How to Do SERP Analysis Like an Expert

A search engine results page (SERP) is the page that appears when you type a query into a search engine like Google or Bing.

Decades ago, SERPs were simple. They were almost all a list of 10 or so links to different web pages. 

Today, they are vastly more complicated, with several different sections and features—and that’s before we even touch on the introduction of AI into search results! If that weren’t enough, the layout of results pages can change drastically between different keyword types. 

The complexity of today’s results pages means a SERP analysis is essential to the SEO process. You need to know which SERP features appear for your target keywords and which sites you compete with. That way, you can tailor your optimization efforts and focus your energy on keywords worth your time and effort.

In this article, I’ll explain what a SERP analysis is, what types of SERP results there are, how SERP features affect rankings, and how you can run a Google SERP analysis. 

So, if you’re ready to learn what a search engine result page is and how SERPs can affect your keyword rankings, let’s dive in!

Key Takeaways

• Doing a SERP analysis involves examining how your website performs on the search engine result pages and determining what types of SERP features to optimize your content for in order to direct more traffic to your site.
• There are many types of SERP features, including paid, organic, video, featured snippets, and the Local Pack.
• Click-through rates for each SERP feature vary considerably. Understanding which features get clicked on the most can help you focus your optimization efforts. 
• Understanding search intent is crucial to ensure your content answers users’ queries. A SERP analysis is the most critical step in assessing intent. 
• A SERP analysis is even more important in 2024 with the introduction of AI overviews. The results for informational keywords have changed drastically and SEOs will need to shift strategies accordingly. 
• Conducting a competitive analysis to see which keywords your competitors focus on can give you insights into their strategies and find opportunities to outrank them.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Is SERP Analysis and Why Does It Matter?
• What Types of SERP Results Are There?
  • Paid SERPs 
  • Organic SERPs
    • AI Overviews
    • Featured Snippets
    • Local Pack
    • Shopping Results
    • People Also Ask 
    • Video
    • News Box
    • Reviews
    • Knowledge Panel
• How to Do a SERP Analysis 
  • 1. Choose the Right Tools
  • 2. Find Your Keywords
  • 3. Understand Search Intent
  • 4. Check Out the Current Results
  • 5. Find Ranking Opportunities
  • 6. Optimize Your Content
  • 7. Track Your Results
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What Is SERP Analysis and Why Does It Matter?

Understanding the SERPs is a core part of any SEO strategy. After all, the whole point of SEO is to optimize your website so it shows up at the top of the results pages for your target keywords.  

So don’t ignore them! 

Instead, run a SERP analysis so you know what you’re competing against before you roll up your sleeves and get to work improving your on- and off-page SEO.

“But What is a SERP analysis?” you might ask.

A SERP analysis is the process of assessing the results page for a given keyword. This process helps you understand the search intent behind a given keyword, discover featured snippet opportunities, optimize for rich snippets, and determine which competitors use the same keywords as you and their strategies. 

For example, if I’m trying to rank for the term “What is SEO?” a SERP analysis will show that I’ve got a lot of features to compete with, including an AI overview that takes up half the page, a knowledge box, and a People Also Ask box. Only one organic link is above the fold!

Your typical SERP analysis has four steps:

• Running a search for your chosen keyword
• Analyzing the top-performing sites
• Deciding if a specific keyword is relevant to your niche/website
• Assessing if you could rank for the same keyword

Without a thorough SERP analysis, planning out a proper content strategy, reaching the top positions in the SERPs, and building a significant volume of organic traffic will likely be tough.

What Types of SERP Results Are There?

When you look at a Google SERP or any other search engine results page, there are two core types of results: organic and paid.

The click-through rates for each vary. For example, the top organic result is 39.8 percent, and the featured snippet (another organic result) has a CTR of 42.9 percent. The top paid ad, in comparison, has a CTR of just 2.1 percent. 

Given the huge variance in click-through rates, it’s important to understand what each type of result does so you can determine whether it’s worth targeting. Keep in mind that sometimes in your SERP analysis you may find there’s opportunity to rank within multiple different SERP features. For example, your content may appear in both the AI Overview and People Also Ask, or in both a traditional organic ranking and an AI Overview ranking. 

Paid SERPs

Google Ads lets websites pay to show up at the top of the SERP pages for their chosen keywords. These sites pay Google every time someone clicks their ad.

These results are displayed at the top and bottom of the SERP and have “Sponsored” written in bold letters above the URL. You can see an example below:

As you can tell from their prominence at the top of the SERP, these ads can be crucial in getting targeted traffic to your website. This can be multiplied by running paid advertising campaigns alongside search engine optimization (SEO) to get more presence for certain keywords.

Organic SERPs

We’re all used to the traditional organic listing of a meta title and description, but Google has added more SERP features in recent years. Competition for organic results is fierce and more complicated than paid listings.

However, if you do a SERPs analysis, learn how to rank your pages in the SERPs, and earn people’s clicks, you’ll see far more organic traffic.

