SERPs: What does it mean?
November 25, 2009 in Blogging, SEO by Danny Thornton
I first mentioned SERPs in my article Using Comments to Build Links and Drive Traffic – Part 1 a couple of days ago. In that article, one of the readers asked if I would go into the details of what SERPs are. Well, in a nutshell a SERP is a search engine results page. When a searcher enters a keyword search into their search engine, they will get 
a number of results that are then listed on a page. This page is called a search engine results page.
The SERP page can possibly return contextual, algorithmic, or organic search listings. Also, you have to be aware that it can return sponsored listings, images, maps, definitions, videos, or suggested search refinements. These results are generated by the search engines using content contained within the Metadata tags of a web page to generate the content that makes up a search snippet. The title tag will be used as the title of the snippet while the contents of the description tag will be used for the description. If these tags are not available then the search engines can pull content from within the page to use in place of the description tag. Thus SERPs are intimately connected to SEO.
I have heard some people mention that they do not pay any attention to SERPs. The issue with that is the less you pay attention to it, the less likely you are to be found in search engines. I guess if you are just writing a blog in order to have all your thoughts written down in one place, then you can ignore SERPs. However, if you are wanting to be found by more people, you need to put some effort into your SEO and SERP.
Posts
Contextual search listings are paid advertisements closely relating to the information the user happens to be viewing.
Algorithmic search listings rely heavily on a site’s meta tags. This is not as popular as it once was because some webmasters practiced keyword stuffing which utilized keywords that oftentimes did not relate directly to site’s content.
Organic search listings are those that are relevant to the search terms.
Hope this helps to clarify the difference.