Getting the first listing on Google's first page does not automatically get you more hits.

See below on how you get more hits to your website.

I would like to know what the other web designers, social media marketers, and search engine optimization experts have to say about this misconception. Please comment below with other search engine optimization suggestions.

I have been designing websites for 15 years since the internet was young at a time when it was easy to get onto Yahoo (there was no Google or Bing yet). Just submit your website in a week, your website was on the major search engines. WOW! Also, back then, we had

• Lycos
• Alta Vista
• AOL's Webcrawler
• Hotbots

They all were easy to get traffic from.

When Google came onto the scene, it leveled the playfield and leveled all those other search engines; most of them were bought out by Yahoo.

The biggest misconception with most website owners is that if they have the first listing on the first page of Google, they will automatically get more traffic to their website than their competition. This is simply not true.

Why do I say this? Have you ever searched for something on Google only to click on the 4th link or maybe the 2nd link on the second page? It is in the title, folks! Your title for each web page on your site is the key to getting people to visit your website, not the ranking it takes on Google or Yahoo. A good search engine ranking does help your website get better exposure, but it does not guarantee that your website will get a hit.

Being on Google's first page is like an impression: It displays, but people must still click the link in order for you to get the visit. This happens less often then a website owner believes.

The secret is no different than a good hub with great content on Hubpages: Write quality content with quality keywords and people will visit.

Why are the description meta tags and your web page title just as important, if not more, than your keyword meta tags?

Because when your website finally comes up on the first page of Google, the TITLE has to be enticing enough for people to click through to your website. If the title fails to make someone click, the description meta tag (used by Google under the title link) better make someone click through. The keywords are only important to make the impression, but the title and description are responsible for the clickthrough:

I think a lot of website owners and web designers get the meta tags confused. We need to understand that the HTML TITLE tag is treated like a headline:

• You only have 7 seconds to make someone take action on your headline for printed material.
• You only have 3 seconds to make someone click through to your website.

It is obvious that website owners also need to place as much value on the title and description meta tags as they do on keywords. Otherwise, all the relevant keywords in the world won't help if nobody clicks through.

If you would like to know how to get to the top of Google, read CoreyRab's hub Getting To The Top Of The Search Engines