1 Why SEO is important

Why SEO is important
A higher search engine result will receive exponentially greater clicks than a lower one.
For example, if a search was repeated 1000 times by different users, this is typically how many clicks each result would get.

Position Clicks
1 222
2 63
3 45
4 32
5 26
6 21
7 18
8 16
9 15
10 16
Source: Leaked Aol Click Data

Paid adverts have low click through rates, and get expensive quickly
Search Engine % Organic Click Through Rate % Paid Result Click Through Rate
Google 72 28
Yahoo 61 39
MSN 71 29
AOL 50 50
Average 63 37
88% of online search dollars are spent on paid results, even though 85% of searchers click on organic results.
— Vanessa Fox, “Marketing in the Age of Google”, May 3, 2010

SEO Does Work
Most queries, except for the the most popular, are still ripe for the picking and you can rank well without a great knowledge of SEO or campaign time.

Different needs from SEO
There are many different reasons you may wish to engage in optimising your search results, including
• Money – Sales for e-commerce sites are directly correlated with traffic.
• Reputation – Some companies go to the extent of pushing negative articles down in the rankings.
• Branding – Coming up top in the results pages is impressive to customers, and is particularly important in industries where reputation is extremely important.