A search engine results page (SERP) is the focus of nearly ever SEO effort. We look at it as the target. Everyone is aiming to land their content on the SERP and to eventually rank as high as possible in order to gain more clicks from it. However, carefully analyzing the SERP itself can clue you in more than you think.

Good SERP Analysis can help you:

It's more than browsing search results. We analyze every single element on the page and turn those insights around to you.

Type your target keyword into the SpyFu search bar to get started. Choose the Keyword Research tab to find "SERP Analysis."

Now the results on this page will start with a summary of metrics about the keyword. Those are there to help you with at-a-glance understanding of how competitive it is to rank for this term.

Here's a full list of each metric and what they mean.

The first set of metrics help you gauge what it might take to rank for this keyword.

The second set of metrics describe the results of ranking--like how many clicks a top domain might expect to get, and how valuable those clicks could be considered. The domain diversity and social domains help show the makeup of the SERP's ranking domains. A less diverse SERP is an indicator that one or two domains are dominating the results.

Below these metrics, you'll find a table of URLs that we found on this SERP when we last collected data.

The rank and rank changes help you see movement across the competing pages. We include titles along with the URLs so you can see how they incorporate the target keyword into the title (if they use it).

When you see an icon like this in the domain column (x2, for example), it means that this domain has multiple pages ranking for the same keyword. Once again, it helps you to find powerful domains in the space. Don't let these intimidate you. You might study their ranking content and overall structure for any tips you can emulate.

The Domain Strength gives you an idea of the domain's SEO presence overall, but the full list of domain strength numbers might help you decide if this is a SERP where you have a shot at breaking through to the first page.

Estimated Monthly Clicks are calculated for each domain. It's our best guess at how much traffic they bring in on this keyword from their current position.

The dropdown arrow leads you to more options of what you can do on SpyFu with this keyword or for the URL that ranks for it.

Current Ads

We include the most recent ads we've seen for this keyword. You can easily search the ads yourself (and we suggest that you do that, too), but not all ads are visible every time you search.

Not only are some ads geo-restricted, they could be limited by time of day and day of the week. This gives you more eyes on ads that are out there for this keyword.

Cached Page

Not sure if that ad really ran on that keyword? You can always check the same SERP that we used to get this data. Look for the "View Cached Page" option on this SERP Analysis page or even in the arrow dropdown for every ranking URL. It helps give you context, and it backs up every claim we make about what ranked and what ran as an ad.