In this article I explain what SERPs are and how they help your business to get found by the people you want to talk to. Plus you’ll discover how to improve your Google ranking and your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tactics.
So let’s start with the meaning behind (yet another) acronym. SERPs stands for Search Engine Results Pages – quite simply it’s the options you see when you do a Google search. It’s Google’s way of serving up what it thinks you ordered – which is why it often goes wrong and you get something that’s off the menu!
When you do an online search, Google looks at all online activity that it thinks is related to the individual words (keywords) that you included in your search – so this may be organic or featured snippets, paid ads and other digital media such as video. But let’s break it down.
- Organic means a search will reveal content from your website that has earned Google’s trust – essentially a marketing team has done a great job with SEO.
- Paid ads or PPC (Pay Per Click) – are adverts that have been built to attract a desired audience, every time someone clicks on the ad it costs. The more clicks or higher % click through rate (CTR) the higher the cost. It’s a balancing act, and involves a ‘bidding’ process with everyone else doing the same thing, but most businesses benefit from this type of digital promotion and when the bidding is done well it really improves chances of being on page 1 of a search.
- Featured snippets are pulled from a web page – a brief excerpt that has to grab attention or at least intrigue and answer the question put into the search in just a few words. This means that the first sentence on every web page has the potential to be an advert and this is something that a lot of web content managers don’t appreciate.
Google Features
Google sets many controlling ‘features’ related to SERPs which help Google to determine page ranking. This is quite frankly another topic in itself, so I’ll just list 3 of what I think are the key features:
- Adwords – the amount you’re willing to spend to increase your bidding power. Reports show that over 50% of paid ads appear on page 1 of SERPs so it’s not an areas to be ignored.
- Featured snippet – the content for these snippets comes from a web page that usually answers a question. It finds it from your website’s index. This type of snippet tends to be more targeted and therefore Google will rank it higher on the page, and usually results in a higher CTR than organic results. Good examples of featured snippets are FAQ, charts, instructions and ‘how-to’ guides.
- Site links – if a search includes a domain name Google sees this as a highly trustworthy search and may show additional snippets from that website such as blogs/news/related pages etc. The benefit of this result is that it offers more choice to the searcher, and therefore increases probable clicks.
What makes SERPs so important?
SERPs determine where and how you will be found. Ignoring SERPs Features means you could get knocked down the page simply by using the wrong keywords, or a keyword that is over-used and therefore highly ranked (in other words page 1 is flooded with competition). Using a related keyword or search term that is less used will help bump your snippet up the page but only if you take note of Google Features. For example Google will rank you higher for adding more relevant information, such as a publishing date as it sees this as something that validates your page. It boils down to building Google’s trust.
Canonical links
What are these? If you manage multiple websites you may wish to publish a great news article on more than one. Google will see this as ‘duplication’ and down-rank it because it thinks you are trying to increase chances of being found. In reality it’s quite common practice to need to repeat pages, and canonical linking is the way round it. Simply copy the page link into the duplicated site’s SEO field – you may need to get this built in to your web but it’s worth it.
So how do you make your ads sing amongst the digital noise?
It’s all about creating balance. You’ll need to invest in some paid ads, but don’t ignore your on-page SEO. Backlinks (links from other related and valuable websites) are vitally important. This may involve a bit of time and energy from your marketing and business development teams to establish partnerships and collaborative connections but it will improve your credibility (and therefore ranking) with Google. Featured snippets that involve video content can often be ranked higher. If you’re planning on using video make sure your Youtube page (or the web page you’ve embedded the video on) is fully optimised (keyword rich) as that’s where Google will pull keywords from. Lastly, you can go simple with ‘direct answer’ boxes, which are exactly that – no waffle just the answer to a question.
Unfortunately we cannot ignore the ever evolving Google – but use it to your advantage. Content is key to the success of your website being found, and by the people you want to talk to. Make sure your content is relevant, to the point, answers the most common questions you think your audience may be pondering over and uses the optimum search terms they may plug into Google. Remember your audience may not understand your business speak or internally used acronyms so keep it plain and simple.
Think like a customer – be your own customer and keep tweaking your SEO, because Google is always changing its parameters and business has to keep up!
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