There are a HUGE number of users searching for terms in Google every minute of every day. On a local, national and global scale, Google has built itself up to be number one in market share as the worldwide search leader. They get a lot of attention and of course businesses are constantly trying to get to be number one in the search results for a variety of keywords.

Let’s talk about search engine position. My first point is simple. Abandon your ego. Don’t worry about being number one for every keyword that is related to your business. It’s not a realistic expectation and you will just suffer constant disappointment. Change your focus to generating traffic. If you can carve yourself a  niche online for a few important keywords, then traffic will flow in.

Focus on a Handful of Keywords

Define your niche by looking at the keywords you think are best for you. Use Google’s Keyword Tool to research the keywords you think are best. Their suggestion tool will tell you the traffic for the keywords you enter, as well as the traffic for relevant or similar keywords and keyword strings. It’s all validated and generated by real traffic and search data. You should only target keywords that are relevant to your business but that still have a medium to medium high search volume. Target the keywords and keyword strings that have about one third to half the search volume of the most popular keywords in the set. It’s your best chance to get position somewhat quickly and to generate traffic.

Shoot for Page 1 not for #1 on Page 1

In terms of the organic search results for your set of keywords, you need to get onto the first 3 pages of results if you want to see ANY traffic. Google and AOLSearch, which is driven using Google’s same search scripts, accidentally released search engine usage data to the public back in 2007. Here’s some information you might find very interesting.

The #1 position on Page 1 of Google will result in about 42% of the traffic for that keyword clicking on your website.

Spots #2 – #10 on Page 1 will result in between 27% and 3% of the search traffic clicking on your website.

Overall, spots #1 – #10 account for 97% of clicks deriving from search traffic for a keyword.

Pages 2 & 3 split up the remaining 3% of traffic for a given keyword across all 20 positions on Pages 2 & 3. If you’re past Page 3, you’re not getting any traffic at all.

You see the problem. Page 1 of Google is worth a lot in terms of traffic generation. If you’re picking medium to medium high volume keywords, however, you can still get some return off of Pages 2 & 3. 3% of 40,000 traffic per month is still a fair amount of targeted traffic that may be ready to buy your products.

Moving off the first (Search Engine Results Page) SERP the rate of decline in clickthrough picks up considerably. The clickthrough rate for listings with #11 rank dropped to 0.66%. That’s an almost 80% decline in clickthroughs from the #10 SERP position and shows that being on the first SERP page results in far greater SE traffic than lower listings.

Use Interim Strategies

There are other ways to get short term results and high search placement within Google. You could try Google Adwords and buy sponsored positions in the right column and beige box above the organic results. Every click is going to cost you money, so you’ll need to make sure the pages you are routing to are engaging and generate some return on investment. In the long term, your cheapest and most effective source of traffic will come from building a good organic Google position.