SERP

Within internet marketing you will come across concepts that are inextricably linked. In the context of web optimization (SEO), it is all about SERPs, or search engine results pagesb.

What is SERP?

The abbreviation SERP is based on the English term search engine results page and refers to the page of results displayed by an internet search engine (Google, Seznam, etc.). It is displayed as a response to a specific query (keyword, phrase).

What does the SERP contain?

The contents of a SERP are search results, which in most cases can be divided into two basic categories. In addition to organic results, there are also paid results.

In terms of traffic, Google has dominated the search engines for years, being the most visited site on the Internet. According to OBERLO, the giant's market share in July 2022 was 91.9%. In terms of absolute numbers, Google processes over 100,000 queries every second.

The Google SERP also consists of two main types of search results:

• Organic results - the results that appear in the SERP due to proper search engine optimization, search query relevance and page ranking algorithm.
• Paid results - results that appear for selected search queries as paid advertising.

Although these two types of results look very similar (or almost the same) in the SERPs, they are different in nature.

Organic SERP results

The organic results show the pages that the search engine ranks in the SERP.

They can only get to the top of the SERPs through proper page optimization, relevancy, and an algorithm from Google - which uses a number of ranking factors to determine which results should rank high.

The standard organic result is displayed in the SERP in the form of a short snippet. It consists of the following parts:

• Page URL,
• the page title,
• meta description.

Advertisement

In the SERP context, advertising takes the form of paid results that appear in prominent positions in the SERP.

Paid results work on the PPC (Pay-Per-Click) principle and allow advertisers to display their ads in the SERPs based on keyword bids - the highest bid wins and appears at the top of the SERPs.

In addition to price, several other factors influence the display of an ad: e.g. relevance, snippet content, etc.

Why is SERP important for SEO?

The main goal of SEO is to get top positions in SERPs. They are seen as the place where you can effectively promote your site and attract new users to it.

Search results are important in the context of optimization for two main reasons:

1. They drive organic traffic.
2. They help in identifying and analysing competitors.

1. Organic traffic

The pages that rank high in the SERPs receive the most organic traffic.

Whenever users type their search queries into Google, they usually only search the first page of results and click on the top results that appear within the SERP. This leaves the rest of the search results (regardless of content quality) without organic traffic.

From an SEO point of view, it is therefore important to get the site to the top of the SERPs, because this way many more users come to the site.

2. Competitor analysis

A SERP not only shows the intent of the user entering a search query, but also helps you identify competitors.

The intent of the user who asks a search query can be divided into four basic types:

Navigational query - a search term used for a specific brand or website (e.g. "Instagram").

Informational query - a search term used for any type of informational content (e.g. "how to build a house").

Transactional query - a search term used when a user wants to buy something on the Internet (e.g. "buy samsung tv").

Commercial query - a search term that indicates that a user plans to do research before buying an actual product (e.g. "bmw x5 review ").

To achieve good SERP rankings, you need to find out what users are looking for and what type of content might be relevant to them (e.g. educational content, product pages, etc.).

In addition to search intent, the SERP will help you discover which websites are competing at the top and how difficult it will be to outrank them.

By analyzing search results, you can identify your competitors, explore the top-ranked sites and gain a wealth of important information, such as:

Content type – i.e. what type of content ranks at the top of the SERPs - then create pages with similar content.

Topic Coverage – learn how to create high-quality content that covers a topic in much more depth than competing sites.

Content length - you'll find out what the average content length is for the sites that hold the top spots, and you'll be able to cover the topic more comprehensively.

Competitors' authority - the authority of the sites displayed among the top results will help you estimate how hard it would be to outrank them.

How does Google generate SERPs?

Google generates a SERP based on a search query entered by a user and ranks results based on relevance, quality and several other factors.

The generation of SERP results is based on 3 basic processes:

• browsing - searching for pages on the web,
• indexing - storing the content of pages in a search engine library (index),
• sorting - sorting and displaying indexed pages in the SERP.

When a user enters a query in a search, Google crawls its index and determines which pages might be relevant to the user. It then ranks them according to various ranking factors and displays them to the user.