SERP is the acronym for Search Engine Results Page, that is, the page displaying the results of a search engine in response to a query by a user.
The order of results or websites will depend on how close they are to SEO criteria. Google, for instance, includes ten results in each SERP by default, which means that the 10 most relevant for your search will appear on the first results page.
It is very important to appear on the first results page –ideally on top. It is estimated that the first 5 SERP results take up 75% of the visits. 99.1% of all clicks are actually on the first SERP. That means that if you don’t appear among these, chances to be found by your Buyer persona are less than 0.1%.
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Which are the types of Google SERP?
In order to identify which results appear on a SERP, let’s do the following search as an example: “boutique hotels in Paris”.
1.- Sponsored results or advertising
In the first part, we’ll have sponsored results –Google Adwords:
These are not organic results and the only way to appear among them is by paying.
See more in: What is SEM?
2.- Purchases, hotels and flights
When the search is related directly with the purchase of a product, a flight or a hotel booking, Google displays a special chart below the ads, with prices, map and extra filtering options:
3.- Organic results
After the advertising and the chart of hotels, the search engine will finally show the first ten results:
We can see how many of these organic results have already been displayed on the ads or in the chart. For instance, “1412 Hotel Boutique” appears on the three sections, which reveals a long intense positioning work.
This article may be helpful: What is SEO?
4.- Related questions
The type of results displayed by the SERP also depends on the type of query we make. For example, if we change the search to “hotels in Paris”, we will get, along with the organic results and the map, a chart with related questions:
5.- Local results
Now, let’s do a different type of search: “restaurants in Paris”. Google identifies this is a local search so the first thing we are shown is a map with options, ratings and reviews:
Apart from the four results we’ve just seen, the SERP can also display videos, images, news, itineraries, highlights, brand results, etc. It is very important to know where it is more convenient for us to appear, to focus our SEO strategy on that type of results.
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To learn more about SERP
Knowing how SERP works will be very useful at the moment of shaping your SEO strategy. If you want to learn more about it, have a look at the articles we’ve selected for you:
- Search Engine Basic Concepts – By Search Engine Watch
- Google Search Results Explained: 11 Common SERP Features – By FX Web
- Anatomy of Search Results & How to Rank – By Reputation X
- SERP: Guide to the Google Search Engine Results – De Ignite Visibility
- A guide to every 2020 Google SERP feature [Infographic] – By Brafton
- Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List (2020) – By Backlinko
- The Step-by-Step Guide to Improving Your Google Rankings Without Getting Penalized – By Neil Patel
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