How first page of Google affect your bottom line.
Probably the most often repeated sales pitch, that potential customers hear from an SEO company is" We will put you on the first page of Google". If a large number of SEO companies use this sales pitch to get customers, it is apparently working for some marketing companies.As in most cases a sales pitch is just that - a sales pitch. There is a couple of problems with this statement. First of all, what keywords your website will show up on the first page for? If very few people are competing for these keywords, it is not going to take any effort to get the website on the first page of Google. Even if your website shows up, and low competition usually means very low (or none) volume of searches. Your website will be coming up on the first page with no people to click on the link of your website.
Let's look at the situation where the keyword is somewhat competitive, and there is enough people searching for this keyword, that you are promised to show up on the first page of Google for. Consider this: the very first 3 results are sponsored (or pay per click), if it is a search for a local business there will be about 7 local results with physical address, and then about 10 results of websites competing nationwide. Being on the very bottom of the page puts you at about number 20, and even for the keywords with decent monthly search volume, you are very unlikely to get any traffic at all. In most cases, to get the benefit of SEO, your site would need to be in the top 3 results, at least for some competitive keywords.
Looking past the sales pitch you can see that paying any kind of money, for something that is not likely to make you any money, may not be a very good deal for your business.