CRM. CPC. SEO. CTA. Digital marketing is chock full of acronyms and jargon. But memorizing all of them is virtually impossible unless you make your living developing digital marketing strategies and campaigns. However, there are some acronyms that local business owners need to know to successfully market their business online. And SERP is one of them.
In this post, we’ll explain exactly what a SERP is and dig into its purpose and value to local businesses. Let’s get started.
What is a SERP?
Simply put, SERP stands for search engine result page. It comprises all the blog posts, videos, featured snippets, sites, paid ads, FAQs, and related questions and search terms that pop up when a query is made on a search engine like Google or Bing.
For example, if you were to google the term “restaurants in Knoxville,” everything that pulled up on the web page would be considered part of that SERP. And, if you were to click one of the small numbers at the bottom of the page, you would be redirected to the next result page. And so on.
SERPs exist to organize information for the user – making it skimmable and simplifying the selection of more relevant information. And with the help of SEO (search engine optimization) algorithms, SERPs make it easy for businesses to create content around informational, navigational, and transactional queries.
Why does any of this matter to a local Knoxville company? Here are 3 reasons.
SERP Rankings Determine Who Sees Your Website
While many Google queries return millions of results, most users never make it past the first SERP. In fact, 75% of all clicks are received by the first three sites that pop up. And 25% of those clicks are received by the first site on the first result page.
Bottom line? Your website traffic (and sales) is dependent on the position your content and PPC ads hold on SERPs. The further down they are, the less likely your customers are to find you or buy from you.
And the opposite is also true. If you rank 1st on the first SERP and win the featured snippet, you’ll naturally generate more traffic and sales than a company on the third or fourth SERP.
Result Pages Let You Compete with Large Corporations
While you compete with local Knoxville businesses, your largest competitors are arguably the corporations and franchise chains in your area, like Walmart and Target. Not only do they have multiple locations across the city, but they also have decades of brand awareness to fall back on. That means your ads and website must as visible as theirs (or more so) if you want to compete online.
Accessible to anyone and everyone, SERPs level the playing field between businesses by allowing you to rank organically using keywords. With SERPs, you can target your audience with your value proposition and drive traffic to your website using blog content, video, infographics, landing pages, and more. And the more high-quality content you publish, the more your overall brand authority will grow.
Top Rankings Drive Business
Perhaps the biggest draw of Google’s SERPs is their connection to your customers. Since search engines allow Knoxville locals and students to generate a list of businesses by typing in a few keywords, they act as a bridge between your products and services and your customers. This often leads to greater amounts of sales – assuming that the right strategies are in place.
Understandably, many local businesses don’t have the time or know-how to capitalize on the most SERP features or strategies, though. As a result, they get buried on the 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th SERP – well out of reach of their target audience.
Offering SEO specialization for websites, landing pages, and content marketing campaigns, Slamdot enables local Knoxville businesses to rank competitively for important keywords and generate the leads and customers they’re after.
Want to boost your SERP ranking? Get in touch with our team.
