High Rankings: How Much Does it Cost?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

One common misconception about search engine optimization is that companies that achieve the highest rankings paid to be there. This is still perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of Web business. The answer – the simple, short answer, “No, they didn’t” – is somewhat misleading. Many of those companies did pay to achieve high rankings. But they didn’t pay the search engines a single dime.

The myth of paid high rankings manifests itself two ways. First, there the old-fashioned “You paid Google X amount of dollars and they put you at No. 1.” Then, there is the myth that pay per click advertising influences search rankings. Both are false.

If you do your own search engine optimization, you can achieve high rankings without spending a penny. It’s just a matter know what to do, how to do it, and doing it. Pay per click advertising doesn’t influence organic search listings at all. All you need to know that is to conduct a search and see how many sponsored ads you find without an associated organic listing next to it. Believe me, there are a lot.

The only way you’ll pay to achieve high rankings is if you hire a search engine optimization company – an ethical, competent one – to do the work for you. But if you do that, rest assured the expense will be worth it. 80% of all search engine results clicks come from those organic search listings.