SERP analysis is the deliberate act of evaluating the different website pages that appear on the first page of search engine results for a specific keyword. This is a crucial aspect of keyword research. By analysing SERP, it’s possible for you to discover what aspects of your website SEO strategies are working or not. You also identify opportunities to optimize for better results.
Why is SERP Analysis important for SEO?
Search Engine Optimization involves taking various measures to ensure your website ranks high on the SERP. To rank better, it’s crucial to understand the best practices and implement them. But a business won’t know what works if they don’t follow up on what’s happening on the SERPs keenly.
SERP analysis is an avenue you could use to monitor your website’s performance and your competition. Analyzing pages on the SERP enables you to identify the position of your content on the search engine results. It also shows you the pages ranking higher than you. By studying them, you’re likely to discover something they are doing better than you. You’ll then use your findings to inform your SEO strategies.
SERP analysis will also enable you to discover how a certain SEO action is affecting your results. When you watch the results after implementing distinct strategies over time, it’s possible to determine what’s working and tactics that aren’t working. This information is crucial in deciding which SEO activities to focus on.
Analysing a SERP will also help you to:
● Discover new keywords
As you look at the performance of keywords you’ve used in your content, it’s also an opportunity to notice keywords you haven’t used in your content before. This could be from your competitor’s pages or Google’s related search terms. Add these to your list and begin filling in the content gaps.
● Assess keyword difficulty
It’s not enough to prepare a long list of potential keywords. You need to go further and check the pages that are ranking for each keyword. If you notice most of the pages ranking high for a keyword are from popular domains, it could be hard to out-rank them. This enables you to look at other options or opportunities you could exploit to rank better.
For instance, if there’s a lot of competition, you could consider long-tail options related to such keywords. You might discover long-tail keywords that match the exact phrases your target audience is using on search engines. Or, you might discover a content type and length that your competition hasn’t created yet. All these are opportunities you could use to gain a better chance of ranking your pages high.
● Determine the search intent for a certain keyword
When ranking pages, Google prioritizes content that answers the user’s query. Before creating any content for a keyword, determine the purpose of a query. It could be they were looking to buy, finding information, or just passing by. Evaluating the keyword helps you to determine whether you have the right keywords. It also empowers you to create content that applies to the user’s search intent.
How to Conduct SERP Analysis
You could go through the web pages on a SERP manually and pick the desired information. However, this process can be tedious and lengthy since you are sorting through large volumes of data. Besides, Google shows search results based on your location. This means you’ll be analysing one-sided information that might not give you a conclusive picture.
Fortunately, it’s easy to beat the challenges associated with manual SERP analysis with an automated tool. There are various SERP analysis tools in the market today. They include Moz, SERP checker, Ahrefs, and SEMrush, among others. If you get a robust tool, it should collect a reasonable amount of data and give various SEO metrics. The only drawback is that a powerful SEO tool will come at a fee. This could be a hindrance to small businesses working with limited budgets.
A third option that can enable you to gather high volumes of data quickly and at a lower cost is Google scraping. Take, for instance, SERPMaster, a tool that can harvest data from search engine results in real-time and save it in a structured format. You just need to define the data parameters you want from these pages. Save it in your desired format for future analysis. Google scrapers are automatic. Once you set the parameters, they don’t require human input and will give updated data any time you need it.
Conclusion
For every SEO activity, your goal is to make your website rank higher on the search engines. To create a formidable strategy, you need to gain a clear understanding of what’s happening on the search engine results pages. This you can easily do by studying the SERPs. SERP Analysis gives important SEO insights, such as the best word count range for content on certain keywords, suitable content structure, unique content ideas, and ideas to optimize your page for featured snippets. To learn more about SERP analysis basics, take a check out this blog post.
