When creating your website, you have undoubtedly heard of SERPs. SERP is the English acronym for “Search Engine Results Page”, it is simply the results page that is displayed when you submit a request to the search engine.
As you will have understood, the concept of SERP is inherent to natural referencing since it refers directly to the positioning of a site in search engines like Google. The SERP is therefore the key to SEO and it is the main objective of an SEO agency that will take care of highlighting your website.
But then, what are the SEO issues of SERPs and why do you need to understand how SERPs work to improve your natural referencing? Detailed answer in this article!
What is a SERP?
SERP is therefore an English acronym that designates the web page generated by a search engine in order to respond to the request of an Internet user. In concrete terms, a SERP contains a list of links that refer to websites whose theme corresponds to the search performed.
The links presented on the SERP are classified by relevance and in descending order: from the most to the least relevant. It is precisely natural referencing that allows Google to establish this list in order of relevance and importance. This ranking is based on very broad factors that may vary depending on the evolution of the search engine’s algorithm. This is why an SEO strategy can evolve and adjust from month to month. A large part of the algorithms created by Google teams remains secret in order to avoid spam.
What is page indexing?
Indexing is a key phase of the SEO process. A website includes a certain number of pages that must be made known to Google and Internet users. To do this, Google’s robots are responsible for browsing (or crawling) the entire web. At the time of the crawl, the robots browse, analyze, index, and classify the page of your website: this is called the indexing phase. It is this step that will allow your pages to appear in search engine results.
Be careful, however, not to misunderstand the role of indexing on the ranking of a site on search engines. An indexed page is not necessarily a page that appears on the first page of the SERPs. Indexing is just the first step in your SEO strategy.
Indexing is carried out by robots called. It is possible to indicate to the robots the pages whose crawl you want to prioritize. The robots.txt file will indeed show robots the pages you do not want to promote indexing.
The de-indexing process works differently: as its name suggests, a de-indexed page is a page that has already been crawled.
How do websites show on SERP?
The pages indexed by Google are pages whose content has already been scanned by robots when crawling a site. These pages appear in what is known as the “Google index”. All the pages of the index are therefore likely to appear in the results of the search engine, they are then visible to Internet users. The purpose of natural referencing is to optimize the appearance of the pages of a website on the SERPs. Also, why go against this principle by seeking certain de-index pages?
Since the 2010s, Google has been fighting spam. To do this, the web giant has implemented a filter system called “Panda”. Objectives of the filter: penalize poor-quality sites and favor relevant content. De – indexing, therefore, corresponds to common sense: it is better to favor quality over quantity!
What does a SERP contain?
The list of websites displayed on a SERP contains a succession of titles as well as a description. The title generally corresponds to the title tag while the description refers to the meta description. There is also the indexing date of the proposed Web page.
The SERP does not contain the results resulting from the classification carried out thanks to natural referencing. There are usually two types of results in two different areas of the SERP.
Paid Results
A SERP can indeed be delimited by a SEA zone (paid results). Which corresponds to the paid search results obtained by websites thanks to a Google Ads campaign. This area can be divided into two with results in the form of text and results that are displayed as images from the Google Shopping Network. The SEO area (organic results) is displayed after the SEA area.
The results offered on the SERPs vary according to the natural referencing, but also according to the orientation of the request typed by the Internet user. Indeed, Google will not offer you the same results depending on whether you are looking for specific information or whether you simply want to buy a product. The nature of the results may also vary depending on the Internet user’s location and the device he is using to carry out his search. If a user types a query from their smartphone, Google will indeed favor sites optimized for mobile.
Organic Results
The SERP may also contain a knowledge graph offered from official (government) or encyclopedic (Wikipedia) sources. Depending on the local SEO, the SERP will also offer you a Google Maps, map to direct you to the businesses that match your search.
In SEO, SERPs are classified in this way:
- SERP 1 corresponds to the very first page of the search engine (the most visited) which generally contains 10 different results.
- The SERP 2 corresponds to the second page and so on!
We consider that a site is well-ranked when it appears in SERP 1. Many studies show that most Internet users do not bother to go to SERP 2.
How to improve your ranking on the SERPs?
This question deserves a full article since it is particularly a question of setting up a natural referencing strategy. However, several important criteria must absolutely be apprehended.
Start by distinguishing the strategies behind the results displayed on a SERP:
– The organic results are the result of a natural referencing strategy.
– Paid results are the result of a system of auctions and the selection of paid keywords.
– Rich effects are acquired from microdata consisting of dependent data.
To improve your positioning on Google’s SERPs, you will need to combine a wide range of techniques.
You will thus work on the choice of your keywords, your meta descriptions, and the structure of your content. Set up a content plan in order to provide Google with original, relevant, and regular texts. Make sure to build your site in a responsive way. And also make sure that no technical problem will increase the loading time of your pages.
In short, improving positioning on the SERPs is the result of a long-term strategy that often requires advanced technical skills. An SEO agency like OMT Lahore will offer you, for example, to carry out a complete audit of your site (technical audit then semantic audit) in order to build a strategy adapted to the configuration of your site as well as to your field of activity.
After this audit, an SEO expert will put in place all the technical changes necessary for the proper functioning and ranking of your website. The semantic audit will be used to establish an editorial line as well as a content schedule. That will allow your site to provide relevant and optimized texts. It is then a question of building your reputation thanks to a net linking strategy adapted to your field of activity.
