An Awesome Video from Yoast Explaining SERP
Below is a simple video from Yoast helping you understand the Google search results page (SERP) whilst covering some of the basics of SEO. If you need any professional help with your SEO strategy, please feel free to contact Whitefish Marketing on 01303 720 288. We offer a free and no-obligation consultation discovery call to see how we can help improve your SEO. Now… onwards with the video!!
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OPr0fxY_x4
“We can safely state that literally, almost everyone has seen the Google search results page. We all know that you can enter your search query at the top and that search results are displayed below, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. Do you know what elements search results consist of exactly? And did you know, you actively need to provide with extra information to create some of them? In this video, we’re going to take you through the Google results page to make sure you’re up to speed on snippets, featured results, knowledge graphs, et cetera. In a later module, called rich results. We’ll tell you more about rich results and how to get them. For now, let’s explore the basics.
Below the search bar in which you enter your queries is a menu which gives you the option of filtering search results. You can filter images, videos, news, maps, shopping, books, flights, and finance. For some companies, it’s interesting to optimize specifically for one of these options. However, the all option is far and away the most important one. So we’ll focus on that. The first couple of results are often taken by advertisements. Companies pay Google to show up in these places. Sometimes there are three ads and sometimes there are none at all. It’s all depends on whether companies are willing to pony up the sum google has determined for that keyword.
The cost of advertising is related to the popularity of the search term. Ads are recognizable by the little green box containing the word ad, and sometimes the results are set apart and you can see the word sponsored above it. This can happen when you are shopping for clothing, for example. If you want to advertise on Google, you should check out Google AdWords. For now, we’ll leave it at that. Because search engine advertising is a separate field from SEO, which we at Yoast do not focus on.
The organic results are our bread and butter. SEO is all about trying to claim that number one spot in this part of the Google search results page. Research shows that as much as a third of the total traffic comes from the number one results and 17% comes from the second results. That means that about half of the searches click one of the first two results. Moreover, 90% of the searches doesn’t get beyond the first page of the search results and the numbers typically decline for each results. So being at the top of the search results is hugely important. Now, let’s explore what these search results consist of.
We call every separate search result, a snippet and a standard snippet consists of three elements. The title in blue, a URL or slug in green, and a meta in black in the meta description, you should give a clear description of what your page is about. Your meta description should entice users to click the results. So it’s hugely important. With our plugin, you can determine the title and slug and give Google a suggestion for the meta description.
Sometimes there’s more to these snippets than just these three elements. In that case, we call the snippets a rich snippets and you’ll learn more about the rich snippets and other rich results later in this course. Sometimes a snippet is apart from the regular search results all the way at the top of the page. This is called a featured snippet. A featured snippet is a highlighted search box that answers the question you type into the Google search bar. Featured snippets often appear as a paragraph or a bulleted list, accompanied by an image. And if you perform voice search Google may read out the information in the search results. As voice search is becoming increasingly popular is becoming more and more important to aim for featured results.
The knowledge graph box appears on the right side of the search results. Let’s look at the Yoast knowledge graph for example. According to Google, this information is retrieved from many different, including the CIA world fact book and Wikipedia. Like featured results, information from the knowledge graph can be used to answer spoken questions in Google Assistant and Google Home voice queries. We’ll go into knowledge graphs in more detail in the module on rich results.
An answer books appears somewhere between the organic search results. It’ll give suggestions for questions that relate to the search query. You type in. If you’re searching for Yoast CEO, you’ll encounter this answer box between the organic search results. Clicking on one of the suggestions will give a direct answer to the specific question you asked.
So there you have it. The Google search results page is more complicated than it seems at first sight. Now that you have an idea of how Google works, let’s explore the field of SEO and how you can make sure that you reach that top position.
Hey, in this video, you’ve learned exactly what the Google search results space looks like, but there are a lot of elements on there and you’re likely to forget them if you don’t make sure it ends up in your long term memory. So why not get the training experience to make sure you actually remember this in the long run. It’s completely free. The actual SEO for beginners training has all additional reading materials, quizzes, and other tools that help you to actually practice your new skills. When you complete the training, you’ll also receive an official Yoast certificate of completion and a discount for our auditor training courses. Check out the full course in the description below.”
