How important is a Google Ranking
We type a word into our Google search bar and hundreds of results appear, aiming to help us solve our problem. Intuitively, we click on one of the first websites that appear. As a website owner, you can use this intuition to your advantage by trying to appear as one of the first websites shown relating to a search term. To benefit from this effect, it is important to be ranked highly in the Google Ranking.
What exactly Google Ranking is and why you should invest in your own ranking is explained in this article.
What is the Google Ranking?
Before we look at the benefits of a top-ranking, we should first understand what exactly Google Ranking is. Whenever we make a search query on Google, the search engine suggests a lot of websites as search results. If we don’t know much about search engines, we may assume that the selection of websites and the order in which they are displayed is random.
However, the Google algorithm evaluates each website according to around 200 criteria and consequently assigns it a position in the Google ranking. The better the ranking, the higher the website will be displayed in the search results. A good ranking thus means more visibility, so the competition for the top positions in the ranking is understandably strong. Therefore, many website owners make use of Search Engine Optimization – SEO – to adapt their website to the algorithm’s criteria and thus stand out from the competition.
Why is the Google ranking so important?
First, we should ask ourselves why ranking highly on Google is so important since there is a wide mass of search engines that can also rank and increase the visibility of the website. Well, compared to Yahoo, Bing, and many other search engines, Google holds by far the largest share of the search market. With around 5.5 billion daily searches, Google dominates the market and offers your website the largest number of potential site visitors and future customers.
Yes, a good ranking leads to more visibility on Google. Fine, but is this bit of visibility worth investing in SEO? Below we would like to show that a top ranking on Google means much more than just a “bit” more visibility.
More traffic
The visibility that comes from a top ranking on Google is often the primary source of traffic for a website. Thus, organic search can become your website’s driving force, as a large percentage of those who submit a search query to Google click on the first five websites suggested to them. Many users underestimate the impact of SEO on website traffic and believe it would be done by other online marketing measures, but a top ranking on Google may well be much more effective than an accumulation of other efforts.
Conversion
More website visitors = more potential customers. A simple equation, but its effect should not be underestimated. Let’s assume a conversion rate of about 2% and previous website traffic of about 2000 visitors. If this number of visitors can be increased by the traffic generated by Google Ranking to about 6000 visitors, then about 80 more sales of your own product or service can be achieved each month.
Brand awareness and trust
We already know about the increased visibility through a good Google ranking and SEO measures. However, this visibility is not only important when a specific search query happens, but especially its long term effects make a difference. A good Google ranking leads to potential customers getting in touch with the brand name and branding again and again. In this way, the brand name is memorized by consumers and can become a decisive success factor in the long run.
And that’s not all. Not only is brand awareness increased, but the company’s ranking also makes your brand appear more trustworthy to searchers. The ranking factors of the Google algorithm also include certain demands on the safety and trustworthiness of the page. Thus, users often rely on Google’s page suggestions and put their trust in the associated company.
Cost efficiency
More traffic, better conversion, and brand awareness – can’t these factors be achieved through other online marketing measures? A legitimate question, because all these aspects are probably among the typical goals of any marketing measure.
But compared to many other measures, improving your own website to achieve a high ranking is very cost-efficient. This does not mean that it is a low-cost measure. But classically placed ads expire and disappear after a certain time. A good positioning of your website – maybe just below the paid ads – does not expire. The cost-effectiveness of SEO measures stems from their sustainable long-term nature.
Optimized user experience
SEO measures to improve the Google ranking of a website are diverse and take place on different levels because the algorithm is very sophisticated. Whenever the algorithm crawls through a website, it gives the best ranking to the websites it deems most user-friendly. As a result, any action taken to please the algorithm better also improves the user experience.
In this way, the goal of achieving a high ranking also increases customer satisfaction, possibly creating customer loyalty in the long run.
Conclusion
These are the reasons why Google ranking is so important and why you should invest in SEO. With SEO you will not only invest in the visibility of your website, but you can also create cost-efficient brand awareness, a better user experience, and increase your sales.
If your website is still lacking a top ranking, you are losing potential customers who are, however, looking for the information and products on your website. It’s time to change that.
