30-second summary:
- Search equity allows for your average business owner to compete on the SERP without being impeded by a lack of SEO-knowledge
- A more equitable SERP is a necessity for Google from a business and overall web-health perspective
- Google is pushing for equity on the SERP to a far greater extent
- The democratization of the SERP represents an enormous paradigm shift that brings certain SEO skills to the fore
What would happen if instead of having to jump through hoops to rank your new website, you were given a seat at the SERP straight away? Presumably, that would cause all sorts of havoc for SEO professionals. What if I told you that there’s a strong push at Google to do just that? I call it “search equity”. It’s Google trying to remove optimization barriers so site owners (aka business owners) can focus on creating great content and reap the benefits of it.
It’s a move that I think Google is pushing hard for and has already taken steps towards.
What is search equity?
Search equity is the ability for a site to be able to compete at some level of significance on the SERP without being impeded by technical structures. It is the ability for a site to rank its content solely because that content is worthy of being consumed by the searcher.
As such, search equity would mean that sites with limited resources can compete on the SERP. It means they would not need to have an overly complex understanding of SEO on a technical level and from a content structure perspective (think things like page structure and other technical SEO aspects).
Search equity gives a business owner the ability to be visible on the SERP and in many ways helps to preserve the overall health