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Once upon a rosy time not long ago, site rankings were king. That #1 spot on the search result rankings was as coveted as gold, sought after, fought for, envied, coveted, and dreamed about: a modern-day internet marketing analog to the Holy Grail. But with the advent of personalized search engine results, many have begun to question whether rankings matter as much as they used to, and further, some have begun to ask the question: When search engine results are personalized to every user, can there even be such a thing as a true #1 ranking anymore?

A lot of study and thought have been put into answering these questions, and while true believers may question their validity or refuse to accept the truth, the fact is that it appears that even with personalization turned on, SERP appear to vary little from one query to the next, regardless of what other queries have been made recently. Stephan Spencer at searchengineland.com has done some fairly extensive testing into this phenomenon, and reports his results here. In a nutshell, what he found was that regardless of what other recent searches may have been performed, for certain keywords site rankings adjusted very little. There may be some minor shifts in positions, but in general the same results appear, even in keywords that may have very different meanings or desired results based on past searches, and that positions appear in roughly the same order, whether or not personalization is on and regardless of recent queries.

He further went on to interview Mike Moran, SEO genius and 30-year man at IBM, on this issue. This is what Mike Moran had to say:

“What I think is true is that, for many queries, a single search result is #1 the great majority of the time, but I think it is less true than it once was and that ranking reports are not nearly as valuable as they were a few years ago. It’s better to focus on traffic and conversions and not get too hung up on rankings.”

This quote really cuts right to the crux of the matter. Rankings only matter inasmuch as they drive traffic, and traffic only matters when it’s the traffic that you want coming to your site. Otherwise, you will just end up with high bounce rates and a bunch of wasted effort. The true key, then, is to make sure you show up high to the potential customers you want visiting your site, and drawing them in and keeping them once you get them there. And the secret to that is content, content, content. As the old adage goes, “Give them what they want and they will beat a path to your door.”

More on content and keeping customers on the page once you get them there, but for now the lesson is easy: Even in this crazy world of search engine result personalization, rankings still matter, but rankings are and should always be viewed as merely a tool to drive the type of traffic you want to your site. That’s true marketing, and that’s where sales, and success, begin.