Zen And The Art of First Page Placement

First page placement isn’t a luxury in today’s competitive internet marketplace. Studies have proven that less than 2% of searchers ever leave the first page when they search Google. The thing is, any given keyword can only have 10 entries on that first page (given that most people never change their search settings). So the more competition there is, the more obscure the keywords you have to seek out in order to eek out a place on that first page.

But there’s a problem — the more obscure the keyword is, the fewer people are searching for it. It might be easier to wrangle your way to the top of the list with a little bit of organic SEO, but will it be worth as much when you get there?

This is where the Zen comes in. See, SEO is like a koan: the harder you think about it, the less likely you are to get it right. Zen koans aren’t meant to convey an idea directly, they’re meant to confound. SEO offers the same kind of puzzle. It can often seem like any action you take only leads you further away from a feeling of accomplishment and success.

The answer, interestingly, is the same in SEO as it is in Zen: wait, breathe, commit to the path without understanding how it works, and first page placement will come just as suddenly and unexpectedly as enlightenment. The reasons why are legion, but it boils down to the fact that SEO builds slowly over time, but Google only updates their authority rankings every once in a while. The result is that one afternoon, because Google decided to update, all of those pages that you’ve been linking to will suddenly matter, and first page placement will be upon you.

Zen masters have a saying: “Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.” SEO is the same way — just because you’ve reached Page One, you don’t get to stop working. Competition will nip at your heels and try to knock you off the top 10 in a heartbeat. You never get to stop working — you just get to work and be enlightened at the same time.