For those of you who have a strong desire to make money online, it is imperative that you clearly recognize the relevance of the search engines in making this happen. Procuring high rankings in the search engines is the number one way to direct targeted visitors to your website. When your visitors are targeted, they have a higher propensity to be interested in what your website has to offer. Once the search engine user types in their search, they are presented with a listing of relevant websites. Generally, the higher the listing of the website, the more relevant it is to the query.
Here are some interesting facts. A few years back as study was conducted at Cornell University to determine search engine patterns. It was determined that the website which shows up in the number one position in the search engines receives in excess of 56% of all clicks for that term. The number two website receives just under 13.5% of the clicks, with the number three website position receiving just under 10% of visitors. While there is a massive drop off after these first three positions, the study found that over 92% of individuals do not search past the first page.
Furthermore, while there are several search engines in existence, most individuals utilize either Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Nevertheless, Google is by far the most frequently searched of the three throughout the world. In the USA, this Google bias is even more prevalent.
Now that you can see the importance of the search engines, how can you utilize them to make money online? As you may have gathered, the most important factor is getting your website to rank for targeted key terms. The more relevant the key terms to that which your website offers, the higher your conversion rate should be. Not surprisingly, many internet marketers focus on search volume in determining which key terms to attempt to rank for. Unfortunately, this is a mistake. Shorter key terms will receive more traffic because they are broader in scope. However, it is the longer, more descriptive key terms which tend to convert at a higher rate. Not only are these key terms easier to rank for, but are those which are generally used by people who are ready to make a purchase.
So why is all of this relevant? Well, it is relevant because with online business, the key is for our website to be found by potentially paying customers. Studies how shown that in excess of 90% of individuals who go on a quest to find a website to make a purchase do so via the search engines, and less than 10% will do so by some other method.
So how do you go about ranking for your targeted keywords and key phrases? Well, this is a whole other article on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). However, I can tell you that search engines will analyze the content of the pages of your website to determine whether or not it is relevant for a key term. Furthermore, these same search engines will analyze the links which point at your website using your targeted keywords in what is called the anchor text. Essentially, anchor text is a hyper link pointing at your website, from another website, which uses the targeted keyword or key phrase in the link. While you can hire someone to perform SEO for you, my suggestion is that you become self-educated on the subject and do it yourself. Once you have your methods in place, you will be in a prime position to make money online via search engine traffic.