SERP Explained
Have you ever wondered what it takes to make your website appear on the first page of search results and what are the factors or criteria needed to make it on the top list?
What is SERP?
SERP or Search Engine Results Page is the result shown by search engines in response to a search or query made by an internet user. The results you would see includes list of web pages, their title, their link and brief description that matches the query of the user, you will also notice the words in bold, from the title, meta tags to description matching the keywords used.
Internet users searching the internet are looking for specific or relevant information, products or services and most likely the websites who land at the top results will greatly increase their chances of acquiring a subscriber or a reader, selling a product or service, acquiring potential visitor targeted by advertising programs (like AdSense) and other potential reasons needed by website owners. Although hundreds or more pages are shown, it is the first page that internet users browse, rarely does a user has interest in going to the next page. So now you know why the front page, top page or top list or top positions in SERP are what most website owners are competing for.
How to Increase Our Position in SERP?
Some authors express that SERP takes into account targeted keywords (only) used by users in the determination of who lands on the top results. I believe that the rank ( or PageRank – PR) which search engines assign to web pages is another critical factor as well on who makes it to the top listing of SERP as explained by Google.
To fully illustrate how we can increase our position in SERP, we are going to use in our example the heavyweight champion of the web, Google.Com, this is made for illustrative purposes. Google, in its article entitled Corporate Information – Technology Overview clearly states there are two ways for us to grab an important position in SERP, which is discussed as follows:
PageRank – First Google explains that it is more likely that those web pages that have a higher PR will appear at the top of search results. Meaning to say, if we improve our PR, the possibility of landing on the front page of search results where competition is very fierce is increased. At the same time, if two or more articles having similar (not duplicate) content are called upon to answer search queries by users, the one with the higher PR wins. And how do we improve our PR? By acquiring quality backlinks.
High Quality Content – Isn’t it awesome, Google will place you on the pedestal by having high quality informative articles. This is what niche marketers are gunning for. Google calls this Hyper-Text Matching Analysis. Now, targeted keywords here come into play. Even if your website is new and has a zero PR, if your content is entirely relevant to search queries as analyzed by Google, it will have an important position in SERP. Google uses extensive procedure as quoted “…our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word.”
With the information just presented, we can shed a light to some questions as to who goes to the top lists of search results. Either (1) you have a good PR or (2) you may have a low PR but have good content that matches relatively the keywords used or your web pages may have them both, a good PR and high quality content. These two criteria co-exist with one another in evaluating who lands at the top position of SERP. As the heavyweight champion in the web, rest assured that Google is doing its best to provide the most relevant search results in the internet.
What do you think Google will do if it scans two web pages having duplicate content having the same words all through out?
