Wikopedia describes the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) as “the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page. A SERP may refer to a single page of links returned, or to the set of all links returned for a search query.”

The SERPs are the single most important thing with respect to search engines and optimizing your website, and in particular, the individual pages. The SERPs are the “free” way of getting targetted traffic to your site. The usual alternative is paid advertising, which is anything but free. Search Engine Optimization is the science (or art) of optimizing a website for the best SERP results possible for range of potential search terms that the webmaster is trying to improve upon for the SERPs. The higher the position on the page, preferably the first page, of the SERP the better. Most search engine users only look at the top choices on the first page.

Each search term, such as “reviewer” or “reviewer of sites“, will have different results for the respective search engine. You will even notice that the results may change from day to day for the exact same search term on the specific search engine. There are many variables to consider when optimizing your site and pages, including how and what your competition is doing on their end for the given search terms. In my opinion, the best methods for improving your SERPs for the specific search terms is to do the following:

• Use the Firefox plugins SEOQuake and Niche Watch to analyze your (and your competition’s) keyword density for a specific page, determine the amount of backlinks (preferably from pages with related content), number of indexed pages, keyword occurrences on the page, page rank, all in anchor, all in title and all in text rank for both domain and webpage information.
• Continue to add original content on your site, especially articles relating to the specific keywords.
• Give descriptive titles to the content and web pages relating to the keywords.
• If possible, use search engine friendly url’s, such as “http://www.example.com/seo/all-about-seo.html”.

It does take time to work your way toward the top of the SERPs, especially if the keywords have a lot of competition, so you will need to be patient. The important thing is to not do anything that could get you penalized by Google, since it is usually the SERPs for your site that takes the hit.