SEO Is Binary: Below the Fold Is the New Page 2

SEO has always been zero-sum.

For every click one site earns, another site does not.

There has never been a version of organic search where everyone who “did SEO” won.

What has changed is how unforgiving that reality has become.

For more than two decades, businesses were told that ranking on page one was the goal.

If you could land anywhere in the top ten, traffic (and leads) would follow.

That assumption shaped entire SEO strategies—content calendars, link building campaigns, reporting dashboards, and client expectations.

That era is dead.

Today, visibility is constrained to a narrow strip of the search results, and anything outside of it might as well not exist.

If your result is below the fold, you are functionally on page two.

And sadly, AI Overviews, People Also Ask and Local Search Results already shove your organic positioning well below the fold.

SEO Has Always Been Zero-Sum—Now It’s Obvious

Search engines do not create demand.

They redistribute attention.

Every query has a finite number of searches and clicks available.

Historically, those clicks were spread across multiple organic results.

That distribution made SEO feel additive: rank higher, get more traffic, but everyone on page one still received something.

That distribution has collapsed.

High-funnel intent searches are more diversified across other channels (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc.) and SERP real estate is more constrained than ever.

Today’s SERP architecture concentrates clicks at the very top.

Ads, featured snippets, AI-generated answers, People Also Ask boxes, and rich results all compete for attention before the first traditional organic listing even appears.

The result is a winner-take-most environment where one or two results capture meaningful traffic and the rest fight over leftovers.

This is zero-sum behavior expressed clearly and consistently.

The Disappearance of Organic CTR

Organic click-through rates have been declining for years, even as content volume and optimization effort have increased. This is not because SEO stopped working—it’s because Google changed what “working” looks like.

Three forces drive this decline:

1. SERP feature expansion
   Featured snippets, PAA boxes, image packs, video carousels, and AI summaries intercept intent before users reach organic listings.

2. Paid results crowding
   Ads now occupy more vertical space than ever, particularly on commercial queries.

3. Mobile-first behavior
   On mobile devices, the fold arrives quickly. Results that require scrolling are often ignored entirely.

The result is counterintuitive but common: a site ranks “better” than it used to, yet traffic stagnates or declines. Rankings did not fail—CTR did.

Below the Fold Is the New Page Two

Page two used to be where traffic went to die.

Now, that same fate applies to a large portion of page one.

Eye-tracking studies, scroll-depth data, and CTR curves all point to the same conclusion: users engage with what they see immediately.

Once scrolling is required, engagement drops sharply.

And when you aren’t chatting with an AI bot, the engagement feels less real.

In short, the blue links are dead.

On most queries:

• The first visible organic result captures the majority of remaining clicks (and now this is taken by AI Overviews)

• Positions two through five receive dramatically less attention

• Results that appear below the fold often see single-digit CTRs

The SERP has collapsed vertically. What used to be ten meaningful organic positions is now one or two.

Being “on page one” is no longer a meaningful achievement.

Being visible without scrolling is.

And while you can acheive above-the-fold prominance as a citation in AI Overviews, the click-through-rate there is abysmal there as well:

Ranking Is No Longer the Same as Being Seen

This is where many SEO strategies break down.

Most reporting still centers on rankings:

• Average position

• Number of keywords ranked

• Movement from position 8 to position 5

These metrics feel productive, but they often fail to reflect reality.

In short, they are becoming vanity metrics.

A ranking that sits beneath ads, AI answers, or SERP features does not carry the same value it once did.

Technically, the page ranks.

Practically, no one sees it.

Worse still, revenue doesn’t grow.

This disconnect explains why so many businesses believe SEO has stopped delivering ROI.

In truth, the metrics used to measure success are outdated.

Visibility—not ranking—is now the core unit of value.

But you can’t eat visibility. Only revenue can do that.

SEO Is Now Binary

Modern SEO outcomes are no longer incremental. They are binary.

Either you:

• Capture position #1 (or the dominant SERP feature),
  or

• You receive negligible organic traffic.

There is very little middle ground left.

Position #1 is not just slightly better than position #2. It is often an order of magnitude better. That gap continues to widen as Google inserts more elements ahead of traditional listings.

From a business perspective, this changes everything. SEO is no longer about steady gains across dozens of keywords. It is about winning specific SERPs outright.

The ROI of SEO Is Shrinking—But So Is the Cost to Compete

Organic search ROI is under pressure. That’s not controversial anymore. What’s misunderstood is why—and what actually offsets it.

The revenue available from SEO has narrowed. Fewer organic clicks are available per query, and a growing percentage of user intent is resolved directly on the SERP through ads, AI answers, featured snippets, and other intermediaries. Even when rankings hold, traffic and conversions can decline.

In isolation, that looks like a failing channel.

It isn’t.

