A search engine results page, or SERP as it is known in short, is the listing of web pages that are displayed by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page. A SERP may refer to a single page of links returned, or to the set of all links returned for a search query.



Some of the more major search engines such as Google and Yahoo may include different types of listings i.e. contextual algorithmic or organic as well as sponsored listings, images and maps. In order to get your website listed highly in the search engine results page you need to undertake search engine optimisation. The process of search engine optimisation or SEO as it is known in short, involves designing and promoting your website so that it is picked up by the major search engines. Without the help of SEO your website doesn't stand a chance of ranking highly in the search engine results page.

If you want your website to have more traffic driven to it and in effect gain more customers then you ideally want your website to appear within the top 30 results pages, after this 30 position you have less and less chance for someone visiting your site as they will use the help of your competitors who appear higher within the search engines.

SEO work is what will get your website into these top 30 spaces within the search engine results. This SEO work covers all aspects of search engine results including web results, image results and industry specific results.

A search engine results page is the page that appears in response to you searching for a keyword within a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. Some search engines cache SERPs for frequent searches and display the cached SERP instead of a live SERP to increase the performance of the search engine. The search engine updates the SERPs periodically to account for new pages, and possibly to modify the rankings of pages in the SERP.

SERP refreshing can take several days or weeks which can occasionally cause results to be inaccurate or out of date, and new sites and pages to be completely absent. If you want your website to have the best possible chance of ranking highly within the search engines then you need to keep in mind the design and content of your website. For example it is important to have unique Meta data on as many pages of your website as possible. You should make sure that these are different as search engines want to know that every page of your website is different. Another way to make sure that every page of your website is different is by ensuring that every page of your website has unique text and information; you should try to write specific text for every page of your website.

If you have a 50 page website and every page has unique content but all the titles and descriptions are the same then a web surfer will have a hard time determining which page of your website is worth visiting and in effect won't use your site.

As long as you enlist the help of an SEO specialist to make sure that your site is designed and promoted in the correct way you will give yourself the best chance of appearing in the top 30 results of the major search engines.