The size of the prize
Top 10 is like having your store right on Main Street or near the entrance of the largest shopping mall in human history. Being outside the top 20 Is like having a corner store on the very outskirts of town. Your footfall in a major mall is massive, with people coming in and out of your store all the time. On the web, a top position on Google has just the same effect.Recent research has shown that the power of a top ranking is even more extreme than the 84% statistic suggests. Apparently, the nearer to the number one position your business gets, the greater the chances that
You will actually convert your visitors to sales. It’s almost as if web Surfers associate a top position on Google with a quality brand.
A business very local to me (and dear to my heart) is the Teddington Cheese in southwest London. This unassuming little shop is rather off the beaten track for lovers of fine cheese. It isn’t even on Main
Street in Teddington. However, it does sell really excellent cheese from all over Europe and some aficionados come from miles around to take home a slice or two.
What many people shopping there don’t know, however, is that the Teddington Cheese won a UK eCommerce Award and sells its cheeses to people all over the world. How did it achieve this? Well, one reason is that it is in the top 10 on Google for the search term “cheese.”
I find the Teddington Cheese story inspiring. Although the web is less of a wild frontier than it used to be, there is still a place in a David seeking to take on the Goliaths of world commerce. You too can beat
The big boys and afford that prime location right on Main Street, WWW. The keys are great products, sound service, niche focus, great content, and good search engine optimization or SEO – getting your site to the Top of the search engine rankings. I can’t help you much with the first four, but I can certainly help with the fifth.
There is a dark side of this heavy preference among consumers for a top-ranking company. More than once I have been contacted by businesses in desperation, who used to have a top 10 ranking but no longer
Do. I remember, in particular, a financial advisory business that used to rank top five for a wide range of loan search terms, and had grown from a one-man-band to a sizeable business in just a few years as a consequence. However, following a change in the Google algorithm (the way the rankings are calculated), its site had fallen out of the top 20, probably never to return, and it was ultimately forced to let all its staff go. The business was up against some very big banks with millions to spend, so regretfully I concluded there was little I could do (certainly within the Much depleted budget available). Still, I will remember that desperation
For a long time. Most problematically, the business had little substance to it beyond its web presence and had done nothing to build the capital or industry relationships necessary to sustain it through difficult times.
I tell this cautionary tale for a particular reason. I want you to remember that the web is only one channel for a sound business (albeit a hugely important and growing one) and that search algorithms are subject to constant change. Just because you’re in the top 10 one week doesn’t mean you’ll always be there. Your competitors don’t stand still. In fact, you have no god-given (or Google-given) right for a particular position. The search engines – and the traffic they bring – are fickle beasts. Forget this at your peril.
However, I do want you to be more excited than scared. I am passionate about the power of the internet and the potential it has to transform business, politics, and our entire society. As I have said, 40% of all
Sales could be online by 2020 and, with the help of this book, your store could be right on Main Street for millions of customers right across the world.
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