Interesting study shows that Google’s “One Box” (the top 5 listings on the top left hand side of the result pages) get by and far the most traffic. The heatmaps show that putting your efforts and money to be listed there is the best way to get noticed - all the other listings get only a small fraction of the attention.

In our shop we call a SERP (Search result page) “Real estate”…. Like any town you want to buy the best real estate… Same goes for SERP placement.

We suggest that you do everything you can to get the best few pieces of real estate on a result page. The top is the best so try and get 2 spots. Buy the top one via PPC and then try like hell to get the top organic listing for the search.

Our life in Toledo revolves around building web sites that work, so we are always trying to get our site (and clients sites) listed at the very top. If you can get the two best pieces of real estate on Google you have a much higher chance of getting some online business.

Here is a great example of Toledo opportunities (or failures). We just bought a refrigerator from the Appliance Center in the Toledo Maumee area. A great local. non-franchised appliance center store. They are the underdog of appliances sales, but very aggressive in there traditional advertising. They run a ton of TV ads and do mailing all day long. Their customer acquisition cost must be very high. (we all know the traditional ads are becoming more difficult to justify ROI - especially our local newspapers and TV station). They however have invested a significant amount of money into their web site which is http://www.appliancecenterdirect.com/.

I have no idea how their investment in the web site is paying off, but I know that anyone searching for local appliance prices and stores in the Toledo area is not finding them. A search on Google for “appliances in Toledo ohio” and “Appliance stores in Toledo ohio” does not show them at all. They are mentioned on the 2nd page on a local TV station site.

What should they be doing? In my opinion they need to be buying some PPC real estate on Google to get in the top 2 ad spots and working aggressively to get their Brand on the top 4-5 organic SERP’s on googles One Box. The market is open and easy to rank for in Toledo - they need to be spending some of their budget in getting these simple rankings created rather then buying 3 extra TV spots on WTOL etc.