See the heatmap above? What does it signify? It tells you that the top 3 results get the majority of the clicks, which means that if you are not in the top 3 results, you will never get a lot of clicks. This is discouraging but look at the flip side. If you end up in the top 3, you will get massive amounts of free traffic. So how do you do that?
SEO is a complicated field, not because it is difficult to understand, but because there are thousands of ways to do the same thing. Unfortunately, most of the methods never work for a majority of people.
Ranking at the top takes a lot of effort. If it doesn’t, you are either lucky or you have no competition. If you rank at the top of  Google for your search phrase from the very start, you can dump that phrase because chances are, no one is searching for it.
Here are some tips to make sure that you rank high in the search results. Notice that I never used the word “may”. That is because I am very confident that this approach works. Learn the “secret” here:
1. The secret is hard work and consistency. Nope, do not learn this turn you off. Keep reading.
2. A sure way of ranking at the top is to ensure that you put more content on your website and you atleast try to give the image that “natural” un-incentivized links are links to your pages. This means writing one blog post every 1-3 days, installing an RSS feed, creating some link bait etc.
3. Let’s face it: In the beginning, your website will not get a single natural link. So you have to buy or rent the links and make it look really natural. How can you do that? Use many different link vendors and vary the anchor texts!
4. Make sure you do not go crazy with link building speed. A new website can sustain only a few links everyday before triggering a search filter. Make sure you start slowly and increase your pace later.
5. Get different types of links. For example, do not go crazy on directories submissions in the beginning. It will get you banned. Get links from high PR pages, high authortiy websites, blog comments, submissions, RSS feed submissions, government and educational websites etc. If you are using only 1 type of links, I can guarantee that you will never rank at the top.
6. Make sure that the majority of your backlink profile contains good quality links. In order words, ease up on the junky links even if they cost 2 cents each. At the beginning, you have to make sure you do not get your website penalized by ensuring that all the inbound links are good quality.
6. Do not stop. If you are overworked with the process, hire someone to take care of the content and the link building. It does not matter if your budget allows all this or not. If you cannot spend money, try doing everything yourself. Depending on different niches, there will always be a minimum amount of money and time that you have to spend. Find out what it is and you are golden!