Google has become the Yellow Pages of the 21^st Century. It’s the go-to for anyone wanting to do research about a particular topic or find the contact details of a specific company. It’s a goal of most companies to be top of their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for their particular keywords. However, the question must be asked: Why is this?

What are SERPs?

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are the results that Google returns once you’ve typed in a query. These results could answer your question directly or could provide more information that will help you answer your query.

If Google answers your question directly, there have probably been a lot of other people who have made similar requests and selected the same result that the search engine has served up. This means that when you make the same query, you will be served with the same answer that others have clicked on before because Google looks at it as being popular and meeting searchers’ needs.

On the other hand, if Google merely gives you a bit of information about your search topic or question, this means that not a lot of people have made the same query. Thus, Google returns results that it thinks may be of use, however, it relies on you to let it know if what it gives you is useful.

Top of mind, top of wallet

Think of your own Google search habits. How often do you venture past the first or second page of the SERPs before deciding on a website that you feel will answer your query or rather going for another search?

The truth is that not many people venture deep into the SERPs. If they are SEO specialists – who have done a great SEO course to get them where they are – they may go to pages five or six. However, the average, pressed-for-time consumer won’t do massive research to find what they are looking for.

This means that to get in front of the target audience that you want, you’ll need to get as far up the SERPs as possible. Why? Because if you’re top of the SERPs – and thus are top of mind for consumers – it will be more likely that they will buy from you as opposed to a company that they can’t reach.

Getting to the top of the SERPs

There are three ways that you can get your company to be ranked highly on the SERPs:

• SEO

SEO – or Search Engine Optimisation – is about getting into the minds of your target audience. It’s about predicting what search terms they will use to search for your products and/or services. Once you have this list, you’ll need to insert these keywords into the copy of your website strategically so that Google will realise that your website is ranked highly for the specific search terms and – as a consequence –  they will rank your website highly for queries containing these search terms.

• PPC

SEO can take quite a long time to get right. However, if you’re trying to get a new website up the ranks – or give an old website a bit of traction – you’ll need to engage in a Google PPC campaign. Of all the digital marketing disciplines, this is the most powerful as – if done right – it has the power to get you top of the Google SERPs and drive massive traffic to your website. PPC advertising can help you fill in the gaps while your SEO strategy is getting off the ground and starting to get traction.

• Content marketing

If you’re doing your website and digital marketing campaign on a shoestring budget (and even if you’re not) content marketing is by far the most cost-effective and efficient way of getting your website to climb up the SERPs. This is because if you have a depth of content that relates to the overall theme of your business, and contains the correct keywords at the correct density, you will get long-lasting and ever-green results.

Being on the first page of the Google SERPs is not out of the reach of small business who have limited digital marketing budgets. All they need to do is to make sure that the apply the best practice principles – that we’ve shared above – and success will follow.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

The Digital School of Marketing offers a myriad of online digital marketing courses, such as content marketing, digital copywriting, SEO and social media marketing. For more information, visit our website.