Search engine visibility is an important feature for digital marketing, every SEO tasks are focused on improving the search performance of the website. If you are a business owner or new to the world of digital marketing, then learning about SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) will help in business growth. Not all are interested in knowing about SEO, but recent competition on online forums has created hype for SEO. Being a business owner before investing you should have some basic understanding of SEO and how the SERP works in favor of business growth. This will also help you realize whether your online marketing is going in the right direction.
In this guide, we will help you understand SERPs in the easiest language. We will learn about this excellent digital marketing tool that holds lots of potential for business.
What does SERP mean?
The SERP stands for Search Engine Result Page or Search Engine Ranking Page. In simple words, it’s the result page that appears on the browser when someone enters a query and place a search on Google, Bing, or any other active search engines.
In addition to natural search results, most of the SERPs typically include segments like PPC ads, knowledge box, Q&A, etc.
Due to technological advancements like AI integration, the efficiency of search engines has improved a lot. Making it hard for the SEOs to acquire the top results. But ranking your keywords on top of SERP is important because they are the ones with maximum chances to get a hit. With an introduction to schema markup, SERPs are now more focused on anticipating the online user’s need.
SERPs are giving results based on the search query but only after going to several factors to make sure that the user gets the most relevant answer. Search engines like Google, Bing are constantly improving themselves by adapting to new technologies and algorithms. These algorithms are responsible to find the relevancy of each web page and give the result in the best interest of the user’s query.
Normally, the first page of every search engine contains around 10 results. Other than that they also show paid search ads related to the query. Hence businesses should not only focus on the organic ranking, but paid ads are also good for quick leads. However, the cost of paid ads are costly and needs proper expertise. Or you will start to lose money on PPC. Plan keywords based on knowledge of what actually the online users are searching for. Therefore, knowing different search queries are important.
Different categories of search queries
Every search query has its own purpose and requirement. SERP shows results based on the type of queries entered on the search bar. These search queries can be categorized into 3 forms.
- Navigational Queries
- Informational Queries
- Transactional Queries
When someone types in the business name instead of typing the whole URL, it is considered a navigational query. Since the searcher knows about the existence of the business all they need is to find the particular website. Sometimes this can be hard if your business name is a competitive keyword, in such scenarios try to use PPC and leverage the ads to rank your website on top.
Informational Queries
The search terms which are specific for gaining knowledge are known as informational queries. Questions like What this means? How to do this? etc are always meant for lean something. Here the intention of the searcher is to learn about the topic and neither they are purchase-driven. All they need is some information for the relevant topic. This type of search query are really good for increasing website visitors. One must create content and leverage them to pass on information, and in return build an amazing brand performance.
Transactional queries
Those search terms where the intent of the searcher is to make a purchase for certain products are called transactional queries.
In comparison to other categories ranking your product higher for transactional queries can lead to huge profit in terms of product sales. Ecommerce businesses completely focus on transactional queries to increase sales.
Why are SERPs important?
In short, the higher ranking of your website on the SERP is directly connected to huge traffic and sales.
Research shows that 40-50% of searchers click only the top 3 results on the Google search engine. If we bluntly put it, your website, if it is not in the top 5 search results then your SEO is not optimum and you need the best SEO services to work for you.
What are the features of SERP?
After this many years from its existence, search engines are now more sophisticated with the way they present information on the SERP. Now it’s not just the list of website links, but the list of websites, snippets, and obviously paid ads.
Currently, SERPs are designed in a manner that the searcher gets the best result in front of them, before visiting any of the given sites. It seems that search engines are now understanding that people are not interested in just the list but they want to get a highlight prior to visiting the site.
With different sizes of screens and devices, search engines are now also optimized accordingly. There are some SERP features that you can view on a desktop but not on your mobile device.
Let’s look at some of the important SERP features, and the way to optimize the business site accordingly
IMPORTANT SERPs FEATURES
Featured Snippets
Featured snippets appear on top of the search engine result page for a certain query. They are like an answer box to your query containing brief information about the topic you searched.
Every SEO focus on creating articles that can get them that featured snippet. But to have that place you need to optimize your content with correct information that is easy to read and precise to the query. The chances of getting a featured snippet are high if you have properly structured your article to give an ideal answer for the query.
Knowledge Card
It gives the direct answer to the query placed by a searcher. Information like planetary distance, the population of the country, etc. A knowledge card holds the information that can answer the query directly without the work of visiting the website to get details. This card often appears with queries having numerical answers.
Knowledge Panel
This panel is often present on the right side of the desktop screen containing information related to searched topic. The knowledge panel is a short description of the searched term. It appears when the searcher tries to know amount famous personalities, locations, or companies. This knowledge panel is very rare to get and only provided to those having some kind of reputation and are searched frequently.
Having a Wikipedia page increases the chances of acquiring a knowledge panel.
Top Stories
Mostly appears for the topics which are trending or in news. Top stories retrieve news from an authentic website and present it to the searcher for queries they make. It appears as a carousel containing all relevant news for the searched topic.
People Also Ask Section
It’s a new addition to the SERP feature where the search engine shows a similar kind of question-related to the search queries. This is automatically generated by Google. The topic you search for is going to be elaborated further into the PAA section where you find the related questions and answer just right there.
Product Results
Shopping results or product result appears in SERP whenever a person type keyword naming or describing the product.
It’s a key feature for every e-commerce business as it brings customers directly to the product link onto the website. Usually, websites having the right schema structure for the product listed get awarded with shopping results on SERP.
Google shows this feature as a carousel that contains a product image, rating, and price. This helps the searchers to quickly browse through the products present on a different website without living the SERP. To get the shopping result make your ecommerce website more search-friendly by using product schema and updating them regularly with the latest pricing and product details.
Since now we have learned what are the key features of the SERP, it’s now time for you to get those spots. For this, a good knowledge of SEO is indeed required. You can check Introduction To SEO if you are a newcomer to the SEO spectrum. Further, follow our blog for all the latest information related to Search Engine Optimization.
