SERP complexity and user engagement have never been more volatile. No-click searches are at an all-time high, above-the-fold visibility is fleeting and elusive, and SERP composition has never been more complex. But the real question is: will your brand stand up to the challengers or fall victim to complacency? The old adage of “grow or die” has never been truer.
What does our data show for the SERP?
Organic search faces an uphill battle against alternative SERP features, with our proprietary data showing the superior visibility of blue links at around 18% in Q1 2023.
Looking back to 2022, Top Top Positioning favored paid listings and intent-based SERP features: Our data showed that SERP prevalence in people search also grew by 156%, text ads growing by 22% and shopping ads increased by 14%. While 2023 still favors intent-based SERP features, paid listings seem to be losing ground.
In the B2B and insurance industries, Q1 2023 favored text ads and people are also asking, showing above the fold approximately 60% and 85% of the time, respectively.
In financial services, top-of-the-fold text ad appearances fell 10% quarter-on-quarter, making more room for people search features.
In retail and e-commerce, the appearance of text ads in the SERPs was cut by almost half, shopping ads were down by 6%, and the appearance of traditional organic blue links was down by 8% year-on-year. These changes in SERP composition appear to be driving product listings, as merchant listings grew 16% and accounted for 45% of total composition. It’s safe to say that 2023 will be the year of the product listing: If we consider all product listing types, around 50% of all retail SERP items are products.
We’re also looking into the great unknown with the integration of AI into the search experience. Google’s Bard and Search Generative Experience (SGE) and Bing’s Open AI partnership are already underway, adding another layer of complexity to an already complex algorithm.
So how do you stay ahead and stay visible?
The answer is a strategic search revolution that breaks down the walls between paid and organic and is firmly rooted in data. The quality of your data, the accessibility of your data across your teams, and how you interpret that data into actionable insights are non-negotiables for a successful search strategy.
The “strategic research revolution” is not as complicated as it seems. Data is the biggest key, but it’s only half the battle. Here’s a five-step process for finding success in an ever-evolving SERP landscape:
Research Your Audience Segment Consumer Insights Understand Your Competition Find Your Brand Gap Active
1. Research your audience
No one knows your audience better than they do. Keywords are your biggest audience research tool, so this is often the most underrated step in strategy development. Making sure your keyword research comprehensively covers your target landscape is critical to identifying the “why” behind the search. Forget about search volume limits: the bigger the list, the better the information.
Remember: every keyword is your users trying to find you. Understanding composition and use lets you know how to find them where they are.
2. Segment consumer information
Now that you know what your audience is looking for, what are they saying to you? What do they repeatedly search for? How many different ways are they asking the question?
The main purpose of this step is to identify what the user wants to do when they interact with your search bar.
The search is just a series of unanswered questions. Understanding the patterns and commonalities across the vast amount of search data gives us key insights into how our users enter the market. But more importantly, the data tells us how we, as a brand, can make connections in their true moment of need.
3. Understand your competition
Standing out is better than fitting in, but to do so in a relevant way requires understanding the environment in which your audience exists. This requires competitive data. Two types of competitive data are critical to understanding how to find success:
SERP composition refers to the organic and paid formats that make up the SERP itself. Competitor composition refers to the domains that compete in the SERP.
SERP composition allows you to understand the environment in which you need to find representation. Is it a payment-dominated space? How many different features and types of listings are there? What is visible above the fold?
Competitive composition makes it possible to understand the formats that allow representation in this environment. Do Informational Competitors Dominate Over Marketers? What about the types of pages that capture the top sites?
4. Find your brand gap
Now it’s time to face the biggest question of all: What is your brand not doing, or actively doing, that is limiting visibility in this SERP environment? Some things to think about:
Are you answering your users’ questions? Are you answering your users’ questions the same way they were asked? Are you answering your users’ questions in a format that resonates? Are you answering your users’ questions in the channel (paid or organic) that is visible?
Understanding your visibility gaps and your brand voice gaps highlights those key areas where strategic activation is needed to drive audience engagement.
5. Activate
Once you’ve outlined the key points from the previous four steps, the last thing your brand needs to do is apply these learnings to your current search program.
The most important point to remember is that the SERP is no longer paid or organic. It’s a battleground of mixed intents and channel-independent tokens. It’s time to integrate your visibility strategy into the SERP itself.
How to do it for your brand
Knowing what to do is one thing, but knowing how to do it for your brand is another story. Some key aspects to consider when planning your execution:
Data Management: We’re talking about a LOT of data here. Data processing and data management are key to extracting the insights that will lead to a profitable initiative. SEO/SEM Planning – Having SEO + SEM managed under one roof allows for easy data sharing and cohesive planning and leads to strategies that work together. Integration is always best when you’re on the same team, are experts in your craft, and understand that search success means total search, not a single position or a specific keyword. Implementation: Data for insights at scale is only as good as your ability to implement it at scale.
Sometimes it just takes the right partnership to do it. Due to in-house resource and experience limitations, working with an agency partner can be the key to maintaining a can’t-lose search program.
As AI permeates the search space, end-to-end search is more critical than ever. Will your brand be ready?
This article was written by Kacie Gaudiose, SEO Content Strategy Manager at Merkle.
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