SERPs : Also Known As Search Engine Results Pages

SERPs, short for search engine result pages, is the output of search engines when they display results for a user’s search query. The page consists of two parts: the bigger section is on the left side, comprising of natural search results whereas you can find sponsored links on the right side, if there’s at least one advertiser who’d like to advertise against that keyword or phrase.

Natural Search Results

Search engines aim to provide its users with relevant results for their search queries. In order to do so, they send out crawlers to gather information about as many websites as possible. When a user performs a search, search engines determine which websites might be relevant for that query.
The way these algorithms, that preform the assessment, work is a very well-kept secret, therefore one could only reverse-engineer how they might work. Natural search results cannot be influenced directly, the only way to get better ranking is to create/adjust your site in a way that is search engine-, and thus user-friendly. When search engines assess your website’s they consider the following:

• How clear the structure of you site is, how easy it is to navigate
• Quality and quantity of inbound links so search engines can see what other sites think about your site
• Quality of content is also important, the more content you have, the better
• Use of standards and different measures to ease browsing for all audiences (i.e. alt tags, anchor texts, etc.)

Paid Search Results

Sponsored links are visually separated from natural search results. These ads only appear if there is at least one advertiser who has relevant ads to the user’s search query. The size of the ads is limited and the SERP can only consist of eleven ads. Just like in case of natural search, relevancy is key when it comes to paid search. In paid search you need to pay only if a user clicks on your ad (hence the name ppc, short for pay-per-click). The more relevant your ad is, the less you have to pay, thus incentivizing you to create more relevant ads so both you, the user and the search engine can profit from it.