Hi there, and welcome to the 21st issue of the Outranked SEO newsletter.
Most marketers still think of SEO as being about ranking their site on page one of Google. But in 2025, that’s only part of the picture.
The real question is what’s your brand’s Share of SERP?
In this issue, you’ll learn:
- Why ranking your own site on page one isn’t enough to win at search anymore
- What Share of SERP is and why it matters more than ever in the era of AI search
- The tactics to increase your Share of SERP
Let’s get into it.
SEO is no longer just about your own site...
For a long time, the industry has seen SEO as being about ranking our own sites, with any effort to do with other sites being link building.
But it's 2025, and if you're still thinking like this, you're missing the bigger picture.
Imagine two scenarios:
- Brand A ranks in position two on Google for a keyword.
- Brand B ranks position two on Google for a keyword but is also mentioned on the pages that rank in positions four, six and seven.
Which is influencing purchasing decisions the most?
The second, of course.
But in an era where top of the funnel is fragmenting, this matters even more.
That's because of 'query fan-out.'
Hopefully you're familiar with that concept, but if not; it's a technique used by AI platforms (like ChatGPT and AI Mode) to splits a user query or prompt into multiple sub-queries and runs those concurrently as searches, grabs information from these search results and summarises them into an answer.
Google explained it like this:
"Under the hood, AI Mode uses our query fan-out technique, breaking down your question into subtopics and issuing a multitude of queries simultaneously on your behalf. This enables Search to dive deeper into the web than a traditional search on Google, helping you discover even more of what the web has to offer and find incredible, hyper-relevant content that matches your question."
And what does this mean for brands who want to be included in AI answers?
The more of the results you're referenced within (in the right context, of course) across all of these sub-queries, the more likely you are to be recommended.
So as SEOs, our mission has shifted from just working to rank our own brand's site on the SERPs to figuring out how we can be visible in as many of the results returned as possible.
Want some examples?
I'll keep it simple but let's say you're a DTC brand that sells mattresses.
Let's look at what shows for search for 'mattresses' on Google...
Here, we see the SERP made up of a mix of retailers and DTC brands. But this is a transactional SERP; unless you're stocked by one of the retailers, there's no real way to be mentioned or featured.
But look at what happens when you dig a big deeper with different queries. Let's see 'best mattresses'...
This is an entirely different SERP.
- 4 product roundup articles
- 1 Reddit thread
- 4 retailers
Let's assume your own brand store could rank in one of the retailer spots. There's 5 other results on the SERP you could realistically get mentioned on; across articles and a Reddit thread.
One more? Let's look at 'best mattress under £500.'
There's only two retailers ranking here on the SERP, with one of those (Bedstar) it being an editorial article of theirs.
That's 8 opportunities on this SERP alone that you could, realistically, be mentioned on.
Now think back to the start of this email... if you're only thinking about where your own site ranks on the SERPs, not which other results you could also be mentioned on, you're missing out on huge opportunities.
Measuring your Share of SERP
One way I've been measuring this type of visibility, knowing this then, in turn, rolls up into increased visibility across AI search AND gets more eyeballs on the brand (awareness) from traditional search, is with what I call 'Share of SERP.'
This is all about measuring the % of results you're visible on across core topics and queries; both for your own site and how you stack up against key competitors.
It's basically a measure of how visible you are, looking at this from an inclusion or mention perspective rather than SERP impressions. The more results you're visible on, the more likely you are to be considered by customers (and surfaced by AI).
Let's go back to back to the last example I gave, of the SERP for 'best mattress under £500.'
There's 10 results here.
Let's say you're currently mentioned on three of these. That's a 30% Share of SERP.
You can look at this at an individual SERP level, but I prefer to broaden this out to topic-level.
That's taking a main search query (e.g. 'mattresses') and then breaking out variations that mimic query fan-out.
You can generate a list of these using Mike King's Qforia tool.
Here's a query fan-out simulation for "what's the best mattress for a good night's sleep?" using the 'simple' AI Overview mode.
And here's for the 'complex' AI Mode:
Build out a list (I usually go for 20 or so per topic) and figure your Share of SERP.
That's:
- How many total SERP results exist for each query and in total?
- How many of the results are you visible on?
You'll get a % score per query and overall at topic-level.
You now have an easy benchmark for tracking growth against.
How to increase your Share of SERP
On most non-brand SERPs, there's a few different types of result:
- Business websites
- News / publisher articles
- Discussions & forums (e.g. Reddit or Quora)
- Directories, review & ratings sites (e.g. G2 or Clutch)
Other businesses websites; you're unlikely to be featured on these unless they stock your products. SEOs can make these recommendations to wider teams, but that's about it.
Ranking your own site as prominently as possible is your route in here; that's just traditional SEO... being as visible as high as possible on the SERPs across the funnel (informational content's not dead, you know ... it might get less organic clicks than it once did, but it's still cited by AI platforms. If you want to be visible and all that...)
The route into news and publisher articles and roundups is PR. And this is the reason why I keep referring to GEO as being 'great SEO + great PR.'
If you want to be recommended by AI search, you need to visible across multiple third-party sources, not just your own. And you can't do this without a solid PR strategy.
Discussions and forums... get involved in these platforms as experts. Don't spam and don't link drop. Be helpful, engage and genuinely set out with a goal of being seen as an expert. There's no shortcuts but when you put in the effort, you'll see the rewards.
Directories and review sites like Clutch or G2 ... these are often a mix of paid listings or partnerships and submissions. Review on a case-by-case basis but absolutely don't dismiss these. It's easy to remember back to the days when 'directories' means spam in the world of SEO, but we're talking more platforms here. Explore your options to be featured (prominently).
The takeaway…
SEO in 2025 isn’t just about where your own site ranks; it’s about how often and where your brand shows up across the wider search landscape.
Measuring your Share of SERP means looking at the percentage of results you appear in across a set of queries, not just impressions from your own site. This matters more than ever in the era of AI search, where query fan-out pulls information from multiple sources and rewards brands that are mentioned in more places.
To grow your Share of SERP, you need to rank your own site as highly as possible, but you also need visibility in third-party publisher articles, roundups, discussions on platforms like Reddit, and trusted directories.
This is where SEO and PR intersect; great SEO plus great PR are needed to be visible in 2025.
When you think about your visibility this way, you stop chasing a single blue link ranking and start making your brand impossible to ignore across the SERPs.
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If you learned something from this issue or it’s made you think about SEO a little differently, please consider forwarding it to someone else on your team.
I’m on a mission to make sure more SEO investment actually has an impact on real business metrics.
Appreciate you making it to the end; same time next week?
- James
P.S. If you ever need expert support with SEO or digital PR and want to drive results that actually matter, I’d love to chat. Let’s talk.
📌 This week’s bookmarks:
If I could only send three links to a fellow marketer this week, it’d be these…
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👋 Hi, I'm James...
Managing Director & Founder at Digitaloft.
I've spent the last 10 years building an agency that's perfectly positioned to help ambitious brands to drive real business growth from SEO and digital PR.
You might have seen me speaking at events like BrightonSEO, SMX and the International Search Summit.
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