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Since the late 90’s top search engine rankings have been the
thing to have, if you’re a website owner of course. Only lately has the SEO
industry begun to try to move away from the “rankings are everything”
mindset and focus on more traditional marketing aspects at the same time. It’s
not been an easy process as “rankings” have been beat into our
web-heads for so long. Many SEO companies themselves are having a hard time
making the transition, let alone business owners who still think that top
rankings are a measure of success.

The real answer to the question, “What’s a Top Ranking
Worth” is, “this much,” which, of course, doesn’t provide much
help at all. But that’s because the value of a top position for a keyword is
determined by a number of fluid factors. In fact, if you really want to know
what a top ranking is worth, you need to first answer these questions:

What is a Search Engine Worth?

The value of a top ranking on Google is different from that
of Yahoo or MSN. Every engine gets a different volume of searchers, a different
quality of searchers and a different intensity of searchers. Each of these
plays a role in determining the value that a top ranking provides.

Market share: Market share is the most
common measure of the value of a search engine. Google is by far the most
popular search engine receiving almost 50% of all searches performed online.
(Most recent stats: Comscore
45.4%, NetRatings
49.6%, Hitslink
51.41%.) That’s a pretty hefty chunk of market share considering the next
biggest player, Yahoo ranges from 10-28% and the fifth biggest player, ASK ranges
from 1-6% total.

Whenever someone is talking about wanting top rankings they
are usually talking about wanting top rankingss on Google. If you’re going to
be ranked anywhere Google is where you want to be. Unfortunately there are
still some SEOs out there talking about top rankings on Alta Vista and Excite
which, according to Hitslink get less than half of one percent of the search
market share. While there is nothing wrong with being positioned on those
search engines, focusing on them is not something you should ever be paying
anyone to do. It’s just not worth it.

On a pure market share level, Google is the engine to
consider first and foremost, but there are other considerations as well.

Quality of searches performed: Because
Google is the biggest engine that everybody cares about most, they probably
also have one of the lowest percentage of quality of searches performed. A good
portion of Google’s search (and I don’t have any stats on this, so this is my
own educated guessing) are business owners, executives and employees performing
vanity searches. That is, searching just to see where they come up in the
rankings. Add this to similar searches performed by the SEO provider and/or
consultants and employees, vanity searches can really start to add up.

Those same vanity searches are also performed on Yahoo and
MSN, but not to the same degree. Remember, Google is the place to be so that’s
where the higher percentage of vanity searches are performed. But even with the
number of vanity searches performed, if you look at traffic stats, Google
probably still provides more search volume to your site. In this case, market
share outweighs search quality.

Search intensity: Different search
engines produce a different level of searcher intensity. Demographics play a
role in this. Some searchers use different search engines depending on what
they are looking for. Other engines attract users that are shoppers more than
researchers. This intensity can make the difference between a quality hit to your
site or a mere “Sunday driver” taking a leisurely stroll through the
web. If you’re an e-retailer you want traffic coming from those that are ready
to buy your products. If you are an informational site you want visitors that
are in the information gathering stages. Both of these can be intense
searchers, but the intensity is focused in a different area.

What is a Keyword Worth?

All keywords are not created equal. There is a whole art to
keyword research and selection so I won’t go into here but a top ranking for
one keyword will produce different traffic, both in numbers and relevance.

Search volume: We all like keywords
that get a lot of traffic. Getting a top ranking for a keyword that is searched
twice a month isn’t as valuable as a keyword that is searched several hundred
times each month. When someone promises you top rankings or your money back
most likely you don’t get to pick the keywords; they do. And in order to ensure
that they give you what they guarantee, you’ll get your top rankings, but not
for high-volume keywords which are much harder to compete for. Instead you’ll
get the low- or no-volume keywords ranked well. A lot of good that does!

Don’t be afraid of getting low-volume keywords ranked,
provided that you are also working on the high-volume words at the same time.
Many times the low-volume keywords will produce significant sums of traffic
collectively while also providing the foundation for achieving rankings on the
higher-volume keywords. The latter point is significantly important. A
low-volume keyword only approach is the wrong approach altogether.