AI Overviews

Google’s been using AI in its algorithm for a long time, but it’s become front and center for users with the recently released AI Overviews, an AI-based feature that summarizes results for informational keywords. While available only to U.S. searchers at the time of writing, it will be launched in more locations and languages soon.  

In Google’s words, AI Overviews will appear:

“…when our systems determine that generative responses can be especially helpful — for example, when you want to quickly understand information from a range of sources, including information from across the web and Google’s Knowledge Graph.”

Google’s goal is to deliver a more conversational and personalized search result that helps them find answers without clicking on a single link. It may help to think of AI Overviews as featured snippets on steroids.

AI Overviews sit at the top of the SERP and often take up almost all of the above-the-fold space. As such, this feature could hit your clickthrough rates hard unless you’re optimized enough to be featured as one of the resources in the AI Overview. 

While Google says there’s is nothing you can do to increase your chances of appearing as a resource other than following its regular guidance, there are some general pieces of advice that can help. Nikki Lam, VP of SEO at NP Digital, explains that “In simple terms, build up your brand across the web, focus on making your content helpful and easy to digest, and always be thinking about improving your E-E-A-T.”

In fact, at NP Digital, preliminary SEO tests show that optimizing content to better reflect the structure and conciseness of content shown in AI Overviews can help improve AI Overview visibility in as little as a few days.​

Featured Snippets

A featured snippet is a short summary or answer found at the top of the SERP. Google uses them to quickly give searchers the information they want without having to scroll through multiple pages. These results, which can appear as sentences, tables, or videos, increase your visibility, drive extra traffic, and boost brand awareness.

Local Pack

The local pack is the three business listings you see close to the top of a SERP when searching for a local product or service. It is displayed alongside a map showing the businesses’ locations.

You might also hear it called the Google Map Pack, or Google 3-Pack.

Like featured snippets, the Local Pack helps websites increase visibility and traffic. It’s essential for brick-and-mortar local businesses that want to stand out in SERPs.

Shopping Results

If you’ve ever entered a shopping query online, such as “best deals on iPhones” or “king-sized beds,” then you’ll already be familiar with this type of SERP.

But you don’t just get these listings by having an online store. If a business wants to appear in the Shopping Results, it must create a product feed that details all the core information about a product, like its name, description, images, and pricing.

People Also Ask

The People Also Ask result is a list of three or four questions that Google provides answers to in addition to your original query. 

Google uses it to give customers additional information without searching for something else. You can use this feature to make sure you cover your topic in detail and increase site traffic by getting Google to include your site’s answer. 

Video

Google provides two types of video results. The first is a normal organic result but with the addition of a video thumbnail. 

In the past, you could get this kind of video result by using schema markup, even if video was just a small part of the page. Recently, however, Google has tightened things up, and it will now only show this result when video is the main content on a page. 

The second is a video pack result showing three video thumbnails and short descriptions. These are much more common and typically show results from YouTube — although Google will occasionally feature videos hosted on Vimeo and other platforms.

News Box

The News Box, also known as Top Stories, appears when users search for current affairs topics or any other query about which recent news stories have been published. 

Getting your site featured in these results is difficult as you’ll need to set up your publication in Google’s Publisher Centre.

Reviews

Reviews are a form of rich result that appears next to website listings in Google when people search for a broad range of educational and transactional queries like product purchases and reviews.  

If I search for the Dyson Hair Dryer, for example, I can see reviews included in links for Dyson and Amazon. You can also see them in travel and dining-related searches. 

Knowledge Panel

Google’s knowledge panel is a coveted SERP feature located at the very top on the right-hand side. It only appears for well-known people, places, organizations, or things.

You can see my Knowledge Panel result below:

These features are a fantastic way to increase your personal or company’s visibility, improve your reputation, and drive more traffic. 

You can’t apply for a knowledge panel, but you can increase your chances by getting as much information about yourself or your company on the web as you can, including social media profiles and a Wikipedia page. 

How to Do a SERP Analysis

A SERP analysis can help you understand how to improve your existing presence on a results page or decide whether a particular keyword is worth targeting.

Below, I’ll show you how to check SERP rankings, find opportunities, and optimize your content. It’s a fairly straightforward process. So roll up your sleeves and let’s get started.

1. Choose the Right Tools

While you can manually search for each SERP you want to analyze, I recommend using one of the following three tools to speed up the process:

1. Ubersuggest: Use my tool to find backlink data and top SEO pages to see which of your competitors rank for top organic keywords, content ideas, and keyword suggestions.

2. Mangools SERP checker: This free Google SERPs analysis tool gives you local SERPs for over 50k locations and discovers competitors’ weak spots. Just enter your keyword, select your location, choose from “desktop” or “mobile, and click “analyze SERP.” 

3. Moz Pro SERP Analysis Tool: Moz’s “Keyword Explorer” lets you perform a SERP analysis. Add your keyword, choose your location, and click “Analyze.” You can then click “SERP Analysis” on the left side or find “SERP Analysis” in the box at the bottom right-hand side of the dashboard — labeled “E” in the diagram below. 

