How many times have you heard “improve your ranking in the SERPS”? Surely many times if you are interested in SEO positioning . But… what is SERPS? What is the meaning and origin of this abbreviation?
If you are interested in knowing, I will tell you about it in this article.
Definition of SERP
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page or in Spanish search engine results page. This definition refers to the results that appear on the pages of Google, Bing, Yahoo or Yandex and that usually show about 10 on average.
In short, SERPS are all the pages that appear on Google that are filled with different results. This is the expression of “wanting to improve our position in the SERPS”, which would mean wanting to go from a certain page to a higher one in any of the search engines.
Types of SERPS
Although it may be thought that there is only one type of SERPS, far from it. We have the big divide between SEO and SEM staged in organic advertising and paid advertising.
- Organic SERPS : are those results that appear free and natural. Those who position themselves thanks to SEO techniques .
- Payment SERPS : results that appear due to Google Ads bids and for which you have to pay a certain amount. The list of results that appears depends on what you pay, the keyword searched and other factors that fall within the SEM .
Results that appear in the SERPS
Whereas in the past only the classic text results with their title and description appeared, today we can find many other things in the SERPS:
- Video results : since Google bought YouTube, it has integrated all the video results in the search engine. Therefore, videos may now appear instead of text results for certain searches that link directly to YouTube.
- Images : a few years ago Google changed the algorithm and began to show images directly at the top of the search. It does not do it for all, but in a great majority we can begin to see it.
- News : despite the fact that Google News has closed its service in Spain, results from different newspapers still appear if we search for a keyword that has current news related to it.
- Maps : local results have a big role with Google Places in the SERPS and Google usually shows a map and these results. They usually appear when searches are carried out with great local prominence, such as “dentist”, “tennis club”, “cafeteria”, etc.
- Products : Google Shopping is another of the Google services oriented to stores. Show different offers and products if the keyword is related to them. For example, if you search for “camera” you will see several results from online stores on the right.
- Google+ : even though the author content disappeared, if you use Google+ and one of your contacts has published content that matches the word you are looking for, its result will appear on the first page.
Don’t just rely on text links
As you can see, SERPS are much more than just text and links. The way to reach a first position can be so varied that you could occupy an entire page with a website, a video, an image, a news item, a local result and a product in Google Shopping.
If you focus on trying to get to the top position only through text results, you will be missing a great opportunity to rank with any of the other methods.
You have to know how to choose which is the best for you and make the most of it. For example, if you are an online store, it may be worth using Google Shopping, while if you are a local business it is more useful that you have correctly registered your business in Google Places than paying for Google Ads .
The important thing is to know what your priority is, your goal and get to appear in the SERPS in the first positions for him. For this, remember that you have to know how to make a correct choice of your keywords , since that is vital, whatever system you use.
How are you going to get to the top positions in the SERPS?
Now that you know all the ways to get there, you have to take the step and try all the ones that suit you. And if you try to coordinate several at the same time, all the better, since one of the most appropriate ways to get traffic from a search engine is to grab as many results as possible on the first page.
