What is SERP in SEO
SERPS or the Search Engine Results Page is a term you’ll hear a lot in the search marketing community. The SERPs often have extra features besides the standard organic link listing, and as marketers, it’s vital to understand the different features and how to utilise them for our clients.
Why are SERPs so important?
SERPs display a range of options depending on the search time, and these change from search to search. For example, searching for ‘white trainers’ brings up shopping listings and organic links to stores, but searching for ‘lawyers near me’ will show Ads, a map pack and organic links.
By assessing the SERPs for each search term we want to rank for or feature in PPC (pay-per-click) Ads, it allows us to decide the most effective approach for our marketing efforts.
Organic SERP features
There are a number of SERP features in total, but we’re going to focus on the ones that appear organically (meaning they haven’t paid for an advertisement to be there). Take a simple search like ‘how to boil an egg’, here is what comes up:
Featured Snippet
The featured snippet answers the most common questions quickly and is usually ahead of organic results and the ‘people also ask’ section. Nowadays, the featured snippet is often replaced by ‘AI overview’ as part of Googles Generative AI update.
AI Overview
As mentioned above, the AI Overview is now overtaking the featured snippet in most Google searches. This experimental answer is generated by the multiple sites listed on the right-hand side of the results.
People Also Ask
The ‘people also ask’ feature showcases a Q&A section in response to search related questions. For example, ‘how do you know when boiled eggs are done?’.
Rich Snippets
These organic links sometimes have additional information, such as extra page links or even reviews under their URL.
Related Search
Related Search tend to appear at the bottom of a SERP and include other people’s searches about a particular topic, in this case, different cooking methods for boiling an egg.
Video Carousel
Sometimes Google will present one video or an entire carousel of results that match your search with videos on YouTube.
Images
Images may be displayed in the search results if it relates to the query, which you can find in the image snippet when searching for logos.
Other SERP Features
The features mentioned above are some of the most common results that may appear in your search engine results page. However, there are over 20 different features that could come up in your SERPs that your business may wish to optimise for.
Local Map Pack
If you serve customers in a certain area, ranking highly within the map pack is important. Potential customers usually want to work with businesses that are local to them, so this is a crucial stepping stone to generating sales.
Social Media/Reddit Cards
Reddit forums or Quora answers can also be the top results for some question-based searches. These can be seen sometimes be at the very top of the page or below the AI Overview or Featured Snippet.
Jobs
Titles of job-related links may appear if you search for a particular job position or term with keywords such as vacancies or jobs attached to them. Ranking for these would be vital for recruiters and their agencies.
Flights & Hotels
Google Flights and Hotel listings are helpful features in the search results for travellers and may be beneficial for hotel brands too.
Optimising your website to reach a certain position in the search engine results page is only the beginning. With Featured Snippets, AI Overview and wider search tools, there are now endless possibilities of how a result can look. Marketing professionals understand that tackling SERPs is best left to a Search Engine Marketer, or someone who specialises in SEO. Why not check out the WorkPR SEO service page and see how our marketing team can help improve your rankings.
