Is ranking in the top 10 good enough?
April 11, 2008
It seems that most webmasters and internet marketers have the goal of getting their sites onto page one of Google. I admit that I, too, feel a sense of joy and satisfaction when my sites hit the top 10 for my keywords.
But is the top 10 good enough? Should you rest on your laurels once you've achieved page one ranking? Not according to the AOL search data that was compromised in 2006. Yes, that data is two years old, but I think it's important to revisit those results and remind ourselves of what it revealed.
That compromised data gave us the following break-down of the percentage of clicks received by each of the top 11 search results:
| Rank | Percent |
| 1 | 22.6% |
| 2 | 6.4% |
| 3 | 4.5% |
| 4 | 3.2% |
| 5 | 2.6% |
| 6 | 2.1% |
| 7 | 1.8% |
| 8 | 1.6% |
| 9 | 1.5% |
| 10 | 1.6% |
| 11 | 0.35% |
"Wait," you say, "those numbers barely add up to 50%!" That's true. According to the AOL data, that's because 46% of all queries resulted in no clicks — meaning that the user didn't see what they were looking for and so tried something else or moved on.
There are a few points I want to make about this. First, this is data from AOL, and without being too unkind to AOL users, well, they're not the savviest of searchers. That makes a difference. I would theorize that Google searchers would be a bit more prone to "dig" for the result they need, especially since in my own experience the figures aren't quite so drastic as this data shows.
That said, though, this chart helps to demonstrate the vast difference between the #1 ranking for a set of keywords and all of the other rankings. Basically, the number one ranking gets the lion's share of the traffic, and the other 9 of the top 10 just get the tricklings.
Number 11, the first result on page 2, gets virtually no traffic at all. I included it in the results to demonstrate how little effect a page 2 ranking has on your traffic.
This is one of the reasons I advocate trying to rank for a series of long-tail keywords, and not putting all of your efforts into one set of very popular keywords. Getting to #1 for a single set of competitive keywords requires an exponential amount more effort than ranking #1 for dozens of long-tail keywords. And, as demonstrated by this data, those dozens of "lesser" rankings will be far more valuable to the bottom line of your traffic than a #9 or #10 ranking for a competitive keyword.
Let me illustrate.
Let's say that your niche has a set of competitive keywords that generates 10,000 searches a day. Sounds like a goldmine if you have a page one ranking right? Let's see.
If you managed to get on page one, but only rank #9, based on the AOL data you would only get 150 of those visitors to your site (4,500 or so per month). However, if you manage to rank #1 for 10 keywords that each only receive 1,000 searches a day, you would get 226 visitors (6,780 or so per month). That's 150% more traffic for the long-tail keywords. And I promise you, it's dramatically easier to achieve (and maintain) 10 less competitive rankings than it is for one super-competitive one. In fact, in many cases you can achieve multiple #1 rankings for long-tail keywords with the same quantity of links needed just to get you on page one for the super-competitive keywords!
Just ask the happy 3WayLinks.net customer who recently posted at the users' forum regarding their first $369 day in affiliate profits. Or another forum poster who reached his first $100+ AdSense day thanks to 3WayLinks' ranking his sites for lesser-competition keywords.
So remember, when planning your keyword targets for your web site, don't forget to target a variety of long-tail keywords. Even if you are planning on going after a competitive set of keywords, still keep the long-tail on your agenda, and give them at least as much of your time and resources. Do so and you'll reap the rewards to be found in Google's "low hanging fruit."
Don't forget the smaller markets!
April 3, 2008
Back in late November I did a promotion for Alok Jain's Project Quick Cash. That promotion did very well, even prompting me to write a report about it (Pre-Selling Secrets).
I'm telling you about this because today I happened to look at my AdSense account and noticed that yesterday the case study blog I created for the promotion had earned $3.50 for the previous day. That's not a lot of money, it's true, but it's a lot more than I expected from a case study blog that I haven't touched at all since November 23, 2007.
I was intrigued, so I looked at the stats for that blog. To my surprise and delight, the blog has averaged almost 1,200 unique visitors a month since the last time I added content to it in November.
And where is this traffic coming from? 62% is coming from search engines, with 68% of the search traffic coming from Google.
I also checked my AdSense account, and in the 4 untouched months that little blog has earned me an extra $110. Not a gold mine, no, but then I stopped doing anything to it in November. Imagine if I had created 100 little blogs that I stopped working on, and 4 months later each one had earned me $100? That's $10,000 and a steady monthly revenue stream. Or better yet, what if I used a powerful article research tool to help me create content fast, and regularly updated those blogs? Imagine the kind of traffic I would see then…
The case study blog has very few backlinks, and yet has gotten traffic from a combination of 773 different keywords (according to the stats). All I did was follow the first of Alok Jain's 5 methods from Project Quick Cash, and use the tools that I created as the one-time-offer for PQC to automate the process. I posted to the blog daily for about 3 weeks.
What this tells me is that it still pays to research untapped niches for content creation. So many marketers are so focused on the hot items (diet pills, celebrities, insurance, etc.) that they miss the smaller untapped markets that can really bring in traffic long-term, and that require very little work to rank for.
Find those smaller niches, and create solid content for them, and you'll see the traffic and revenue roll into your sites. I've always found this to be true, and this little forgotten blog is just one more pillar supporting that truth.
Please post your thoughts and comments below.
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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