Getting to Page 1 of SERPs

The continuing shift to e-commerce and the dominance of Google as the preferred search engine makes understanding the best way to get to page one of the search engine results pages (SERPs) critical to improving sales in 2015.

Underperforming product pages are wasted space on a company's website. Companies invest the same resources to maintain and update poor-performing pages as they would with superior performing pages, so the need to optimize pages is clear.

According to a study conducted by Chikita Insights, more than 91 percent of Google e-commerce referrals come from first page search results. Only 2.3 percent of referrals come from products that appear after the second page.

Google determines search rank through an algorithm that includes keywords, listing quality and reviews, and having the product in stock, so it's important for retail marketers to optimize the use of each of these factors on their product pages. Products with all of these attributes will land on the first two pages 25 percent of the time, while failing to have just one of these likely pushes it to the third page or later.

Keywords are essential in the title and description. Keywords in either the title or description will increase search rankings, but the most visible items — i.e., the ones that will appear on the first page of Google SERPs — will include keywords in the title and description, will follow best practices for listing quality and reviews, and will have the item in stock.

Google determines listing quality based on a combination of images, videos, discounts and items in stock. Items with images are 50 percent more likely to be found on page one of a search than items without an image. A picture is worth 1,000 words, but three or more images is what's needed to be considered highly visible for the Google algorithm.