SERP, SERP,What is it and why do I care? The Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is obviously the page you look at after doing a Google (or other search engine) search. Your ranking on the SERP is relevant because.... well, no one looks at anything past the first page. And with mobile, it's even more extreme
Let's start to understand the relevance of the chart by putting it into the context of types of web visitors - generally there are three:
- Navigational - this guy already knows who you are, and is looking for your phone number or physical address, example "What's the number for Domino's Pizza?"
- Informational - this one is gathering information across a broad category, example "I want to go on vacation to Florida, let me Google 'Florida Vacations'"
- Transactional - this one needs to buy something online now, example "It's my wife's birthday - I need to order flowers now"
The search behaviors of all these types of visitors are all pressed together in the famous chart above, and obviously, they don't all behave the same way.
The first step in improving your SERP is knowing in an analytical way, your baseline, beginning point. I like to use Rank Checker.
You simply fill out the online form with your site address and your top three keywords.
The tool will return values to you for your keywords (and also offer to sell you services to help you improve.)
If you are trying to rank for highly competitive key words, you may be inclined to become discouraged. Big companies are spending tons of money to come out on the top for highly competitive words. If you try to buy your way to the top, you will soon learn that the more competitive the word, the more you will pay to rank. But there are ways to break through the clutter, and get to a good place on SERP.
Improving SERP means understanding the behaviors of three types of web inquiries (Navigational, Informational, Transactional), the type of business you are promoting online, and creating a strategy that optimizes your positioning on SERP. The important thing that you can do today, is record your SERP ranking and the keywords that you think are important to people looking for you. Then stay tuned as we talk about finding the "low hanging fruit" of keywords - high volume keywords and phrases that are not currently competitive.