✅Understanding the position and your appearance on search engines is crucial for higher traffic to your website. This article will break down how Google and different search engines work to create your sites search results✅
Increase traffic from search engines by optimizing search results
SEO consultants are trying their hardest every day to get the best positions for the most searched keywords, but most of them neglect the fact that high ranking alone does not mean good search engine traffic. In the following example, I was looking for kitchen cooking pot in Google :
The result above is currently ranking on a very good 6th position, but it will almost certainly be clicked only by very few people because:
- Requested phrase "kitchen cooking pots" is not listed in the caption. There is not even a more general phrase such as"kitchen cooking." All other search results include some variations of the words 'kitchen' or 'cooking' in their title - that's why our result will most likely be skipped.
- The text in the excerpt (= black text between the title and the link) is not interesting at all. It does not contain the phrase I searched for.
Well, now we know what is wrong. But how can we make our search result look more appealing?
How do search engines make descriptions?
Title
- Search engines get title from the HTML content of the title of a landing page.
- Google displays up to 70 characters in the title of any search results, including spaces.
- If the title is longer than 70 characters, Google displays as many words as possible and adds three dots (...) .
Description
- The search engine description consists of the text content of the destination page itself or the meta description.
- The maximum length for Google is 156 characters, including spaces. Longer description is shortened and completed with three dots (...).
- In addition, Google sometimes displays other information (e.g., the date of publishing the page). In this case, the maximum length of your description is 139 characters.
- If the landing page contains the meta description label and contains the search phrase, Google will display it as a description. It does not have to match exactly, as shown below.
Meta description of landing page on Evanacycles
Extended description
In case of questions about reviews, people, business, or events, Google displays the so-called extended snippet (see below). For more information, see Webmaster Help .
We check the text of our search results on Google
Firstly, we need to identify the results with poor optimized text. You can enter individual keywords into Google or search your website and check your result manually. Collabim allows you to see all results together and quickly detect those that need to be improved.
To see all the results, click on all snippets link in the detail of any keyword in Collabim.
How to improve the text of search results?
Title
- Does the title contain the keyword that is the most important for the given page? (e.g., bicycles for evanscycles.com). The search engine highlights searched keywords in the results. The seeker is more likely to click on the results with the keywords he / she has typed into the search engine.
- Is the caption shorter than 70 characters? If it is, it does not appear in the results.
- Does the title make sense? Is it not just a list of keywords? You do not want to use a headline such as BIKE SHOP, BIKEMASTER, BICYCLES, TIRES.
- Does it contain the website's name (ideally at the end)? For instance, BICYCLES | EVANCYCLES.com
Description
- Does the destination page contain meaningful text in the meta description? Maybe a brief description about the website or the information about the products.
Some pages contain only a list of unrelated keywords or words in meta desctription. Meta description is not necessary to write manually for each page (although it is the best). You can generate it by putting words into a template. - Does the meta description contain less than 139 characters?
If not, your text will not be displayed in full version in Google results. - Does it contain the most important keywords for the given landing page?
If not, Google does not use the meta description text in its results and automatically creates an excerpt from the other text of the page instead. - Is the text of the excerpt readable? Does it contain a call-to-action?
Call-to-action can increase the likelihood that people will click on your result.
Check your search results with Collabim!
Do you have good search engine rankings on many competing keywords? And do the actual visitors actually come on your website because of those keywords? Check your results with Collabim and you will definitely improve!
I will gladly answer further questions regarding optimization of text for search results in the comments.