When Should You NOT Shoot For First Page Placement?

One thing that every SEO company in the world will tell you is that first page placement is the gold medal of the SEOlympics. If you can get on the first page, you will get organic search traffic, and that means you’re in business. It doesn’t matter whether you use organic methods, PPC management, or some other hat’s toolbag to get there, if you’re not on the first page, you’re dead in the water.

Right?

The answer is “not always”. There are actually times when you might not want to spend the time and effort it takes to get onto the first page of Google — it might actually not be worth the investment. It sounds like an impossible scenario, but it can happen. That’s not to say that being on the first page is ever a bad thing, mind you — just that you might have other priorities that take precedence.

For example, if your site is built to sell to or otherwise take advantage of a specific community, you might not care that much about Google’s SERPs. If you were the genius that first thought up icanhascheezeburger.com, you knew up front that your audience was 4chan and that was about it — at least until the site went viral and everyone bookmarked it for themselves. If you’re the person who profits from the banner ads on elementscommunity.com, you don’t give a crap about Google because your entire audience consists of people who play elementsthegame.com.

Similarly, if you have a site that serves a specific geographic locale, you might do better to purchase IRL advertisements like billboards, newspaper ads, or local radio spots in order to increase awareness of your website. You’ll still definitely benefit from a first page placement, but you don’t actually NEED it to get by.

Of course, if you’re one of the 99.9% of webmasters who doesn’t have a large community to piggyback off of, you’re going to have to choose a route and aim for the moon, because without a first page placement, you’re going nowhere with extraordinary speed.