SERPs, also referred to as Search Engine Result Pages, are essentially the catalog of links to websites a search engine like Google generates to respond to a user’s query. SERPs are of various types, including organic search results, paid ads, related images, featured snippets, knowledge graphs, and video results.
In all these various SERPs, the most notable ones are paid ads and organic search results. This is because both these types of SERPs are the most likely to get clicked on by users when searching for something in particular on the world wide web.
Paid Ads:
These are the SERPs that show up at the top of the search results page. They are paid for by advertisers bidding on specific keywords that would most appeal to the user interested in their product. Importantly, their placement is dependent on how much the advertisers are paying for them. The first search result page placement is always the most likely to get traffic. Therefore, it costs the highest.
Organic Search Results:
These are the SERPs that show up in the middle of the search results page. They are free of cost and calculated by the search engine to rank highest in an algorithmic listing that determines how relevant these SERPs are to the query searched by the user. Most businesses tend to use backlinks and search engine optimization to ensure a high ranking for their SERPs. A typical organic search result snippet on a search result page includes the page title, page URL, and meta description.
How to rank higher in SERPs?
Due to the reason that the first three organic search results from a particular search tend to get 87% of the total traffic, many advertisers tend to use certain tricks to get a high-ranking SERP. Here are five ways you can ensure that your page ranks high in a particular search engine:
Improve Your Domain Authority
Domain authority is essentially the merit of your site on a particular search engine like Google. It is a rating of how reputable your website is in the eyes of a search engine. For example, a big-name news website like Forbes has a better domain authority and ranking than a small lifestyle website.
Backlinks
Backlinks are a crucial part of how a search engine evaluates the credibility of your content. The best way to get a higher ranking in SERPs is to increase the number of backlinks on your site and create your backlinks.
Improve Your On-Site SEO
On-site SEO is essentially optimizing your website to rank high on a search engine. It considers different elements of your webpage, including headlines, images, and HTML tags like title, meta description, and header. According to a recent study done by Hubspot, Around 64% of advertisers actively invest their time and resources in search engine optimization.
Check Out: SEO Trends 2020 That Cannot Be Overlooked
Optimize Your Site
Your site also needs to be user-friendly in addition to being SEO-friendly. This is because the typical user nowadays has a brief attention span and instantly clicks off your site if it does not provide a smooth experience. Therefore take into consideration your site speed, usability, device compatibility, and interactive graphics.
Run PPC Campaigns For Transactional Searches
Transactional searches are searches that include product advertisements. These searches have the potential to earn you revenue; therefore, you can benefit a lot from running a successful PPC campaign for these types of SERPs.
The Importance Of Backlinks And Social Media For SEO
As aforementioned, backlinks are essential for building up credibility and ranking high on search engine algorithms. Social media also plays a vital role in getting exposure for your website. According to a study conducted by Letter.ly in 2021, a typical user spends about 145 minutes on social media every day, which amounts to almost 17 hours per week.
Advertisers consider how much social media directly influences the masses, which significantly impacts search engine rankings. Therefore it is essential to driving good quality web traffic to your blog through social media promotions and backlinks.
Ranking Factors That Matter For Google Searches
Although the particular wording influences how your SERP is ranked in the search results of their query, there are certain ranking factors you can look out for when optimizing your website to be successful.
- Accessibility of your website
- Content optimization
- Domain age, authority, and URL
- Links and backlinks
- User location
- Mobile compatibility
- Relevance to the query
- Social signals
- Technical SEO
- Usability
- Webpage speed
- You business information
Understanding Google’s Algorithm Updates
The only downside to optimizing your website to be SERPs is that any changes in the Google algorithm directly affect your website’s traffic. This is because Google is the biggest and most used search engine in the world. The most recent update to Google’s algorithm is the broad core algorithm update released on 2nd June 2021.
For one thing, this update includes a set of speed-related ranking signals which are termed as the Core Web Vitals or CWVs by Google. According to the founder of Search Engine Land and Maximized Online, Danny Sullivan;
“Core updates are designed to increase the overall relevancy of our search results. In terms of traffic we send, it’s largely a net exchange. Some content might do less well, but other content gains. In the long term, improving our systems in this way is how we’ve continued to improve Search and send more traffic to sites across the web every year.”
Factors That Can Affect A Site’s Ranking On The SERPs
To sum it all up, the essential factors that affect a site’s ranking on the SERPs are as follows;
- Content quality
- Domain authority
- Dwell time
- Mobile usability
- On-page SEO
- Organic click-through-rate
- Referring domains
- Total number of backlinks
