Discovery is the sine qua non of digital marketing. However, wanting to be discovered is very different from actually being found on the internet.
By definition, discovery is an act of serendipity. In the digital world, this serendipity is married with consumer behaviour to provide the ‘eureka’ moment. What queers the pitch, however, is when billions of people are in the process of discovering, it isn’t just one eureka moment, but millions of them, creating a clutter that prevents serendipity.
The haystack
Consider a common problem that all of us face — fabric stains. While there are a number of products available for this purpose, we are either unaware of them or are unsure of their efficacy. To resolve the issue, we turn to Google. And herein lies the nub of the problem — the search engine had 91,620 search requests in April 2018 for this very query; getting seen in this crowd is the challenge.
Helpfully, Google organises the results on its page. This is commonly referred to as the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) list. With such a listing, the eureka moment becomes easier since searchers can scroll through and pick the listing most suited to their needs.
Getting the right position on the list is the key to being discovered. Typically, Google lists 10 items per page. Quite obviously, the earlier the listing, the better the chances of being discovered. Though the search engine itself does not publish data on which positions (measured as click-through rate or CTR) on the SERP listing lead to higher or fewer clicks, there have been other experiments, data from which is shown in Graph 1.
Graph
As can be seen, being earlier in the list has a sizeable advantage over appearing later, even though the results are on the same page. It follows, then, that the challenge of being discovered is being present earlier in the list.
~ Being first generates twice as many click-throughs as being second.
~ Being second generates 40 per cent more clicks than being in the third and so on.
However, there is no discernible pattern in the rate at which the CTR decreases between successive clicks.
Being the needle
Getting on top of the listings is determined by a Google algorithm that changes frequently. The algo takes into account many variables while displaying search results.
~ Search Intent : Based on factors such as time, device and keywords used, the search engine calibrates the results. The simplest example would be a search for restaurants at, say, 1 pm from a mobile device.
In this instance, the results would show a list of restaurants around the location from which the search was initiated. Google deduces the intent of the searcher and shows results accordingly. A similar search on a desktop device at the same time can show completely different results, since the algorithm would deduce a different intent.
When the search intent is not clear, say, while looking for fabric stains, the Google SERP will show a mix of brands that can be purchased online, show advertisements from such brands, display cheat sheets on stain removal and other related articles.
Page rank : This is the secret weapon in Google’s arsenal. Simply defined, page rank determines the likelihood of a page answering the searcher’s query. It is determined by the quality of the content in a web page and its reliability, which is judged by the number of times a page is referenced. The page rank, though, is used only for organic listings and does not impact paid listing results.
Paid or unpaid : One of Google’s revenue sources is the advertising it displays along with the search results. There are different types that it offers. In a significant departure from its previous practice of showing paid search results in a different panel from the organic ones, Google now shows paid results along with the organic results. This further complicates the strategy of being discovered.
Search Strategy : Core to Discovery
Given the points mentioned above, it is clear that search pages need to match searcher’s intents, have a high page rank, and top the SERP listings.
Let us return to our restaurant example to evaluate how a web strategy chould be constructed for appearing on SERP pages.
On the face of it, the search term ‘restaurants’ is vague and generic, with apparently no way of logically building a search strategy. This need not be so.
In the context of restaurants, Google deduces intent based on factors like location and time of search. The search page for a restaurant should have its address, location and timings as minimum content for it to be listed. But this is not enough.
Additional information that can improve the page rank would be restaurant ratings and reviews on other credible sites such as TripAdvisor, Zomato and Google Maps.
In the case above, it is reasonably easy to craft the contents of a web page for it to get noticed because we know the intent of the search.
But consider a situation when this is not possible, say, a search at midnight from a desktop computer. In such an event, the search engine will serve a list of restaurants in the searcher’s neighbourhood. Google can get this data from Maps, geolocation tags in the restaurant’s web page and other sources.
Given the ambiguity of intent, it might be an opportunity for the restaurant to consider a paid listing, so that it appears higher in search results. The cost of such a listing would be negligible, given that not many would search for restaurants at midnight, when compared with 12 pm.
Clearly then, achieving a high position in the SERP is an outcome of aligning content with the searcher’s intent and Google’s methodology of ranking to be discovered. Merely putting up a web page hoping to be found will not work. This requires a thorough understanding of the technology that enables search and a significant dose of detailed planning and creativity.
Digital marketers should consider the different elements that make up the SERP and develop appropriate strategies to be present in the different content blocks, that is filters, sponsored content, paid ads, organic search and maps.
(The writer is Director at Rage Communications, specialising in analytics and marketing communications)