There’s gold in them thar SERPs…gold I tell ya!
Now, whether that phrase takes you back to a simpler (maybe? I don’t know, I was born in the 80s) time of gold panning, Mark Twain, and metallurgical assay — or just makes you want some Velveeta shells and liquid gold (I also might be hungry) — the point is, there is a lot you can learn from analyzing search results.
Search engine results pages (SERPs) are the mountains we’re trying to climb as SEOs to reach the peak (number one position). But these mountains aren’t just for climbing — there are numerous “nuggets” of information to be mined from the SERPs that can help us on our journey to the mountaintop.
Earning page one rankings is difficult — to build optimized pages that can rank, you need comprehensive SEO strategy that includes:
- Content audits
- Keyword research
- Competitive analysis
- Technical SEO audits
- Projections and forecasting
- Niche and audience research
- Content ideation and creation
- Knowledge and an understanding of your (or your client’s) website’s history
- And more.
A ton of work and research goes into successful SEO.
Fortunately, much of this information can be gleaned from the SERPs you’re targeting, that will in turn inform your strategy and help you make better decisions.
The three main areas of research that SERP analysis can benefit are:
- Keyword research
- Content creation
- And competitive analysis.
So, get your pickaxe handy (or maybe just a notebook?) because we’re going to learn how to mine the SERPs for SEO gold!
Finding keyword research nuggets
Any sound SEO strategy is built on sound keyword research[1]. Without keyword research, you’re just blindly creating pages and hoping Google ranks them. While we don’t fully understand or know every signal in Google’s search algorithm — I’m pretty