This is the third post in a multi-part series about website positioning.
Why Search Engine Optimization works
Google is the number-one search engine in the world. More than 60% of all online search happens through Google. In one month Google processes more than 30 billion searches worldwide. Google decides which websites to display when someone searches for something. Google makes its decision based on the relevancy of the keyword search to the keywords being used on a website and the quality of the content on the site’s pages. For example, if you’re a coffee shop in Portland, you probably have the word “coffee” written somewhere on your site. However, no one types the word “coffee” into a Google search to find a coffee shop. If they did, they would probably get a lot of information on the history of coffee, the types of coffee, where coffee comes from, and major producers of coffee, but not a lot of information about coffee shops.
By finding the right keywords and placing them in the right places on your site, we are telling Google, “Here we are and here’s what we are all about!” Google likes this and gives every website a score, or “page rank,” based on how the keywords are used and the quality of the content surrounding those keywords. The higher your score, the greater the possibility of showing up on the first page of a Google search for that keyword.
The first page is all that matters
In reality, it’s not even the first page that matters. Of the first 10 sites that show up in a Google search, it’s the first 3 listings that really count. If your website does not rank for a keyword in the first 3 listings on a Google search page, chances are no one is going to look at it. More than 60% of all people searching for something on Google will click on the first 2 websites that show up in the list. The third place listing averages about 18% and it drops off significantly after that. The bottom 5 average around 4%.
