking to get on page 1.

You can find out which keywords are best for your small business website optimization efforts by signing up for your free BoostSuite account now!

Organic Rankings and the Top Positions Within Them

Looking back at the SearchEngineLand.com article, Jessica points out that not only is it important to appear on page one of the search results, but it’s also important to rank within the top 5.

Compete.com released a study last year which showed 53% of organic search clicks go to the first result, and 87% of the total clicks on the first page is within the top 5 results.

You’ll also notice only 15% of the total listings on page 1 of the search results are paid. That’s not a lot of real estate and if it’s an extremely competitive keyword, the likelihood you’re going to show up in one of those sponsored ad areas is pretty low if you’re a small business.

You have to do EVERYTHING right. Your landing pages must be optimized for the keyword to get your Quality Score up and your CPC price down, otherwise, you will have to out-bid your competitors who probably have deeper pockets than you.

To Get More Results, Go Organic

The data has spoken. You have a much better chance of getting click-throughs directly from the organic search results. Searchers prefer clicking on them as opposed to paid ads.

Organic results are more trustworthy and even better, they’re FREE. This means small businesses should be using a tool like BoostSuite to find the keywords which are best for your business, optimize your pages with said keywords to build out your site’s content to build inbound links to rank higher, and convert more of your visitors into leads and customers.

Do you agree or disagree with my outlook regarding small businesses focusing on organic search results as opposed to paid? Let’s hear your opinion in the comments below!

This article was originally published by BoostSuite

Published: July 22, 2013
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Ryan Kettler

Ryan Kettler is Director of Communications for BoostSuite. Ryan is a sports fanatic, devoted runner, avid golfer, beer connoisseur, Internet marketing zealot and live music enthusiast. When he’s not helping BoostSuite customers he can be found running 5ks, sampling IPAs, and cheering on his North Carolina State Wolfpack. BoostSuite is a web marketing optimization product for small business owners. Unlike current products that bewilder and discourage small business owners, BoostSuite allows novice web marketers to build more website traffic and convert more online visitors into customers and leads for their businesses. BoostSuite is free and takes only one minute to set up, is easy to learn, and can be used by anyone.