Do You Really Need To Come In First Place?

Do You Really Need To Come In First Place?
When I was in 6th grade, track and field was all the rage.
I've never been particularly athletic. But it was 1984 and
everyone in my class was pretty fascinated with the
Olympics that year. As you can imagine the school's annual
track meet turned into a mini-Olympics.

So I surveyed the events and the sign-ups for each one. I
decided that the long-distance running events held the most
promise for glory. The 2 mile, in particular, only had 2
other girls signed up?so I was pretty much guaranteed a
"medal". That sounded pretty exciting. Maybe I could go for
the gold!

However, watching the other events leading up to the
2-mile, I soon learned that one of the other girls was a
seasoned runner. She knew all about pacing, how many
minutes she should be able to run a mile in, and all that
fancy stuff. At that point, I knew that first place was
pretty much done for. I barely knew how many laps around
the track I had to run. I ran the race anyway and wound up
coming in second?which was just fine by me.

It's not all about winning?a place or a show can be just
fine

Whenever I talk to a client about search engine placement,
this track meet comes into mind. The client comes to me
wanting to be #1 for their chosen search term. But for many
small businesses, being ranked first is not truly that
important?and depending on the search term, being #1 may
hurt their business.

How can being #1 possibly hurt?

I know, saying that being on top can hurt your business
sounds pretty unbelievable. But, being in first place has
several disadvantages:

1. Getting to first place for desirable keywords takes a
lot of work. The world of search engine placement is highly
competitive. Most people with a website are trying to get
placed in the Search Engines.

With all of this competition, you'll have to do a lot of
work on your site to get the search engines' attention.
This could include keyword research, changing your
headlines, editing your text, submitting your site, getting
links coming in to your site, and making sure that your
site is content-rich. It takes a fair bit of work just to
get listed, and then even more work to get to the top.
Aiming for third or fourth place can be easier to achieve,
and cuts down the amount of work required to get there.

2. The climb to the top is often slow. Raising your ranking
on the search engines isn't an instantaneous process. After
you've made your changes, you have to wait for the search
engines to stop by and re-rank you.

You probably won't get to the top spot on the first try?so
you'll have to go through this process a few times to make
headway. The quest to get to the top can take quite a
while, and having to work repeatedly on optimizing your
site for search engines can take your focus and attention
away from your business.

3. Being #1 can bring you more "browsers" instead of
qualified prospects. Holding the top spot means that you're
most likely to be a visitor's first stop on their search.
Instead of having a focused idea of what they're looking
for, the people who are coming to your site may only have a
vague idea?which means more hand-holding and
question-answering for you.

This can become a real problem if you work to be ranked
first for a more general search term like "marketing
consultant". You'll have lots of visitors, sure, but are
they really the best visitors for you?

The sheer number of visitors is much less important than
the quality of visitors that arrive at your site. Are they
looking for what you're selling? Do they have the right
sort of budget to work with you? Are they in an industry
that you like working with? Are they going to connect with
your personality?

If you get them to your site, but they then answer "no" to
any of the above questions, they won't buy from you?which
can be more frustrating than having them never come by at
all.

4. Sometimes the top spot gets skipped! Some searchers
automatically click lower in the list instead of clicking
on #1. This may be because they assume that the person in
the #1 spot would be too busy to help them, or would have
higher rates. Or they may just skip over the top slot
visually because it's close to paid ads at the top of the
page.

Being a few listings down actually reduces this skip-over
factor, and makes it more likely that a rushed visitor will
notice your listing.

5. People often aren't ready to buy the first thing they
see. Your customers will want to do their due diligence
research before making a purchase. If you're number one on
the search results list and they start researching from the
top, you may find that by listing 4 or 5 they feel informed
enough to purchase. And you will have been long forgotten
just because they clicked on it first.

If a visitor comes to your site after having seen other
options, they may be more prepared to make a purchase
immediately. This could help you close more sales.

6. Staying on top is challenging. Imagine a pyramid of
cheerleaders competing for the "longest time in a human
pyramid" World Record. They're up there, trying to keep the
girl on top stable for hours at a time. Sounds exhausting,
right?

It's equally tiring to try to stay in the top spot on the
search engine rankings. Because, while you're sitting
smugly on top, other companies are working on their sites,
trying to climb over you. Unless you keep checking and keep
working at it, that #1 slot may not be yours for long. This
vicious circle takes your attention away from your business
as you have to work on your website endlessly.

Does that mean that if you do reach #1 you should take
steps to lower your ranking?

If you're already in the top spot for a search term, don't
panic?you've already conquered #1 and 2 on this list by
being patient and working through the process.

But if you find that you're suffering from any of the other
problems on the list?too many browsers, not enough visitors
because you're being skipped, or lots of visitors and not
enough purchasers, you may consider experimenting with
letting other companies take over the top spot for a while
to see if your site will benefit.

Being in first place isn't everything in the search engine
race. But if you can get into the top 10 results, you'll
improve your traffic, get more interested prospects to your
site, and probably close more sales. And there should be a
medal for that!

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Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big
visibility for small businesses. As the owner of elf
design, Erin is passionate about helping her clients stand
out in front of their competition and attract more clients.
One of the best ways to do that is with Search Engine
Optimization, which you can learn about in her eLearning
product, Raise Your Ranking, which is available at
http://www.howtoraiseyourranking.com .