Age old question covered in a myth that’s about to be uncovered it seems: is it better to have 1 keyword ranking on the first spot in the SERPs, or two different keywords ranking on the second spot each? If you asked me a while back, I would have definitely gone with the 2 x lower ranked keywords, simply because I didn’t think the difference between the first two positions is really that big. Well… it is apparently, according to SEO Researcher. Check out the following chart which shows the distribution of clicks for the top 10 rankings.
If you look at the image the website provides, you’ll notice the huge difference between the first position in the SERPs and the following ones. Even more so, the difference between the red and orange results and the rest is small.
Now, I’m not contesting the validity of these results, they might as well be true for specific keywords, but I refuse to believe that that many people search wearing a blindfold and simply click away on the first result that pops.
I’ve studied my own behavior and what I do is I wait a couple of seconds, process the first 4 or 5 results, reading the title and the description underneath. This usually gives me a general opinion on what I want to click on. How about you guys, are you blindfolded searchers or processors?