better for number 1 or 10 in search engines ?

Everyone strives to be number 1 in the search engines for their chosen terms.

The trouble is, do the terms you are targeting actually convert into sales or anything else you want to sell on your website?

Going after high volume terms is the wrong strategy for several reasons:

1: the conversion is lower

2: people are not sure what they are looking for as the term is so broad

3: it’s more difficult to rank for broad high volume terms

4: being number 1 is not always best (see below)

One of my sites has been #1 for a specific term for several years now - for this 2 word phrase is gets about 500 visitors per week and the google adwords amount for #1 is about £1 a click. So it’s quite a competitive term.

However with the recent google shake up we have slipped down to about position 8 - a complete disaster I though, although most other terms have remained where they were.

But last week was our best week ever !

I think there are a couple of important reasons for this.

1: people surf. they don’t always stay on the first site they see and go off and see what else is for offer

2: by surfing, and by the internet’s nature of short attention span, once they have gone to their 3rd or 4th site the user is ready to complete their surfing and wants a solution

Now not all industries are the same and I understand from the ringtones business it’s best to be #1 - but in this industry it seems not being number 1 is best.

You can try this out with your own industry by tweaking your adsense account. Go hell for leather for a couple of days and outbid everyone (and tweak your ad copy so your click through rate is high) and stay at number 1 for a couple of days - what did it do for your conversions ? Where they higher than normal ?

If they were then you know your answer for your industry. If not, then tweak your bidding so you slowing slip down the rankings and see what happens.

Once you know what is best for your industry then you know how hard to try for that “coverted” number 1 position in the search engines. Otherwise you are best to concentrate on the long tail phrases.