A Look at Life on Page Two of Google

Dear Sir/Madam,

We have noticed your website is not ranking in position #1 on Google. We can help you get there.

We get these kinds of emails on a weekly basis, and as an SEO company this humours us. But for business owners, hearing this day in and day out can be daunting. And let’s be honest – SEO is a ‘nice to have’ for most small to medium businesses. But right now, you need more revenue and more sales. So let’s speak honestly – how important is it really to get your website ranking in the top spot?

What’s it like, you might ask those at the top of Google’s search results. What’s it like to bask in the eyes of the curious user; the first port of call to answer their question, to solve their problem? The #1 result accounts for an average click through rate of 31.7% on any query, after all.

For those on page two, three, four, five and beyond, you are just a scroll past – a skim. Offline, you can envision empty stores and phones that don’t ring. You sit by the phone waiting for a call. The brick and mortar store is overwhelmingly silent with the ambient hum of the air conditioning unit and sallow store lights.

On page two, you settle for the scraps of users who are frankly, just clicking ‘next’ for the hell of it. By the time a user hits page two, it’s the equivalent of scrolling social media and your eyes glazing over. No content catches your eye because you’ve already skimmed the first pieces of media and not been satisfied.

Meanwhile, competitors are winning the sales at the top. Your product may be much better than theirs, but they’re investing in SEO strategy and you are not. Google values quality content, but with 90.63% content getting zero traffic from Google, it pays to have a strategy to send that quality content to the top.

Publishing without a goal of clicks can easily get vapid, but it’s something to focus on as you write. With every sentence, you should have that imaginary user in the back of your mind. Would they click this title? Would that first sentence grab them, and would they leave the page feeling like they’ve learnt something of value?

If the answer is no, your work is a shout into the void.

Christmas is approaching, but it does so quietly. On page two, three and beyond, you regard this time of year with placid resignation. You’ve tried, you think. You might get some shoppers, but compared to page one it’s not enough. But that can change.

If you would like more sales, more ringing phones and more eyes on what you have to say, we can help you get there. Our belief at Vine Digital is that anything but page one is not good enough. There are agencies out there who give the rest of us a bad name – empty promises and claimed “wins” on page two. There’s no such thing. If you want an agency who won’t settle, that’s us.