This is categorically false. If it were that easy, the biggest businesses would own the best
keywords, regardless of whether they were relevant to their products or services.
Obtaining a top spot in a SERP requires worthy content coupled with time, effort, and
skill??”not a bucket of payola.
People trust search engines because of the objectivity of the results. When someone types
in ???external hard drives,??? they get a list of recommended destinations, formed by the
Internet community at large, and then filtered through Google??™s algorithms. Even the top
ten results have a mix of content, from analysis to editorial to commercial.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
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13
Figure 13-1. Google??™s results page shows a mix of paid and organic results. The blocks with a
number 1 show the PPC ads, which cost money; the block with a number 2 shows the organic
results, attained by following SEO strategies.
Studies continually demonstrate that users are likely to click an organic result over a paid
result.1 To compound that, other studies show that appearing in the top ten results is a
dramatic competitive advantage, and appearing in anything after the third page is nearly
worthless.
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