Almost all of us rely on search engines today to find information, know about brands, shop, and find solutions to our problems. Thus, brands from every other industry focus on convincing search engines to increase their visibility and reach their target audiences.
However, ranking high on search engines is not that straightforward. Many factors play a critical role in search rankings, and site owners need to address every aspect to push their sites high on search engines. Plus, a popular search engine like Google often updates its search algorithms to offer valuable and relevant content to its users.
In today’s competitive market, SEO marketing is more crucial than ever. Keyword research is the first and foremost step towards best SEO practices. So, how can your website rank high for relevant keywords? There comes the need for SERP analysis.
What is SERP Analysis?
SERP is nothing but a Search Engine Results Page. SERP analysis is the process of exploring the search engine results page to assess and review the top ranking websites. It is actually a marketing tactic followed by digital marketers to improve the chances of outranking the competitors in their business arena.
Yes, with SERP analysis, one can examine the top-ranking websites and identify relevant keywords to outperform the competitor's rankings. Often, marketers review the top ranking websites for specific keywords and searches and discover how they rank higher in searches.
However, SERP analysis is not only about rankings. Other than rankings, it has various elements like featured snippets, locations, images, related searches, and more. You can leverage those data to optimize your website and improve your rankings on search engines.
Why Should You Perform SERP Analysis?
When you do keyword research, you can gather many technical details about each keyword like search frequency, complexity, and value. But mere keyword research and these details are not enough to improve your rankings. You need to conduct an in-depth analysis to enhance your search engine rankings.
When you perform a thorough SERP analysis, you will discover various data related to Domain and Page Authority, Link Metrics, Content Types and Formats, SERP Volatility, and User Intent. With all of this valuable data, you can:
- Make use of relevant keywords for your niche.
- Discover new keywords and improve backlink opportunities.
- Come up with creative content ideas.
- Improved traffic for the relevant keyword.
- Enhanced chances of outperforming your competitors.
- Better ways to optimize for featured snippets.
- Attain top rankings and maintain them
- Overall increased organic traffic, improved leads, and excellent sales.
Thus, SERP analysis is a crucial step and should be a part of your SEO strategy. So, how to perform SERP analysis efficiently so you can enjoy its optimal benefits? Read on.
Quick Steps to Perform SERP Analysis:
An efficient SERP analysis involves a step-by-step approach that illustrates what to search, how to search, and how to use that information to optimize your content. You can perform the entire SERP analysis in the following steps.
Step 1: Do Your Keyword Research
So, you have finalized your topic and are all set to write about it? The first and foremost goal of your SEO efforts is to make your content rank high for all the possible relevant keywords. You can do so by targeting it for specific keywords.
To get started, make sure you create a list of valuable keywords that are relevant to your topic. Leverage any SEO tool and check for keyword ideas. You can take the parent keyword and check it on the SEO software to get various longtail variations. Thus, you will get a long list of relevant key phrases.
In short, the keywords should represent the topic and give you an idea of the search intent. Once you get the list, you can start doing the analysis immediately.
Step 2: Determine the Search Intent
Now, the next step is to identify the search intent for every keyword and make sure that they are all relevant to the topic. So, instead of assuming the search intent, it is advisable to follow a rational approach. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to find the search intent in the SERP.
- What exactly is the user searching for? Are they looking for information or products or guidance in their buying decisions?
- What content is ranking high in the SERP? Is it an informative article or a landing page of a website?
- What is the status of the search user? At which step of the sales funnel are they in now?
- What is your motive? What do you want your user to do next?
The purpose in finding the search intent is much more than ranking higher on search engines. It is all about understanding your target audience, their needs, and psychographics. Thus, you derive better marketing strategies to achieve your goals.
Hence, always go beyond the keywords. Rather than stuffing keywords in your content, try to optimize your content for search engines. Make sure you find the search intent behind the users and create content that resonates with that.
Step 3: Competitor Analysis is Inevitable:
Your business may belong to any industry. Probably you will not be the only one doing it, and there will be many others other than you doing the same. Hence, it becomes crucial to understand your competitors and their marketing tactics. Thus, you can out beat them in search rankings and boost your sales.
So, while doing SERP analysis, it becomes crucial to analyze the competitiveness of your keywords. Thus, you can understand how hard it is to rank high on search engines. Check for metrics like the domain authority of your competitors to know their reputation. That will help you understand the competitiveness and how difficult or easy to rank on SERP.
Here are a few points that you have to ensure before attempting to rank for a keyword:
- The SERP is not showing results from authorized sites, including Quora, Wikipedia, or Hubspot.
- You can do better content than the one listed higher on the SERP.
- You have that creative mind that you can improvise your content and make it more engaging and meaningful than anyone else.
Undoubtedly, competitor analysis will help you understand your brand position and your competitor’s authority. Plus, you will also know whether your desired keywords are worth targeting. You can leverage any SEO tool to create search engine optimized content.
Step 4: Strive towards higher Rankings:
Apart from high-quality content, many things play a critical role in search engine rankings. Below are a few things that one must keep an eye on to enhance their rankings:
- Check for unique but relevant keywords that your competitors are not using.
- Work on acquiring as many quality backlinks as possible. Backlinks from reputed sites will improve the credibility of your website, helping you rank higher in the SERP.
- Work on getting featured snippets that you can optimize for your keywords.
- Incorporate a FAQ column wherever possible but relevant to the topic.
- Make sure you handle a unique approach and speak a different angle through your content, standing out from your competitors.
- While targeting a local keyword, you can optimize your website to appear in the Google maps preview.
You can leverage any tools available online to track your site performance as compared to your competitors. Ideally, you have to convince Google that your published content is relevant to your niche. Thus, you can enhance your domain authority over time and help your website rank for relevant and valuable keywords.
Step 5: Optimize Your Content:
Optimizing your content is not a one-day process, and it needs utmost dedication. Whether you create content from scratch or repurpose content, you have to optimize it for better rankings.
Here are some content optimization tips that you can benefit from:
- Skyscraper technique: It is about using the highly-ranking content as a reference and enhancing it by adding more relevant, valuable data than it.
- Incorporate primary keywords: Make sure you include primary keywords in your title, intro, alt texts, and more.
- Include secondary keywords: Include secondary keywords across the headers, other sections and use alternate words for your primary keyword.
- Add value to existing content : Include more valuable sections and speak different angles to broaden your content topic. Thus, you have more chances of satisfying the search intent while reducing the bounce rate.
- Analyze your competitors : Even if your content is already ranking high, you can analyze how your readers perform by leveraging the available tools. That data will help you bridge the gap and optimize your content.
- Create Resources: Create a study or report that is valuable for your target audience and get valuable backlinks back to your site.
- Leverage writing tools: Use tools like Grammarly to make sure you write grammatical-error-free content and in precise words.
If you maintain the best content practices, you can always stay ahead of your competition. Google will see you as a credible source of information and rank you high on search engines.
Final Thoughts:
All business owners today know the importance of search engine rankings. Thus, everyone strives to make sure that their site ranks high on the search engines. However, with ever-changing Google algorithms, ranking high on search engines is easier said than done.
Moreover, SEO is not a one-day job. Doing SERP analysis and regularly conducting SEO audits is crucial for search rankings. So, are you a business owner looking for ways to improve your website’s search rankings? But do you feel intimidated by the evolving SEO and digital marketing trends?
At Cypherox Technologies, our Digital Marketing and SEO experts can make Google crawl your website by following best SEO practices. Reach us now to discuss your digital marketing services and SEO needs.