Relevance and conversions: While
high-volume keywords are attractive by the sheer numbers of potential
customers, they can often produce a far lower conversion rate than more
specific, lower volume keywords. Take the word ‘golf’ for example. According to WordTracker that
word gets searched over 7000 times a day. While the phrase ‘golf clubs’ gets
less than 2000 searchers per day, significantly less search volume, the
relevance of that phrase is far higher. This, in turn, means that if you sell
golf clubs, you’re likely to get a much higher conversion rate off of traffic
coming from searches using ‘golf clubs’ than searches using just ‘golf’. In the
world of keywords, relevance matters.

What is Your Industry Worth?

Some industries get a huge amount of traffic while others
can produce only a fraction of that. Take the mortgage industry. Searches for
home loan related keywords far outnumber searches for flow meter related
products. The value of your search engine ranking will depend on what industry
you are in and the number of searches being performed online for what you have
to offer.

For most industries, this fluctuation in overall industry
search volume won’t mean a thing. It doesn’t matter if thousands of people are
searching for motorcycle related products but only hundreds are searching for
what ever you offer. All that matters is if there are enough searches being
performed for what you offer to build a successful business online.
Unfortunately, there are some industries where all the top rankings in the
world won’t return a positive ROI simply because the volume of searchers is too
low to sustain a business. You should know this before investing money into an
optimization campaign. But even if your search volume is low, there are still
other considerations that will help you determine the value in getting the
rankings.

What is Your Profit Margin
Worth?

Profit margins are a huge factor in the value of a ranking.
Search volume can be low for your industry or keywords, but if you are in an
industry with a high profit margin it doesn’t take much to succeed. This is why
that some keywords, with seemingly very little traffic, can often go for a
premium in the CPC (cost per click) market. In these industries one sell can
easily offset the cost of the entire online marketing effort.

As with any industry, and any marketing efforts, you need to
be aware of what your profit margins are. Some products undoubtedly have a
higher profit margin than others, which makes rankings for these keywords more
valuable to you regardless of search volume.

What is a Search Position Worth?

The position you get in the search results can matter a
great deal. Statistically very few people click past the third page of search
results and instead, if they have not found what they are looking for, go back
to refine their search. In fact, a great majority don’t even click past that
first page. This makes first page search results prime real estate. What is
more, a good number of searchers will already find what they are looking for at
the top of the first page and therefore never scroll down “below the
fold” to the other half of the rankings. This is why everybody wants to be
#1!

Unfortunately, only one person can be #1 and out of the
dozens, hundreds or perhaps even thousands of others competing for that, the
chances for you obtaining that are pretty slim… even with the best SEOs
working for you. Simply put, your commercial site may never overcome the highly
popular informational site which is considered the de facto authority on the
topic. It can happen, but its a long hard road!

Also keep in mind that a well optimized site can actually do
better in lower positions than the site in higher positions. Carefully crafted
title and description tags can make your site much more compelling to the
searcher. A #1 ranking isn’t always necessary, but it sure helps the ego!

What is Localization & Personalization
Worth?

Search engines continually look for ways to provide more
relevant results to the user. This is both good and bad to the business because
what is more relevant for one is not as relevant for the other. If the search
engines had their way (and they are trying to) they want to produce a
completely different set of results for every searcher even though they are
searching for the exact same thing. Why? Because when I search for ‘golf’ I
might be looking for golf ranges in my area and you might be looking for
high-end golf clubs. Through localization and personalization, if search
engines can ensure that they are giving each user unique, but also highly
relevant results, everybody wins.

What’s bad about this, and really, it isn’t bad at all, is
that this makes search engine rankings almost completely obsolete. You may try
and see where you rank for a given term, but if your site is not personally or
locally (or both) relevant to the individual searcher you may be in a different
position altogether. And here’s the real kicker… you’ll never know because
you’re not them so you will never see the exact results that any other searcher
sees.

So what is a top ranking worth? Not much of a lot, or a lot
of nothing. In reality, it just simply depends. So should we stop focusing on
top rankings altogether? No, but it is important to realize that search engine
rankings are merely a single measure of success, not success in themselves. You
can do a lot by focusing on other more traditional marketing aspects of your
site such as usability, conversion improvement than top rankings alone.