You’ve probably seen variations of the above page thousands of times. If you haven’t already guessed, the above is an example of a search engine results page. These types of pages are visited millions of times every day.
SERPs are what show up every time someone makes a search. Our job is to ensure our websites rank as high as possible in these searches.
This is search engine optimization.
Originally, SERPs only included text results, but over time search engines have added additional elements to help you find what you’re looking for faster. Results now include: images, videos, maps and product listings.
Search engines have also began to personalize results based on the information they have on record about you and your search habits. This could be as simple as which websites you’ve previously visited to something as complex as which pages your Facebook friends like.
Make More Money from the SERPs
To make more money from the search you have two options:
1) Improve your position
The higher your website is in the results, the more people that will naturally click it. Studies show that on average, the first position receives around 40% of the clicks, while the 10th position receives around 3%.
2) Increase your CTR
Increasing your position is without a doubt the most effective way to increase the amount of visitors you receive. Yet there is an often overlooked yet highly effective strategy: making your listing more appealing to visitors.
This can be done by using the <title> and meta description. Take a look at these two listings for example:
Now, no matter what order these are placed in, each offers something different. Wikipedia offers an encyclopedic definition of content marketing, while CopyBlogger promises to teach readers to build a business around it.
The offer is more important than the position, especially when the two benefits are so different.
