With all of the new video content, images, local searches and paid ads showing up at the top of the search engine results pages, there are a lot of distractions for users searching for content on Google. So you really want to make sure that, when a users’s eyes do drift towards the organic results, your listing stands out from the competition.

The following are three ways you can boost your ranking, make your listing stand out from the rest of the organic results on the SERPs, and get ahead of the competition.

1. Get Sitelinks

Sitelinks are the website links that appear under a listing on the Google search results page, and are meant to help users navigate the listed site. Google will analyze the link structure of a site, and if they find shortcuts that can help users save time and more easily find the information they are looking for, sitelinks are added to the search result.

If the structure of a website doesn’t allow for Google’s algorithm to find good sitelinks, or sitelinks that will be irrelevant to a user’s search, then Google will not show them in the search results. This process is currently automated, but there are best practices you can follow to help increase the chance of sitelinks being displayed for your listing:

• Use your Google Search Console account to submit your sitemap
• Use relevant anchor text throughout your site
• Fix broken links and other crawl errors
• Internal and external link building

2. Create Eye-Catching Snippets

Snippets are the few lines of descriptive text that appear under every search result, giving users a sense of what the page is about, and why it’s relevant to their search query.  Rich snippets are microdata, designed to summarize the content of a page that will make it even easier for the user to understand what the search result is about, and if clicking through to the site will help them find what they are searching for. You can learn how to update your snippets in one of our previous posts.

Full of keywords, snippets can be a great way to help your listing stand out on the SERPs. However, keep in mind that if the original snippet description is too short or not descriptive enough, Google will rewrite the meta description using a core piece of text from the page itself.

3. Video Content

It’s no secret that video is King across the web, with users consuming more and more content in video-form. Google knows this, which is why they are more often returning search results with relevant videos near the top of the page.

Take for example my search query below: “how to BBQ”. Although there are hundreds of millions of results, the top-ranking ones are video content on how to BBQ. Even if the thumbnails were lower down on the page, the video result is more likely to catch a user’s eye, as they’ll know that the information within the video will likely be concise and relevant to their query.

Video content on the SERPs can help build a brand’s visibility and authority as a result for a searched keyword or phrase.

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Not all of your competitors will employ the same tactics to make their listings stand out, so even if you focus on one or two of these suggestions, you’re likely to find more success and an increase in your organic traffic.

Photo Source: Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash