Also known as SERP
SERPs is an acronym meaning ‘search engine results pages’. From a copywriting and grammar pedant’s perspective, it’s annoying that the ‘s’ gets included in the acronym, but here we are.
If your website is beloved by Google and other search engine crawlers, you will appear high up in SERPs, and therefore you will be considered to be ranking highly.
If your website is a bit of a stinker and is loved by nobody, then you will not rank well. Therefore you will be low in the SERPs.
When talking about SERPs in the context of conversations around SEO then, we are usually focussing on the organic results part of search engine results pages. But SERPs contain results (and therefore links to websites) not influenced by SEO. One example is paid adverts in the form of Google Ads.
Why is SERP important to SEO?
Reporting on rankings, or SERPs placements is considered to be an important part of SEO reporting. But in reality, simply ranking highly is not a reliable measure of how well a website is performing.
Google shows slightly different results to everyone, based on location, search history and a whole load of other influencing factors. This is why we use rank tracking software like Semrush, which works out an indicator of rankings based on results averaging.
If you regularly visit your own website by searching for it then Google will make a note of this, and you’ll likely see your website rise up the rankings. Google knows you’re looking for it, so they’re just trying to be helpful. But if someone else searches for your website, they will likely see it far lower in SERPs, especially if they have never searched for it before.
You might rank highly for a search term that nobody is searching for, but you should aim to rank for a keyword that is popular and has good ‘search intent’. This is why keyword research is so important.
SERP – explain it to me like I’m five years old, please!
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. This page comes up when you type something into a search engine and results appear.
