For a lot of new clients we meet, it could be. That's because they tend to think of Google's listings as the top two or three organic results (the unpaid website results), without ever considering the other types of results that are above, below, and around. Although those top organic listings do get the largest percentage of traffic, Google is estimated to process more than 2 billion searches per day. In addition, the other major search engines handle hundreds of millions more, and regardless of where they begin their search, a lot of buyers don't necessarily look at the organic listings first.
With that in mind, here are some other search engine listings you should consider, and optimize your site for:
Sponsored (pay per click) listings. There are a lot of reasons to love paid advertising, even if the direct costs aren't one of them. For one thing, Google and the other major search engines know who butters their bread; that's why you see the best paid listings at the top of the page and in a bold font. There are also many who think that serious buyers tend to prefer pay per click ads over organic listings, which could make them more efficient.
Local listings. Roughly one out of every five Google searches are specific to a city or geographic area (for example, a searcher typing in something like “Denver accountant”). Since local buyers are often more likely to end up doing business with your company, optimizing your site for local search is the ultimate example of a good business tactic that requires a minimal amount of effort.
Image and video results. For a lot of reasons, image and video results can actually be more convenient for searchers than looking through the websites they come from. Plus, adding these types of content to your business website is a great way to highlight important keywords and create backlinks from sites like Pinterest or YouTube. If you have that kind of business website with lots of descriptive photos or marketing videos, then make sure your titles and tags have your most important keywords and phrases in them.
Long-tail searches. Although these aren't actually another category of results on Google and the other search engines, they might as well be. That's because business owners and online marketers tend to pay a lot of attention to the phrases that get the most searches, ignoring the fact that a full 30 to 40% of searches are in the “long tail,” meaning that they are more obscure or specific than general keyword groups and phrases are. The more meaningful content you have on your business website, the more likely you are to earn traffic from those types of searchers.
Organic search engine listings for the most common keywords are easily the most important part of any SEO plan, and probably will be for years to come. But, to maximize the profitability of your business website, you should make your search engine optimization efforts as balanced as possible and incorporate as many different traffic sources as possible.