SERP data can be an invaluable treasure trove for businesses looking to maximize their visibility on the internet and reach more users. However, how you collect and analyze such data will have a significant impact on your results.
What exactly is SERP data, and why is it beneficial for SEO? Let’s take a closer look at what SERP data is comprised of and the recommended way to extract it.
What is SERP data?
Search Engine Result Pages are the web pages that a search engine such as Google returns to a user in response to a search query. They usually include both paid and organic search results and other features such as featured snippets, knowledge cards, knowledge graphs, top stories, and video results.
SERPs are often uniquely generated for each query based on several factors, such as the location and browsing history of the user. In addition, the appearance and functionality of these pages are constantly evolving as search engine providers work to offer users a more refined and intuitive experience.
Organic search results are sorted based on Google’s complex ranking algorithm, which uses hundreds of factors to determine the most relevant, high-quality pages to show the user. Some of these factors include the number of backlinks to a page, keyword density, and page loading speed, among others.
Organic search result snippets generally include the title, URL, and meta description of the result page. Google also occasionally shows rich snippets alongside results for pages with schema. Such rich snippets are displayed for products, recipes, reviews, events, movies, and software applications, among other data types.
Paid search results generally appear at the top of SERPs and are marked with a little “Ad” icon. Unlike organic results, which are ranked via Google’s algorithm, advertisers with the highest bids on specific keywords usually receive prime placement at the top of the page. However, Google also factors in other elements such as click-through rates and relevance when ranking paid ads.
Since most users only click on the first few organic results on the first page, ranking high on SERPs is a top priority for many organizations and businesses. Thus, extracting and analyzing SERP data can be very useful for search engine optimization purposes.
SERP research and analysis often involves competitor research and analyzing keyword relevancy. Through these processes, you can get helpful information about competing domains that rank for your search keywords and ensure that the keywords you target are relevant to your site’s content.
Other useful information that can be extracted from SERP data includes the click potential for specific keywords, keyword opportunities from the related searches featured at the bottom of the page, and what type of content is ranking high in the results.
How to efficiently collect SERP data
SERP data can either be collected manually or with the aid of web scraping tools and SERP APIs. While checking SERP data by hand used to be reliable and straightforward, it has become much more complicated and less reliable as SERPs have evolved.
For example, if you simply look up a keyword on Google, the results you get will be affected by several factors, including your device, search history, and location. And even if you get accurate results, it’s still a lot of time-consuming manual work and a very inefficient method of gathering SERP data at scale.
However, with a SERP API, you can quickly and efficiently scrape valuable data from Google search result pages. Using a SERP API often requires little to no technical knowledge. Most SERP APIs return search result data in the JSON format, which is easy to work with and integrate with different applications.
SERP APIs also provide real-time, accurate results, regardless of your location. In addition, you can combine multiple queries and get the results sorted automatically. You can also use third party Google Image Search APIs for getting results from Google image search pages. One of such tools is SERPMaster – it delivers Google search image data in real-time. You can choose location, device, and browser settings to get the specific data needed.
Conclusion
As you can see, SERP data is undoubtedly helpful for search engine optimization. However, it’s much better to automate the process using web scraping and SERP APIs rather than checking SERP data manually. Doing so saves valuable time and increases the accuracy and effectiveness of SERP data extraction and analysis.
