SERP - Why "SERP" is the Most Important Internet Acronym for Your Business

SERP (or Organic SERP) is an acronym that can make or break your online marketing campaign. "SERP" is short for "search engine results page," and as marketing through search continually entrenches itself as the dominant medium for online success, it becomes vital that you be able to:

  1. Identify the importance of a SERP - What do you need to know about SERPs, and why?
  2. Act on that knowledge - Knowing what's important and why it's crucial to your business, how do you make that knowledge work for you? Once you know what you should be doing, how do you go out and do it?

This guide will teach you what SERPs mean to you, and how to leverage that information to make more money for your business through SEO and PPC.

So What Is a SERP, Anyway?

We identified a SERP as a search engine results page above, but what does that mean, exactly?

Basically, it just means that a SERP is a list of Web pages. Odds are, you've seen a million of them. Here's a sample of a Google results page:

SERP stands for search engine results page

Three key components are represented above:

  • The User's Search or Query - This is the thing a searcher types in. In the example above, someone is looking for information or products relating to Apple computers.
  • Organic SERP Listings - These are the "natural" listings. To produce these results, Google uses a series of metrics to ensure that your site is relevant. To have your site show here, you have to effectively "score well" on that algorithmic test.
  • Paid SERP Listings - These are advertisements, or "sponsored links." You can have your ad displayed here by launching a pay-per-click search campaign, and by ensuring that your maximum CPC bids and Quality Score allow you to secure a high enough ad position for the keyword you're targeting.

Quality Score

Why Do SERPs Matter to Me?

Because ranking your site in the proper SERP position will be the difference between success and failure in your search marketing campaigns. Consider the following insights provided by these studies:

In other words, most people click on the first page, and most of those people click on earlier results. The higher your search engine results page ranking, the more traffic you'll get:

SERP rankings

Image Courtesy of SEOBook.

So Just Move Up, Then?

Of course, it's not that as simple as just "improve my serp in Google."

As with anything else, you have to weigh benefits with costs. While better keyword rankings in SERPs are great, the fact remains that:

  • Improving SEO SERPS is Hard - Generating a better search engine optimization ranking for competitive keywords is often as complicated as it is profitable.
  • Buying Better Paid SERP Position Can Be Expensive - Meanwhile, consider the fact that in paid search you are literally being charged more money for higher SERP positions.

So getting proper placement on search results pages is crucial, but the key question remains:

How Do I Improve Google SERP Rankings (Wisely)?

If you're like, well, everyone, you have a limited amount of resources. Limited copywriting RAM, a finite amount of SEO expertise, and a PPC budget with a ceiling.

As a result, you have to answer two key questions:

  1. Which SERPS do I improve? What keywords should you be dedicating your time to ranking for, and which keywords should you be buying?
  2. How do I do this? How do you rank for the keywords you want to rank for, and how do you pay less for the positions you want in paid search?

Google results page

How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Page Positions

Improving your SERP position can be done in a few (often not so easy) steps:

A simplified version of the process looks something like this:

SERP insights on best practices

Don't Just Check SERPs: Improve them!

The above probably looks like a lot of work.

It can be.

But it doesn't have to be.

It's literally impossible to perform all of these tasks and to improve your SERP ranking without the aid of software (unless you have an unlimited budget and an enormous manage a single account...and have no interest in lowering costs or improving results...).

Luckily, WordStream offers solutions for all of the above tasks. Learn more by: