If you still picture the search results page as "ten blue links", you are missing most of your visibility opportunities. On a typical commercial query, organic links occupy less than half the screen.
The top of the page
AI Overview / generated summary
Appears at the very top on many informational queries. It draws on several sources and links to them underneath. Getting in is not about ranking — it is about answering the question clearly and in fragments that can be lifted.
Ads
On commercial-intent queries, up to four text ads sit above everything. The first organic result can land well below the fold. This is why SEO and SEM should not be treated as separate budgets, but as two ways of occupying the same results page.
Featured snippet (position zero)
A paragraph, list or table shown in a box above the organic results. It is usually pulled from a page already ranking on page one. To win it: make the question a heading, and give a direct 40–60 word answer immediately underneath.
The middle of the page
People Also Ask
An expandable list of related questions. It is gold for content planning because it shows you the user’s next question. Use those questions as headings on your own page.
Local pack
A map plus three business cards. For businesses with a physical location this can be worth more than organic ranking. Google Business Profile completeness, review volume and proximity decide who appears.
Image and video carousels
Video surfaces on "how to" queries; image blocks surface on product queries. Giving your images descriptive filenames and alt text is the cheapest way into these blocks.
Commercial components
- Shopping carousel: product image, price, merchant. Requires a Merchant Center feed.
- Rich results: star ratings, price range, stock status, recipe time. Won through structured data.
- Sitelinks: the list of sub-pages under your homepage on branded queries. Earned through clean site architecture.
What this means
You can occupy several positions on a single query at once: an ad, the featured snippet, an organic result, a People Also Ask entry and an image block. This is what people mean by "SERP dominance", and it sharply reduces your competitor’s chance of getting the click.
Before you start optimising, do this: search your target queries in a private window, screenshot the results page, and list which components appear. Make your decisions from that list — not from generic advice.