Second Place is Truly The First Loser
My head literally had only hit the pillow for about 30 seconds before I re-realized this thought again. Second place is truly the first loser. And I came to realize that more than ever just a few moments ago. My son lost is cell phone in the snow last week and it stopped working. What I should do is probably punish him and not purchase a new phone, but because I am a common idiot father, I am going to replace his phone with something even better.
So, I logged into my AT&T account and like always, they offer an array of free add-on phones for my family plan. Many of these phones were actually pretty cool. One of the phones that I thought was nice was the Motorola Karma. I can get this phone free. But at any rate, in the process of reviewing these various phones, I decided to jump over to YouTube to see if there were any reviews.
Here’s the part where I re-realized that “second place is the first loser.” When I was doing my searches for these various phones, I felt very strong at clicking the first result. What’s crazy about this situation is that many hours later — once again, head crashed on pillow only 30 seconds — I was able to fully understand the power of ranking #1 for something.
In the case with the YouTube videos, I was clearly able to see the view count of each video on the search result page. In a few cases, the second and third result had more views and in fact seemed even more relevant than the #1 listing. Yet, what did I do? You guessed it… I clicked on the first result and watched that video. Reflecting back on why I did this, I remember saying to myself, “Well… if YouTube thinks this one should be #1, then that’s the video I need to watch to get the best review of this particular phone.”
Was that true? Well, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the fact that I clicked on the #1 result, and so do most people. So ultimately, the key to success is ranking #1. And this helps another point I have made many times before in the past. And that it is better to rank #1 for a keyword that only gets 100 hits per day than to rank on page two for a keyword that gets 10,000. No one looks at page two on Google. Not many people even look at the bottom first ten results.
Ranking #1 is the key. So that being said… when it comes to doing keyword research, or targeting various phrases, etc… remember to choose keywords, titles, and phrases that you feel you have the most chance at ranking number #1. Anything below that are simply losers…
January 17th, 2010 at 6:39 am
I still don't understand it. If most people are clicking on the number one video, why number two video has most views? May be number two video is number one for another more popular keyword. I will opt for 100,000 visitors from page 10 instead of 100 visitors from number one position.
It is the traffic that counts not the ranking in search engine. SEO artists make us believe in the greatness of ranking, page ranks and all other bull crap but I don't buy that.
I don't care where I am in searching engine ranking. I only care how much traffic I am getting.
By the way, most of the time I really don't click on the #1 because most of the time the #1 contents are crap unless it is from an authoritative site. Lots of #1 position is attained by writing for the search engines rather than for human being.
January 18th, 2010 at 3:30 am
I totally agree. I read that the number one search result get's 80% of the clicks. That is amazing considering how much it cost to be on the side of the screen when there are only 20% of the clicks left to go around for all other results. There is no close second on Google.
January 22nd, 2010 at 4:30 pm
you are thinking like an internet marketer, so of course you are more selective in what you click on. However, real humans who use the net to find "stuff" are not so discerning and click in fast. The fastest click is the number 1 listing.
That is what Garry is saying. He found himself thinking like a normal internet user instead of an internet marketer.
If you could grasp this concept, your traffic would reflect it.
AL
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:55 pm
[...] Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 1/22/10 Posted by Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM on January 22, 2010 in: Weekend Reading Second Place is Truly The First Loser [...]
January 24th, 2010 at 2:12 am
[...] See the original post here: Second Place is Truly The First Loser [...]
January 26th, 2010 at 3:58 am
Thanks for reiterating… and yes! You're right, I did find myself thinking like a normal Internet user. Isn't it nice when you can have a few moments of clarity.. hehe
February 9th, 2010 at 7:16 am
Second is indeed a loser if a person does not have deep knowledge or skill of his/her own.
If one is depending on a great marketing program to sell the same thing as ten million others are offering online, that is a way to truly fail.
But, it takes time and lots of study and experience to become, for example, an authority in how to treat French or California soils so they will produce the sweetest grapes or some such thing.
I have only seen one program truly make money for anyone in my circle and that is the Linda Christas program. Check them out.
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