You’re trying to break into the world of search engine optimisation, commonly shortened to SEO. You’ve noticed mounds of acronyms and you’re trying your best to make heads or tails of it! One of the most common acronyms you’ve come across is SERP. In this blog, we’ll explain what a Google SERP is, its most common features and why they’re essential to building your small business SEO plan.
What does SERP mean?
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. Whenever you type something into the Google search bar that isn’t a URL, what comes back is the results page. It’s important to note that the contents of the page can be massively different between two people, even if they look up the exact same thing.
What are the features of a SERP?
The features of a SERP will vary depending on whether you’ve looked up a location, business, book, movie or many other categories. Very simply, there will be paid results and organic results.
Paid results (known as Google Ads) can be done in such a way that users bid to advertise on a specific keyword, and then only pay when a user clicks through on their ad, known as a PPC or pay-per-click campaigns.
SEO on the other hand, is all about capitalising on the organic (non-paid) search results and climbing to the top of the pack without paying for ads. This is achieved through strategic on and off-page SEO tactics where rankings are earned and seen as more credible than paid listings.
Some other common features on a SERP include:
Knowledge Panel
There will usually be a knowledge panel to the right-hand side of the Google SERP that provides some basic information about the item you’ve looked up, as well as related searches.
These can catalogue a wide range of information that is compiled by Google and is not subject to any SEO tricks and tips – although, the listings featured in the knowledge panel largely feature sites that have been optimised for search engines.
Local Packs
Searching for something like ‘pharmacies’ will return with a map, studded with pins of pharmacies near the searcher’s location (if they are sharing their location).
Google prioritises businesses that share plenty of specific information (such as their business hours, reviews, products and FAQs), so make sure you’re keeping your website up to date to cash in on these and improve local SEO!
Related Questions
There is very often a box with dropdowns labelled ‘people also asked…’. There is one link per question, and it must be on the front page of the search it’s being associated with. All in all, it can be a bit of a tricky task, but since the rate of interaction with these questions is increasing, it is definitely well worth it.
Conclusion
There are so many small things to consider when building an SEO plan, and it all comes back to the SERP.
If you’ve found this article enlightening but still have some questions, get in touch with us at DigitUX today for a free consultation to grow your brand and help your small business thrive.