Ever wondered what SERP, or SERPs stand for? In this post, we will learn all about SERP and how important it is to track where your website sits in these glorious result pages.
What is SERP and what does SERP mean?
Search Engine Results Page or SERP is the page where a search engine like Google displays results when users type keywords or phrases into its search bar.
To find a SERP page all you need to do is hop over to Google’s search page, type in something that you are looking for and the results that show up are displayed on one of Google’s SERPs.
Generally, you will find search results served up in listings with a clickable title, a URL and what we call a meta description. Occasionally these will also include relevant alternative site links and a picture.
Here’s an example: if I search for Nike Air Max trainers on Google I get a series of eCommerce listings like this one from Footasylum.
The number of results that show on a standard SERP page can vary widely, depending on how popular your query is. In my search for Nike Air Max trainers, I received 179,000,000 results, whereas a quick search for ‘Ed Sheeran tickets 2023’ gave me 9,200,000 results while a search for ‘lemon flavoured cornettos’ gave me just 719,000 results.
SERPs are important for website owners to understand and utilise because they influence how people perceive your website when searching for things online. They also affect how often people click on links to your site from search engines.
Here’s why.
Most people will click one of the first 3-5 search result returns on a SERP page, but ONLY if they can see the relevance.
Did you know - 28.5% of users click the first Google search result? Positions lower see drastically fewer click-throughs. If you are second you can expect just 15.7%, third 11%, fourth 8% and fifth 7.2%. Results on the second page of Google have a clickthrough rate (CTR) of less than 1% according to the Search Engine Journal.
On my first two searches for trainers and concert tickets, I had plenty of first-page results that gave me exactly what I asked for. On the lemon ice cream query, there were plenty of suggestions, but nothing was what I was looking for and so I clicked away.
So relevance and position matter greatly.
If you want to be known for ‘x’ you have to work for it!
When Google searches your website they are looking specifically for pages that answer queries from their search bar. How your website is ranked is based on relevance and your domain authority, which is made up of site visitor metrics and things like other websites linking out to you. That’s quite simplistic, but the blog post I just linked to will help you learn more about upgrading your domain authority.
There are 3 types of results on a SERP page
Pages that Google’s spiders crawl and index - this happens when you let Google know to search your site using a sitemap or manually inputting your data into their directory. Here’s how.
Pages that have been linked to using Google ads - these usually appear at the top of the screen preceded by the word Ad in bold.
Highlights that Google have selected to share because they think they are relevant to your search question - these are called ‘snippets’.
The anatomy of a SERP page
Let’s dive into understanding SERP pages better.
The first thing you need to know about SERPs is that they change frequently
This means that what appears at the top of the SERP list changes regularly. You should never assume that your ranking will stay the same forever. If you do, your competitors will quickly take advantage of that!
SERP results will change based on how much content is out there on the given day and time you search and how Google has ranked entries based on relevance, user experience and your brand’s authority.
If you or your competitors are actively working on ranking higher, then you can knock someone else off a higher spot. This could have a HUGE impact on lead generation from your content marketing efforts.
Results also change based on personalised feeds and updated desktop or mobile views, something that was introduced by Google in 2022 during their GML2022 conference. I recommend watching it on demand if you weren’t able to attend live.
What this means is that what shows for me as position 1 on a SERP page might differ based on the device I am using, as well as if my partner makes the same search on his phone or desktop.
I would expect other search engines to follow suit with their own SERP ranking methods.
Google Snippets are the future!
Snippets have taken Google a while to perfect and they are still being tweaked and rolled out on many search queries.
They change drastically based on the intent of your search query. So for an eCommerce query, you would expect a shopping-related snippet to be top of the SERP list.
Here’s our Nike SERP example again.
Here’s a look at a search for ‘Ed Sheeran’. You can see that top stories replace shopping news and underneath that is a snippet that shows related search queries, or ‘top questions’ about Ed Sheeran. On this search, there’s also a featured snippet on the right-hand column, which acts as a dictionary entry for the search. This later snippet doesn’t affect rankings, but can certainly change a user’s intent when it comes to the results they choose to select.
That’s also a wealth of information available to Google’s users without leaving a search. Whilst that’s great for you as a user, it isn’t great for your website if you haven’t optimised your website’s content to feature in one of these snippets. Or if you haven’t created compelling meta data to woo users from search to your website.
There are two main ways to get traffic from Google and rank high in SERP
You can either use paid ads or organic traffic.
One is through paid advertising, which means you pay Google to show up at the top of the results
Paid advertising is a great option for increasing your visibility in search engines. You can use Google Ads (formerly known as Google Adwords) to advertise your website, blog, product, service, etc.
Using keyword-rich meta titles and descriptions you will look to gain extra traffic from ad positions at the top of result pages. You must be careful though - some keywords are more competitive than others, meaning you may find several other ads visible at the same time as yours!
The other is organic search, which means you don't pay anything to appear at the top of the list
According to Endpoint Digital as many as 70-80% of users ignore paid ads on search engines, so if you're looking to build an online business, then you need to make sure that you're getting as much exposure as possible. This is why you should focus on publishing great content using your website’s pages, product or service listings and most importantly your blog.
Blogs are a great way to help your positioning in organic search results, as they help build your backlinks, expand your search engine keyword reach and use internal linking to optimise your On-Page SEO.
Learning how to structure your blog’s pillar content is key to establishing a successful SERP strategy to keep your organic search rankings up. So take some time now that you understand more about SERPs to work out your next step.
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