Google’s latest “Search for Beginners” video is a crash course on how to create effective snippets of search results.
Given that the information is beginner-friendly, what is covered in the video may already be known to experienced SEOs.
If you’re new to SEO or just want to refresh your knowledge of search snippets, watch this video for a quick recap.
Importance of search snippets
A search snippet is the primary piece of information that we use to determine which results a searcher clicks on.
Select pages based on snippetsA Google search snippet is more than just a meta description. “Snippet” refers to both the title and description, as well as other important information about a web page.
Besides the title and description, the snippet contains:
- Date the page was published
- Page author
- Product price
- Product availability
- and so on
A page title should describe what the page offers, but a good description is a one or two sentence summary of the page’s content.
Google Recommendations: How to Write Titles and Descriptions
When writing page titles, avoid vague terms such as “home” for homepage.Also, avoid long titles as they may be truncated in search results
Use descriptive terms in the title, but don’t overuse repetition or synonyms. Doing so can be seen as spam by Google and searchers.
It’s important to use a unique title for each page. Many content management systems allow you to manually enter your own page title.
Create titles and descriptions in your content management system (CMS)See: SEO Best Practices: How to Write a Great Meta Description
How Google Generates Search Snippets
The snippets that appear in search results are auto-generated by Google. Snippets are meant to highlight the content on the page that is most relevant to a user’s specific search.
Depending on the searcher’s query, different snippets may appear on the same page. Google tries to choose titles and descriptions that are relevant and helpful.
This means that even if you manually write down all the titles and descriptions, Google may choose alternatives depending on the query you enter.
There are two ways to influence the hot Google-generated snippets: rich results and meta description tags.
A separate video has already been made on rich snippets, so this video will focus only on meta descriptions.
meta descriptionGoogle Recommendation: Meta Description
According to Google, a good meta description is a short, well-written summary of what a particular page is about.
Google suggests thinking of your meta description as a “sell” to persuade potential customers to visit your website. So they should be distinctive and relevant on each page.
Technically there is no limit to the length of the meta description, but it will be truncated in search results if necessary.
For more information on search snippets, see Google’s full video below.
