Three Paths To First Page Placement

First page placement is the goal of every single client of every single SEO company in the world — if you can’t hit the top few results of some SERPs, you’re not ever going to get any business. But that kind of top rank isn’t the result of a single monolithic activity — there are three distinct ways to get your way to the first page, or even the first slot.

First: SEO
Search engine optimization is the most basic way to the top, but it’s probably the most efficient. SEO is a wide umbrella, basically covering almost every single activity that can make your website achieve a higher rank for a particular set of searches. SEO is a long-term investment, but it’s well worth it in almost every circumstance. Unless you know your business is going to close it’s doors if you don’t get a customer or three today, SEO is likely to be your route of choice.

Second: PPC
The next choice is pay per click marketing. PPC takes a lot more money to get into, but the results are essentially instant. If you need a customer or three today to avoid going out of business, spending the money to hire a PPC manager can get you those customers — and because you don’t pay unless you get clicks, it’s not even that much of a risk. All you have to do it make sure that your landing page converts like a beast.

Third: Third Party Site Funneling
The goal of SEO is to get your website up in the SERPs by linking to it. But having content up on someone else’s website that links back to yours and convinces someone to make the jump from one to the other has most of the benefits of an actual first page placement, only it can be faster and cheaper to obtain. It might not quite be technically a first-place for your own site, but if the traffic comes through and converts on the back end, who cares?

Most companies are going to want SEO, or PPC if they need it — but they shouldn’t ignore the potential of site funneling while they wait for the SEO to kick in.