2. Find Your Keywords

Begin by assessing keyword difficulty and traffic potential of potential keywords. Once again, my keyword research tool, Ubersuggest, comes in clutch. Just type in a seed keyword and click on the Keyword Ideas tab.

You’ll see an estimated monthly search volume and an SEO difficulty score ranging from 1 to 100.  

You should also consider doing a competitor analysis to see which keywords they focus on and where they might fall short. 

Another option is AnswerThePublic. This search listening tool gives you consumer insights to discover new ideas for content, products, and services.

3. Understand Search Intent

If you want to rank high in Google, your content must match your chosen keywords’ search intent. 

Search intent can fall into the following categories: 

• Informational, where searchers looking for answers

• Navigational, where searchers looking for a specific website

• Transactional, when the searcher is looking to buy

• Commercial, when a person is actively researching products or services

You can tell search intent from a quick look at the results. Blog posts? Probably informational. Maps and local listings? My bet would be navigational. Product listings? I’d wager it’s transactional. 

Make sure you analyze intent for every keyword you want to target, ruling out any that don’t match your website’s offering. In other words, if you run a blog that doesn’t sell products, don’t waste your time with transactional keywords 

4. Check Out the Current Results

The next step is to assess how you and your competitors fare in the SERPs. Run a search for each of the keywords you found in step 2 and make a note of where you and your competitors place. 

Understanding where you place (if you rank at all) is a great way to identify keywords with content optimization opportunities. After all, if you’re already ranking, you may not need to create a brand-new piece of content. 

For your competitors, make a note of key metrics like:

• Page authority
• Domain authority 
• Word count
• Number of links to the page
• Number of links to the domain
  

Becky McManus, Sr. SEO Strategist at NP Digital, adds that “a few of the most important elements to analyze in SERPs for a specific keyword is the different types of content for 

1) who is being rewarded for top spots (length, format, design of pages, etc.)  

2) what is being added to the SERPs by Google (rich results, features, etc.) 

It’s also crucial to understand how that looks over time. The SERPs are constantly changing and evolving every day, so a one-time look at them isn’t going to give you the full picture.”

You can use a browser plugin like the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar or the MozBar to find this information quickly. 

Here’s what SERPs look like with the Ahrefs extension, for example:

Other tools you can use are Google’s Search Console for your click-through rate data and Google’s Keyword Planner for finding keywords.

5. Find Ranking Opportunities

Now that you know who ranks where in the SERPs for your target keywords, you can start mining the results for opportunities. 

In situations where your content is ranking but it’s not in the top three results, use the metrics you gathered in the above step to see if there’s anything obvious you could do to improve. 

Building more backlinks to the page may work if your competitors have way more links. Or you might need to write more content if your page has content gaps.

For keywords you’re targeting with fresh content, you can use the top results to structure your article. Consider the following things:

• What format should it take? (blog, product page, etc.)
• How long are the top results?
• How many images do they have?
• Do they include videos?
• What headings do they use?
• What keywords do they target?
• Is there an angle I can take to stand out?

Finally, you can also use a content optimization tool like Surfer SEO or Frase to see which keywords you need to optimize new or existing content for.

As you can see in the image above, there are a few keywords I can add to my What is SEO article to improve its rankings.

6. Optimize Your Content

Now it’s time for action. Take what you’ve learned in the previous steps and apply it to your content creation and optimization efforts. 

You’ll want to make sure your content is better than anything else currently ranking in the SERPs for your keywords. That means your content should be:

• Longer (but only write more if you have more to say)
• More in-depth (Break bigger topics into several articles to cover them in detail)
• More up-to-date (constantly updating and refreshing old articles is vital)
• Better optimized (both on-page and off-page)
• Unique (by adding a new angle or take to the conversation)
• More authoritative (through first-party data and expert quotes)

Don’t forget about the user experience of your website, too. A mobile responsive website is essential. But also check the performance of your page and improve Core Web Vitals if necessary. Pay particular attention to Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, too.

7. Track Your Results

Make sure you’re tracking the results of your hard work. A rank tracker can automate the process of measuring results and tracking improvement in rankings over time.

But I urge you to manually review your most important SERPs every week or so to see what’s changed. Make sure you’re doing this in a private browser so your previous browsing habits don’t impact the results.   

Check how the rankings have changed, whether you’ve moved up or down, and whether any new competitors have appeared. Pay attention to the layout of the SERPs, too. Has Google introduced or removed any features? Have AI Overviews appeared on the page? A rank tracking tool can tell you if your rankings increase or fall, but it’s only by using your own eyes that you’ll identify new issues or opportunities. 

FAQs

Conclusion

The SERPs are constantly evolving, and there’s a greater mix of results, including video content and AI Overviews. Other recent changes include zero-click content and a greater emphasis on search intent. That’s why you need to know how to do a SERP analysis and carry it out regularly. I’d recommend it every few months.

A regular SERP analysis can maximize your opportunities for getting noticed online; combine your analysis with high-quality, relevant content and the right promotional strategy, and you’ll go a long way to attracting your ideal audience. Now that you understand the importance of a SERP analysis, you can make it a regular part of your routine and optimize your SEO to help your website achieve its goals.