Don’t Try To Rank #1 On Google

When a business begins search engine optimization for their company, the first thing that comes to their mind is the time it would take for the process to show results. Will this most important component of digital marketing help their website to rank as the first result on the search engine results page (SERP). How much time would be consumed for a keyword to rank on the first page and what will be the cost for it? these three are the basic, yet the most important questions every company has.

The answer to these questions lies with the real-time data generated using the tools that measure SEO operations. Any digital marketing company who has handled SEO for their clients for over five years will agree to the fact that – ranking number one does not always equate to SEO success. This fact mostly applicable to the companies working on the niches like legal marketing or Plastic surgery marketing.

The goal of every SEO campaign is to generate a good amount of traffic to the website regularly that drives sales and conversions. At the end of the day, this is what will bring in revenue to the business – which is the ultimate goal of SEO.

Does The Top-Ranking Page On SERP For A Keyword Always Get the Most Amount Of Search Traffic?

It is a misconception that the top-ranking page always gets the most search traffic, and that is the reason for the rank 1. Using tools Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and Keyword research tool, you can check the popularity of any topic.

For example, if you search for ‘how do I learn Spanish?’ the first result has less search traffic when compared to the first five results.

Usually these tools are used to find the topics that are most searched so you can frame more content around the kind of information people are looking for. another main reason is to find what topics are working best for your competitors so you can incorporate the same into your SEO and get better results. But when you use these same tools to search volume of individual keywords and pay attention to it, you get to see the amount of search traffic to the top-ranking pages.

If you use any of the most used tools for SEO, these are the search results you receive for any topic searched – AR, DR, UR, Backlinks, Domains, Traffic, and Keywords. Focus on the column – Traffic while searching for the topics.

The highest-ranking pages for a given search term, also rank high for other search terms. They also get traffic from hundreds of long-tail keywords. This proves that the quality of SEO and strategizing it right from the very beginning is very important. Since SEO involves multiple factors and each has to be focused on to be polished, it is essential to work it right. SEO does take a long time for the results to catch up, but once it starts to rank high revenue starts flooding in for the business.

What Do You Notice When You Perform A Search On These Tools And Take Note Of Search Traffic?

The top-ranking page isn’t the one that gets the most total search traffic.

The top-ranking page often gets less search traffic when compared to other pages in the SERP.

The traffic numbers of the top-ranking pages rarely show the trend you might expect. They don’t always go in descending order.

How Often Does The Top-Ranking Page Not Get The Most Search Traffic?

Here is what you can do to check this yourself. Takeover 100,000 non-branded search queries with at least 1,000 searches per month in the US. Pull the top 10 ranking pages for each query. Next, pull the total US search traffic for each page and calculate how often the top-ranking page got the most search traffic.

The result of it would invariably be, the top-ranking page is the one with the most total search traffic only 49% of the time. This proves that trying to rank #1 on Google is overrated.

If Rank #1 Is Not The Main Goal, How Do You Get Organic Traffic For SEO Success?

The position of a page for your main keywords in Google is a good indicator of SEO success. It has the highest correlation with search traffic of a page out of all the variables. But it does not necessarily correlate at rank#1. This proves that it is possible to get more traffic than your competitors even when they are ranking higher.

How To Get More Organic Traffic For Your Website That Drives Conversions?

Generate article content that covers the topic in-depth

The best way to do this is to cover your topic in-depth. You can combine two close topics in a single article. You can start by checking the ‘phrase match’ report in Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. In this, check for long-tail keywords that you are relevant to your article title and use them to build more content in the article. So, you rank for all the relevant keywords that are most searched.

This tool, will not only provide the keywords you need to use in your article, but it also gives an insight on the subtitles/ways you can cover the topic in-depth. These keywords tell you exactly what your audience is looking for on Google search engine and how your article can give them the answers to it.

The second way to cover your topic in-depth is by using the Content Gap tool. Paste the URLs of the top 3 ranking pages in the tool and filter the keywords which include your main topic. Make a note of all these keywords and use them to create more in-depth content for your website on a regular basis.

Create An ‘Authority’ Page On Your Topic

When you check SERP for your keywords, there are a few main things that you can take note of. The page in position #2, #3 or #4 gets more search traffic than the top-ranking page. The reason for this is producing catchy-headlines. When a headline is click-bait in nature, it is hard to ignore for the searchers. The second reason is the amount of high-quality content that is consistent throughout the article/page.

The common traits of pages that get a high amount of traffic are – they come from high-DR websites, have a disproportionate number of backlinks and are broadly-focused. They do not target a narrow topic; hence there is scope to continually provide high-quality content.

The above tips will help you create comprehensive articles with lots of ‘authority’. This makes them relevant and valuable results for long-tail queries also. This is an on-going process where you accumulate lots of ‘authority’ over the years and start to rank for thousands of SEO-related queries and get an enormous amount of highly-relevant traffic.

Author Bio:

Fazeela is a Digital Marketing Executive at Bright Bridge Infotech, a Legal Marketing company and she enjoys learning about the Digital Marketing field. She specializes in guest blogging, blog publishing, and social media. She is an avid reader and loves writing impeccable contents pertaining to digital marketing. She holds a bachelor degree in Engineering.