So you’ve got a website… but how are people finding it? The sad truth is that you can have the best website in the world, but if people can’t find it, then it’s pointless.
Search engines like Google and Yahoo are the number one channel people use to find your website, and search is a highly effective way for brands and businesses to reach most customers.
According to a research study by Forrester Consulting* in 2016, 95% of consumers use search to discover or find out about new products and services. Compare this with only 50% indicating that they discovered a product or service via TV advertising, and it is plain to see that search is the dominant channel.
The good news is that it is easy to get your website onto the search engines. The bad news is that it is difficult to get your website to rank high enough for your target audiences to find.
But why is where you rank so important?
A study ** based on the analysis of 465 thousand keywords, across five thousand websites, in July 2014, showed the difference in potential business depending on where you rank. The website page in position one of Google, typically gets around 31% of all clicks on that page. The web page in position two gets 14%. The page in position three gets 10% and if we look at positions 6-10 combined, they get around 3.7% of all clicks. Web pages ranked on page two of Google get around 4% of clicks and if you’re on page 3, it drops to 1.6% of clicks.
Let’s put this into context:
Acme Solicitors, based in Sussex, is currently ranked at the bottom of page one of Google. There are 1,300 searches every month in Sussex for the keyword ‘solicitor’, so they are getting minimal visits to their site and only one enquiry if they are lucky every month (Search Engine Land state that the average landing page conversion rate is around 2.35%).
With work optimising the Acme website, they start to see improvements in the number of leads they are receiving. In January, their rank for this keyword improves to number four and they start getting a regular two leads every month. In March, they move up to rank three and get three to four leads. By June, they have reached rank two and are now receiving four to five leads. Then the holy grail, in October, they achieve rank one and rocket to ten leads every month.
This information shows the importance of ranking as high as possible on Google. Even one or two places can mean big increases in search engine traffic and potential leads. And this is only the start – what if we increase the landing page conversion rate (some websites are proving 10-11%) and target other related keywords?
At Smart Monkey, we love helping businesses generate more quality leads - get in touch for a complementary consultation to see how we can help you.
www.smartmonkey.co.uk
beth@smartmonkey.co.uk
@Bethanie_Nash
