Roast releases industry-first report looking at SERP features

Despite the development of new solutions across AI and voice search, marketeers are neglecting fully understanding their search landscape. In the age of zero click searches, it's harder for SEO to gain traction as there's so much competition.

The battle to gain eyeballs on pages rages on, yet organic listings have the highest traction (at 50%), followed by SERP features (at 27%) and pay-per-click listings (at 23%). However this data isn't strictly representative of how much space these blocks actually take up in the SERPs.

SERP features present an opportunity for all brands across various sectors, though these must be assessed at the beginning of any SEO strategy.

The insurance and hotel sectors used a large proportion of FAQ snippets, as well as star ratings and featured snippets. Restaurants, on the other hand, are largely dominated by maps and ‘discover more places’, revealing that marketers need to look more closely at local SEO optimisation, or else they risk missing out on a large portion of opportunities. Property was another sector surveyed; and related searches largely dominated the category which only highlights Google's desire to get marketers to move closer to a specific request or webpage.

The report shows how by tapping into this information and knowing how SERP features are performing across categories, marketers can calculate where to easily win traffic and clicks. Overall, if marketers consider SERP feature optimisation at the start of their overall SEO strategy, it could have a huge impact on their performance.

A sample report can be downloaded here.