SERP Reverse-Engineering
To learn what page to build, read what Google already ranks for your target keywords.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 92%
Instead of guessing what Google's algorithm wants, treat the search results page as the answer key. Put your target keywords into Google and look for correlations in the page types and page components that rank. This tells you both which page type to build and what elements (map, phone number, reviews) it needs. The goal is inspiration, not blind copying.
Origin
Ethan Smith's core diagnostic method at Graphite, applied across MasterClass, Thumbtack and commerce clients.
Core principles
- 01The ranking results are a revealed-preference signal of what Google (and users) want
- 02Look for correlations across many keywords, not a single result
- 03Take inspiration and build something better rather than merely copying competitors
- 04Serving the user's real intent is what makes rankings robust to algorithm changes
How to run it
- 1
Search your target keywords
Take the keywords you want to rank for, search them in Google, and look for the recurring page type theme. If all results for 'how to poach an egg' are recipe articles, you need an article.
Pro tip Rigorously, search all ~1,000 keywords a page could target and look for the dominant page-type pattern; sometimes intent is fractured across two types (e.g. category page and listicle).
- 2
Read the ranking page components
Inspect the pages that rank and note recurring components (map, address, phone number, reviews). Those correlations reveal the product requirements for your page.
- 3
Build better, not identical
Use the observed patterns as inspiration for what genuinely helps the user, then add ways to serve that intent even better than incumbents.
Pro tip Ask what the component implies about user need (a map means users want to find/contact the business), then serve that need more fully.
Watch out Don't optimize purely to earn a click and stop; superior engagement is what actually lifts rankings.
In the wild
Ranking pages for local queries consistently show maps and phone numbers, implying users want to find and contact the business. Rather than just copying, you ask what else would help users contact the business and build that in.
→ Requirements are derived from evidence, and the resulting page serves intent better than the pages it learned from.
Common mistakes
Guessing the 'secret algorithm'
Trying to reverse-engineer Google's crawler instead of asking what serves the searcher leads to brittle pages that break on the next algorithm update.
Copying competitors verbatim to game rankings
Optimizing only to earn the click without improving on the experience yields weak engagement, and low dwell time drags rankings back down.
Is it for you?
Best for
SEO practitioners and PMs specifying page requirements for a new content or programmatic build
Not ideal for
Brand-new categories with no existing SERP to learn from
From the transcript
“you take a few keywords you want to rank for you put them in Google and you look for themes of the page types that…”
“you're basically looking for correlations of which page types are ranking for the terms that you want to rank for”
“a way to answer that is to see what are the patterns of the pages that are ranking for the terms you want to rank…”
“I would take inspiration and make make a great page”
From the episode
The ultimate guide to SEO
Ethan Smith (Graphite)