Anatomy of a Search Result

So you want to be at the top of Google? Think you can just put up a great website filled with keywords and the magic will just happen? Nope. You need a systematic, well-rounded approach. Let's take a look at a real life Google search. I live in Boardman, Ohio, and let's say for example I'm looking for a chiropractor nearby. I would then search for something along the lines of "chiropractor boardman ohio". Let's see what we get.

The first link on the page is a paid advertisement via Google Adwords. The second and third links are from a third party site. I this case, Healthgrades, a site that focuses on reviews of doctors. The third result is an organic search link based on that site's SEO. You'll see there is a collection of paid advertisements along the right side also. After the one organic search link, we see a collection of links from Google Places. So, before I scroll down, I have seen a grand total of one organic search result. After I scroll down a bit, Google shows me the rest of the Google Places results, then it shows me the organic search results.

What does this mean? While having your website show up on Google on its own merits is important, you need to look at other things also. Most of these links were either paid links or taken from Google Places, and some of the highest results were from third party sites.

Note, that there are 5190 results for this targeted search, so being on the first page is still a pretty big deal. Chances are, if someone is searching for "chiropractor boardman ohio" they're ready to go see the doctor. Coming up in this search is much more valuable than coming up in a generic search for "chiropractor". (In the search industry they call this the "long tail")

To make sure you have all the opportunity you need to rank high in local searches, we recommend making sure you set up, optimize, and verify your information on all the major social media and internet directory websites, in addition to having a great website filled with relevant content. There's a lot of work and a bit of strategy involved in doing this, but in the end, it's worth it.

*Full disclosure, Advanced Chiropractic, which shows up twice on the first page of Google, is our client.