Or would hiring an SEO and a #1 position be worth the investment?

If you haven’t already, read the prologue to this post. If you don’t want to bother, then here’s a bit of info to set the stage.

In that post I showed how chiropractors in Scotts Valley were just about rendered invisible because Google bestowed a “Site Links” blessing on another chiropractor in town for the query “Scotts Valley chiropractic.” Dr. Hinde, though in position 2, looked like a mere mortal, while Dr. Thibodeau apparently achieved sainthood. On other queries, though, all chiropractors appeared to be on an equal playing ground, yet Dr. Thibodeau still reigned supreme.

This post answers the question, should Dr. Hinde in position 2 for the more popular and lucrative keyword “chiropractor” try for position 1? He also commands the first THREE positions for “Scotts Valley chiropractic office.” Is that enough?

And what about the other chiropractors further down the page and on other pages? Is it worth their time and investment in SEO to try to improve their rank in Google?

This time we look at where on the SERP (search result page) commands the most attention

One of my favorite sources for SEO information, SEOmoz, recently posted their results of an eye-tracking study they did to show how consumers are trying to find local businesses. I could just point a link to their post, which I’ll do here anyway, but I wanted to bring over their study and images because I have some additional points I wanted to make. Here’s their post. And here’s the Kat & Mouse take.

Harris Interactive in its new study sponsored by CityGrid Media posted some interesting statistics that are important for you, a local business owner, to know. Here’s what they discovered.

Searching for a local business at home

To no surprise, online search and review sites are where most people go to find local information – 60% of them to be exact in this study of 1000 adults – when they were at home. In the under 35 segment, this increased to 85%! Again, no surprise.

And finally, only 8% said they go to merchants’ websites first before searching. That last metric is a little confusing to me especially since most people have to search to find a website to go to, but regardless of how or why that happens, there is still a crystal clear takeaway from these metrics.

75% bounce. 63% bounce. 95% bounce. 38% bounce. Maybe you’ve seen those in your Google Analytics, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you’re missing an important metric in that last column (see screenshot below) that Google graciously gives you to help you win the internet marketing game.

Do a search on “Scotts Valley chiropractic” and you’ll likely find:

An essential task to complete when transferring your site or pages to a new URL

Anytime you transfer pages to a new URL, it’s imperative that you let Google know where to find these new pages. You do this with 301 redirects. These instructions tell Google that those pages have been permanently moved, and it will respond by updating it’s index. Here’s how to do that.