If you’ve considered improving your SEO for your business, it’s likely you’ve come across something known as SERP features. In this article, we’ll aim to help you better understand what this really means and briefly go over each of the SERP features you might come across!
So, what are SERP features?
As the name suggests, SERP features are found on search engine results pages and are catered to the user’s search intent. Similar to how your phone has widgets, you can think of these features as widgets that search engines place in the search results to benefit the user’s experience. Many people type their search inquiries to look up information and these features help to get answers without the need for clicking on any links. You may have also heard of this being a “Zero-Click Search” as well.
How does a Zero-Click Search affect SEO?
With SERP features being more and more present, zero-click searches are becoming increasingly popular too! As a result, many sites are experiencing fewer impressions and decreased traffic even when ranking highly because these features provide users what they need instantly. Before we go over the different types of SERP features that are out there, it’s important to keep in mind that optimizing for these features is a huge part of proper SEO now.
What SERP features should I know about?
Now we’ll dive into the different features that you might come across in your daily searches as well as ones you should know about when trying to optimize for your business.
Adwords
This is one of the more familiar features in marketing and can be identified in the SERPs with the “Ad” tag. Ads typically appear near the top of the page above any of the organic results or at the bottom below the results. These paid results will show up in the SERPs based on a few factors such as relevancy to what was searched and bid strategy by the specific brands. Since these ads appear near the top of the page, keep in mind that they’re likely to impact CTR since they push organic results further down the page.
Features Snippet
A featured snippet appears at the very top of the SERP and gives the user a brief, instant answer to their search query. The way this information is displayed can vary depending on what’s being searched but some formats include a short paragraph, a list, images, or even a widget. These featured snippets are usually found when searching for facts, events, calculations, or even famous people and have a higher CTR than regular organic results. For pages that are already ranking in the top 5 positions for a given search term, this is a huge opportunity because these snippets typically extract content from one of these pages that answers the query best.
Image Pack
With some search queries, Google will display a series of relevant images in the search results. To improve your SEO through image optimization, be sure to include keywords in the file name as well as the title and have descriptive alt text that accurately describes the image. Some other things that could help are adjusting the size of the image to make it smaller without compromising the quality.
Knowledge Card
This feature offers coverage of a wide variety of human-edited data, private data partnerships, and data from the search engine index. The appropriate information is shown based on the user’s inferred intent and, as a result, this feature isn’t easily influenced. That being said, it’s still useful to constantly update your website with complete and updated information.
Knowledge Panel
Knowledge panels are able to provide the user with a quick summary of people, things, and places with images and important dates that might be useful. Similar to knowledge cards, the information here is based on human-edited data and the search engine’s data agreements with its partners. Due to this, being able to appear in a knowledge panel is typically unattainable for most sites.
Local Pack
If a user’s search contains a specified geographic location, the results page will display a pack of three local business locations that are the most relevant to the query. A map is also shown with pins on the addresses of these businesses. This might not be as important to some B2B brands but those who have multiple physical locations could benefit from optimizing for this feature.
Local Teaser
Local teasers are very similar to the local pack in that they are shown when the user’s search has a specified geographic location included. A map is also displayed with the relevant businesses with pins on the addresses of these businesses. The way that they differ is that they also show information such as reviews, hours of operation, pricing, and sometimes promotional discounts.
People Also Ask
Based on Google’s algorithm, related questions are generated to help the user find a full and comprehensive answer to their curiosity. These questions can show up in various locations on the SERP and are integrated into the organic results. Upon clicking on the drop-down arrow, the information that’s shown is similar to what you would expect of a Featured Snippet.
Reviews
The number of reviews and rating scores will sometimes be provided for products, hotels, recipes, and other results where social proof plays a large role. This typically will appear under the URL for the page and those who have more positive reviews will be more likely to have higher click-through rates. It’s highly recommended to include schema markup for reviews on your webpage despite the fact that each industry varies.
Top Stories
The main purpose of the Top Stories feature is to show trending topics that are related to what people are searching for. The displayed results are mainly taken from Google News articles and show how long ago the story was published and who published it. If you’re curious about how to rank in the Top Stories feature, there are a few submission procedures to follow that Google is transparent about.
Shopping Results
This is similar to Adwords in the sense that these will show up as paid product listings but will also include images, prices, and the name of the store that’s selling the product. Even if you’re not looking to invest in PPC yet, this would still be important to take note of since it’s a viable option when competing against other keywords and brands that are heavily investing in Adwords already.
Video
This feature will primarily appear for specific keywords and is mainly based on the determined search intent. For example, searching up “how-to” tutorials will likely lead to a few video samples with the option of viewing more videos, which more than likely come from YouTube. Not all searches will result in a video supplement but just like reviews, video schema markup must be present on the webpage.
There are a few more features that you might come across but we hope this list has helped you begin to gain a better and more full understanding of what SERP features are and the reasons they exist! People are constantly looking for answers to their questions and search engines are doing a great job getting them what they’re looking for in as few clicks as possible. By keeping these features in mind, you’ll now be able to generate marketing strategies that properly navigate or take advantage of these helpful features.