What’s changed is the cost structure of SEO.

Revenue Compression Is Real

Modern search economics are unfavorable compared to a decade ago:

• Total organic CTR per query has declined

• Traffic concentrates heavily at position #1

• Middle-of-the-SERP traffic has largely evaporated

• Incremental ranking improvements often produce negligible gains

The ceiling on organic revenue is lower than it used to be. SEO is no longer an unlimited growth channel. It’s a finite, highly competitive resource.

For businesses chasing broad keyword coverage or vanity rankings, ROI does, in fact, deteriorate.

The Counterbalance: AI Has Collapsed the Cost of Execution

What changes the math is AI—when used correctly.

AI has not made SEO easier in the sense of “set it and forget it.” But it has dramatically reduced the marginal cost of high-quality execution in several key areas:

• Content research and outlining

• First-draft production

• Entity mapping and topical coverage

• Content refreshing and pruning

• SERP analysis and intent classification

• Internal linking at scale

Work that once required large teams, long timelines, and high burn rates can now be executed faster and more cheaply—without sacrificing quality when human oversight is applied properly.

This is not about flooding the web with AI content.

That strategy fails.

This is about using AI to remove waste and cost, not strategy and execution. 

ROI Has Shifted From Volume to Precision

Old SEO ROI models assumed:

• More content → more rankings → more traffic → more revenue

That chain no longer holds.

The modern ROI model is tighter:

• Fewer pages

• Fewer keywords

• Fewer SERPs

• Higher conviction and higher intent

AI enables this shift by reducing the cost of experimentation and iteration. You can test, refine, consolidate, and optimize faster—focusing spend only where the odds of winning are real.

The result is not higher total traffic.

It’s better unit economics.

Why SEO Still Makes Sense (If You’re Disciplined)

SEO ROI still works when:

• You target queries where position #1 is attainable

• The SERP has monetizable intent

• You leverage AI to control production costs

• You measure success by revenue, not rankings

Where SEO fails is when:

• It’s treated as a content volume game

• AI is used indiscriminately

• Investment is spread thin across unwinnable SERPs

In short: SEO ROI hasn’t disappeared—it has become selective.

What It Actually Takes to Win Today

Winning position #1 in modern search is not about doing more of the same. It requires a different strategic posture.

Intent Ownership

Keyword targeting alone is insufficient. The page that wins must satisfy intent more completely than any alternative—informational, commercial, or transactional.

SERP Feature Control

Winning often means capturing:

• Featured snippets

• PAA answers

• Visual or video placements

• AI-eligible summaries

Ignoring SERP features means competing for less visible real estate.

Authority at the Topic Level

Isolated pages rarely win anymore. Google favors sites that demonstrate topical authority across an entire subject area, supported by internal linking, entity relevance, and consistent coverage.

Precision, Not Volume

Publishing more content does not guarantee visibility. In many cases, it dilutes authority. Modern SEO rewards fewer pages executed extremely well.

When SEO Is Not Worth Doing

Not every SERP is worth pursuing.

SEO may not be viable when:

• The SERP is dominated by ads and Google-owned answers

• Margins cannot support the investment required to win position #1

• Clicks are siphoned off before organic results appear

• Competitors have entrenched brand and authority advantages

In these cases, pursuing “page one rankings” is not strategy—it’s inertia.

Rethinking SEO KPIs

If SEO is binary, KPIs must reflect that reality.

Metrics that matter less:

• Average ranking

• Total keywords ranked

• Page-one count

Metrics that matter more:

• Share of organic clicks – Critical, but sometimes difficult to measure effectively.

• Above-the-fold visibility – Nigh-to-impossible with all the stuff shoved in there, but still possible with AI citations.

• SERP feature ownership – This is particularly true when it comes to owning your brand.

• Revenue per ranking – Measuring actual SEO ROI is where the rubber meets the road.

SEO performance should be evaluated by impact, not activity.

SEO Isn’t Dead, But You Better Diversify

SEO still works. But it no longer rewards participation.

The middle of the SERP is a graveyard. Traffic concentrates at the top, and Google continues to compress organic visibility into fewer and fewer pixels.

Businesses must make a clear decision:

• Invest to dominate specific queries,
  or

• Allocate resources elsewhere.

There is no longer a meaningful payoff for being “almost good enough.”

Below the fold is the new page two—and page two has always been where SEO goes to die.

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Nate Nead

Nate Nead is the Owner of SEO.co, an SEO agency that has served some of the most well-recognized online brands since 2010. Nate has personally helped the likes of Qualtrics, Box.com and GoDaddy improve their online rankings with his expert team of SEO gurus. Formerly licensed as an investment banker, Nate holds an MBA in Finance and Marketing from the University of Washington and an undergrad in Business from Brigham Young University.

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