Google’s search engine results page and small businesses future

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Search engine results page/s (SERPs) with the right ingredients in the right proportion can hugely benefit any organization irrespective of its size, nature of business and bottom-line.

Googles since its inception in the late 1990s has been doing the most stunning job of collecting, organizing and visually presenting the data to the staggering figure of 3.5 billions searches every day! It also occupies 92.18% of the market share in search engine industry. Just mind boggling really. One of its kind and trust me for a while from now. And they had the opportunity to do what they do, since then it has been a completely different world altogether. But how does it all come together? what does happen in the background when one searches for something? These are the BIG questions and if one is a fan, one must certainly find out and read more and more about it, as I try to do which will only add to the value of your business and grow you as an avid-entrepreneur such as myself. The idea behind this blog would be give the small businesses a fighting chance in the world of search marketing and if done right, trust me, anyone can reap the rewards of their hard work.

Today, I hope to share some basic knowledge on the search engine results page ( SERPs) in short. That’s when you open your browser and start any search for information, a product you might be interested in buying for someone or simply looking for a specific vendor nearby? All that is happening all thanks to the search engine, with a lot of science, art and technical knowledge the creators and their massive teams all over the planet today, have been working hard to present the user the right information at the right time at the right place i.e. on your fingertips!

So, let’s try see what we can talk about? In all, there are three different types of search engine results page which are as follows;

1. Paid results

2. Local results

3. Organic results

PAID RESULTS

Out of the three, paid ad results is pretty straight forward, which simply means when the users/brands pay some money for the advertisements which they would like to show on the google search engine results pages either with a text or a shopping ad. These today are also all about creativity, one can achieve the same with videos and images too, all of which simply adds value to the brand or creator of the content. One of the most important element here is to think about the search users’ intent. If the creator can pinpoint that, he or she can do wonders for themselves. Paid ads also involve bidding for the most relevant keywords with your competitors in your relevant industry. for your information, Google ads is also the biggest contributor to the total revenue of Google, responsible for a total revenue of 160.74 billion U.S. Dollars in advertisements alone as of 2019.

But that should not the worry for the start-ups of today at least for the start, cause one can carefully formulate a good smart strategy which would involve much of search engine optimization, local results and organic results. The small business should always start with organic results since it does not need any mullah and if done right, one can achieve the same good results as the popular and successfully running brands on Google and other search engines do.

3 types of search results

Google My Business

LOCAL RESULTS

The local results pages mainly involve the google my business (GMB) pages on search engines. The GMB pages involve providing all details about the business along with the images. The idea is to provide the correct and updated information there since it will be visited by any landing on your page? One should also make sure to do a little research on the primary and secondary keywords and provide the description of your business with the most relevant keyword/s. the business images matter too, hence having high resolution images would matter. The location i.e. the Google maps would be integrated, hence providing the right location of the business would also matter highly. The local results also called the knowledge panel on the right hand side, also features snippets which adds value to the link on Google. Eventually, the more accurate description with the right relevant keywords in the description, great images and videos of the business and all the relevant prerequisites of good google practice, in other words relevance, distance and prominence would result in higher ranking on the search engine results pages, between the ads on the top and the organic results below.

ORGANIC RESULTS

Lastly, let’s talk about the holy grail of search engine marketing, as I would like to call it, the organic results which although sounds very difficult to achieve, takes some time to show and even more difficult to maintain, as many would imagine, I beg to differ. If and when, the creators of the content, the brand and all involved in the project i.e. from the top down, understand the relevance of working on search the right way following all the good Google practices, they are bound to see the results in due time and once achieved, its more solid to keep doing the right way and maintain your position on search results pages. The organic results largely depend on the work done on the search engine optimization (on-page optimization ) i.e. knowing your audience thoroughly, zeroing on the primary and secondary keywords for your content, building a crisp, relevant content inclusive of high resolution images, videos, gifs, infographics, appropriate internal linking and limited organic back links from authoritative sites in your niche industry preferably. All these little elements once cross checked in its entirety, will result in higher ranking for your content on the organic search results pages in due time. Once the goal is achieved, one must also always keep their respective content updated and relevant.

These were some of the ways to promote your small businesses but the most optimal way to start would be the organic and local results for all Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) across the board. If followed and done the hygiene check for all small enterprises’’ content optimization for local and organic results, they will most certainly see the day when they are competing with the big boys at the table!

Happy content-building!

#searchresults #searchengineresultspage #SERPs #googlemybusiness #digitalmarketing #MSMEs