Google Research Notes: SERP Refinements and What They Mean To You

POSTED BY: Jake Doran   /  CATEGORIES: Branding, Content Optimisation, Keywords, Online PR Agency, Papers, SEO, Social Media Agency, Social SEO
POSTED ON: 24 Nov 2009
TAGS: Content Optimisation, Content Optimization, Google, Keywords, Online PR Agency, SEO, Social media resource, Social SEO

Here at C&M, we like to stay abreast of what those clever peeps at Google are up to, and recently they’ve been making some slight changes to their search engine. Which may not sound like much, but a small change on Google’s part can cause huge changes in the way that you use search.

And they’ve been especially busy recently, tinkering with their SERPs, adding new functionality and tightening up all the nuts and bolts on their search behemoth. Handily, we’ve rounded up some of these new changes and are going to share them with you… Yes, you.

Three Results in the SERPs

What it is…
Three results pages – due to a double indent – are appearing in Google (first position) results in response to search queries. This means that more than two pages can be optimised for a single term without ranking conflicts.

What it means…
You may be able to optimise more pages for similar terms in the future and also occupy more search space if you achieve first spot on the SERP: the position to aim for. However, this is a recent development and only present on pages that rank in first position or for branded searches. More reading here.

Meta Description Links (as well as Site Links)

What it is…
Links to other site pages are appearing below meta descriptions. Although the links that appear are determined by Google’s algorithms, they are influenced by the main links that appear on a given page.

What it means…
The most important pages on the site should be linked to using the main navigation. For instance, a link to a ‘Trade-In Offer’ page from the home page – within the main navigation – may encourage the appearance of one of these links on a SERP and result in better click-through rates. Read more about this here.

Rich Snippets

What it is…
Google is experimenting with rich snippets, in which additional content can be added to a webpage in a supported format (either microformats or RDFa), which is then returned in the search results near the meta description. At the moment, Google is mainly displaying reviews and people information.

What it means…
If positive information is displayed then it may encourage clickthroughs, as well as allowing a site to occupy more search ‘real estate’. More reading here, and here

Google SideWiki

What it is…
Google now allows users (who have installed the Google Toolbar) to install the SideWiki system and leave comments about a web page. These comments can then be viewed by other users. At the moment this is only available to users who have installed the toolbar – but this is not an insignificant number of users and will definitely increase.

This will allow Google to directly monitor sentiment about a given page and could even be used to rank pages in the future. This reinforces the idea that being useful (and indexable) is important.

What it means…
People can review your products, services within a SideWikis, and publicly comment on any part of your site. But be warned, this can of course, go both ways and you could receive negative reviews as well as positive ones. Find out more here.

Google User Data to Rank Pages

What it is..
Google seems to be developing its algorithm to take into account user search patterns, click-through rates and bounces, as well as traditional cues such as links. This is backed up by patent applications, as well as inferences from search results and the observations of the SEO blogging community.

What it means…
If – as public information seems to suggest – Google is boosting those pages that have better click throughs than others, then meta descriptions (the text that, by and large. features under a page title in a SERP) become an even more important factor for SEO. They need to contain keywords, and they need to be snappy enough (with a call to action) to encourage a a higher rate of click through. Whilst this is SEO / content optimisation 101, it’s a great reason to revisit any your more dusty metadata. Further reading on this can be found here

Google Blog Search Results Embedded in SERPs

What it is..
Check the bottom of your search results pages. The above example is a search for ‘Social Media Agency.’ As well as including ‘related searches’, Google is now including blog post results from its Blog Search index. In other words, it’s now inserting relevant, real-time results from a fresher content store (the two indexes are, of course, different – one deals with all web pages, the other deals with blog post pages only… which means that blog search results tend to be more up-to-date, real time affairs).

What it means…
Happily, against the search in question, we currently rank as both a web page in the main listing, but also as a blog post in the ‘Blog Post’ section. Over time, we need to work hard to maintain and improve our position in the main results. But it’s a lot easier to bolster this position by blogging regularly around our core keyword themes. Short term, if we don’t blog about being a ‘Social Media Agency’ we’ll be replaced in the Blog results by newer blog post content, whilst our position in the main listing is likely to be more stable. So, the point is clear: blog more about around your core keyword categories and feature twice on a page one SERP.

That’s all for now, but Google being Google, there will almost certainly be more changes on the way. And when they do, you know where to come for our thoughts and theories.

 

POSTED BY: Jake Doran   /  CATEGORIES: Branding, Content Optimisation, Keywords, Online PR Agency, Papers, SEO, Social Media Agency, Social SEO
POSTED ON: 24 Nov 2009
TAGS: Content Optimisation, Content Optimization, Google, Keywords, Online PR Agency, SEO, Social media resource, Social SEO

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