What is it?
Google can include many different formats of content directly in a results page. These are commonly called “SERP Features”
(SERP stands for ‘Search Engine Results Page’).
Some common examples are:
Many of these SERP Features have specific requirements that your page must meet in order to qualify for them. This can range from things like using an HTML list, using the correct Schema.org markup, or using videos.
Why is it important?
If your content is not in the right format you may still rank well, but you will be missing valuable opportunities to catch the eye of your audience, and to achieve a higher click-through-rate.
For SERP features like a Video Carousel, it is impossible to appear here without meeting the requirements (i.e. a video).
For other SERP features like FAQ’s, it is possible to rank without them, however meeting the requirements and achieving them increases the amount of space that your page takes up on the SERP, and can increase click-through-rates.
What to do next?
- Gather the SERP features for keywords that your site ranks for.
- Filter these to the SERP features which you do not currently own.
- Group these unowned SERP features by URL.
- For each URL go through the filtered list of SERP Features that appear for keywords that that URL ranks for, and determine which ones it is currently not eligible for.
- For each Keyword, determine the increase in traffic that you would get by owning each of the SERP features that appear for it.
(You could also use Cost Per Click here, if relevant)
- Total these traffic increases by SERP Feature to determine which will be the most impactful to implement.
- Add the requirements for these SERP features to all the pages which currently rank for keywords where it appears, but they are currently not eligible.
