Landmarks in SERPs

When you are ranking a website or a video in Google, there are generally 3 landmarks you have to reach to achieve the goal of ranking #1. Those landmarks are getting to the first page, getting “above the fold” and getting to #1. Each time you reach one of these positions, you will see a jump in visitors. Below, we will explain why these landmarks are so important and why you should expect to see a jump in traffic when you achieve each.

First Page

#10 in Google’s rankings. Getting there means the browser will not have to go to the net page to find your site. This may not seem like much, but it is. You can basically expect zero traffic from search engines until you reach the first page. People navigate to the 2nd page just as much as they navigate to the 82nd (almost never). Getting to the first pages only means you will get 1-2% of the traffic that comes in from that keyword, but it is better than nothing and it shows that you are making progres twoards your goal of ranking in the top position.

Above the Fold

The next goal in the battle of ranking in Google is getting “above the fold”. When I said “above the fold”, what I mean is ranking in the top half of Google’s rankings. No, this isn’t an arbitrary “5 because it’s in between 1 and 10”. Ranking above the fold means that searchers will not have to scroll down to see your site. Still, this does not mean you will get nearly the amount of searches that you would at the top position, it does mean that you will at least have the opportunity to attract the attention of the searcher with every single search. In general, ranking above the fold means #5 or sometimes #4. For arguments sake, we will say #5 to keep it simple.

Beware: Pay attention to possible factors that may bump that “above the fold” ranking up to 2 or 3. For example, some keywords will have a Google places listing in the top few spots. This pretty much kills any chance of seeing that no scroll influx of visitors so stay away from those types of keywords if you can.

Bonus: Thumbnails! This is why I love ranking videos in Google. Google is nice enough to place a thumbnail image next to most videos that they rank. This thumbnail is great because it instantly attracts the attention of the searcher. Ranking a video or creating a image listing above the fold will give you bonus points and a lot of visitors.

Number 1

I don’t have to get into this in too much detail. You probably already know why it is so important to reach #1 for your given keyword. In case you are not aware, however, ranking in the #1 spot means that you should expect to see 50-60% of the traffic that the keyword brings in on to your site.

I am not going to say “get to 10 and your on your way” because that is not the point. In general, you will want to reach the #1 position but there are some cases where ranking on the first page or above the fold will be the most effective use of your money and effort. The thumbnail example that I showed you above is a perfect example of that.