Google Search

How Google Search Results Work for Real Estate

Google SearchSearch engine optimisation is important for every business. Buyers and sellers turn to search engines to find real estate listings and services, and it’s important that you take advantage of search to drive buyers to your website.

In order to get this traffic, however, you need to understand how search engines—like Google—work to help users. When you understand how Google search works, how it ranks pages, and the difference between organic and paid results, you can ensure your site ranks better in the results page.

How does Google search work and what appears in the search engine results page (SERP)?

When you search for information or products in Google, you begin by typing a keyword into the search bar.

The search engine results page, which provides a list of web pages that Google has deemed most relevant, is the outcome. At the top, under the search bar, you’ll see how many results your keyword search generated. Many results can appear, but there are two main categories of results: paid and unpaid search results. Let’s discuss them.

Unpaid Results

Content the search engine identifies as a good match for your search is defined as organic results. These results appear in the main area of the SERP page and 10 options are shown on each page. Organic results are ranked based on content quality and are typically informative resources. Organic results are unpaid, and you cannot pay to improve your ranking.

Paid Results

Businesses target search terms by paying for advertising through Google Adwords. Advertisers specify how much they will pay each time a user clicks on their ad and then they bid on search terms. Google then sets the order for how the ads will appear based on how accurate the ad is for the search term, how much the advertiser will pay, and the past success of the ad.

The ads that will most likely pay off are the ones that are prioritized, which lines up with what users want. Most users want relevant search results, whether they’re paid or unpaid. You can identify paid ads by a yellow box on the left of the result that says “Ad.”

Result Position and Why it Matters

Page one of Google’s search results page is a big deal, because data reveals that 71% of searches       result in a click on the first page. An Advanced Web Ranking CTR Study found that the first unpaid position on the search results page gets an average 31.24 % of the total clicks. At the second unpaid position on the page, the click-through-rate drops by over half and continues to drop as the results appear down the page.

The average user selects a result very quickly—within 8-9 seconds—making page position crucial. Your position in organic or unpaid search results directly impacts the amount of traffic to your website.

Who is Responsible for my website ranking?

Google considers hundreds of factors when calculating your ranking for certain search terms, so responsibility falls in a couple of different places.

Your website developer should take responsibility for ‘best practice’ optimisation on things that you may not be able to access, such as title tags and code structure (having said this, in the modern version of Google, tags and code structure makes up a very small percentage of your ranking).

You (the website owner) are responsible for your website content, which makes up the majority of your ranking. If you are not putting relevant content onto your site then your ranking may be suffering. You should take care when modifying content that you do not inadvertently cause 404 Page Not Found errors, which may have a negative effect on your ranking. You should also take care when putting on new content, ensuring that it is unique and not duplicated content that can easily be found on other websites. If you are paying a specialist Search Optimisation company, they may be responsible for your existing content, new content, structure and recommended code changes, however you should check your agreement with them to see exactly what is covered.

We are continuing our How Google Search Results Work series, so be sure to check out our next post Understanding Unpaid Search Results in Google. You’re going to understand the intricacies of Google search in no time!

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