"I just want to get to page one on Google!" shouts the potential client.
"We can get you there!" shouts the jubilant SEO in return.
Months later the now client receives a phone call from his excited SEO.
"We made it!"
The client runs to his keyboard and quickly types in his keyword and hits enter. Bingo. Number eight. Party hats are purchased, high fives spontaneously occur everywhere...in short, there is much rejoicing.
Oddly enough, weeks go by and little changes. No significant change in phone calls or web leads. What gives? Well, as the good people at Cornell found out with some research, there's much to be said with where you are on page one. Simply being there doesn't account for much. Check out this extremely cool distribution chart brought to you by the awesome folks at http://www.seoresearcher.com
Eye tracking was used to see where people looked (this is the "time spent" column) to correlate that with their actual click behavior. As you can see, being at the bottom of page one isn't going to generate much in the way of results. To get results, you need to land at the top of page one...so put the party hats away and keep SEOing!
Check out the full study here.
