Often Google is referred to as online real estate, their homepage being deemed as the most valuable in the world. The same reasoning works well with each individual search term, with the first page of Google being the most lucrative peace of online real estate you can own. Unlike the real world of property through where just about all property has a value, only a few websites actually have any online real estate value. This is because there are only 10 places on the first page of Google and once you get past the third of fourth page, there is almost no value at all. In fact if you are position 50 for a search term, then you might as well be position 450.
There are many sets of stats out there, but a sample is that only 18% of people will venture to the second page of a search and only 5% will venture to the third page. In terms of business return, if you are not on the first page of Google for the correct search terms, your return from your online investment will be small if anything at all.
We mention Google in this scenario, based on the fact that it pretty much dominates the UK search results, with over 90% of all searches going through the big G. Bing, Yahoo and Ask make up the rest, with other offerings not even touching and results scale. The massage has to clear, there are no half measures with online marketing or search engine optimisation, you just have to be on the first page of Google.
