Now that many search engine results pages on Google have gone from featuring ten listings to only seven, it is more important than ever for SEO companies to focus on getting their clients on the first page of Google – and, also more important than ever to make your SERP snippets (the lines of text that appear in your listings on search engine results pages, or SERP) more attention-grabbing and Google-friendly than ever. To make your SERP snippets stand out, you can put a few different tools into practice. First, though, here are some things to note about how Google treats your SERP snippet:
There is no definitive character limit. Your SERP title is measured by pixel width, rather than characters.- To that end, the previous 156-character limit no longer applies to the SERP snippet, nor does the 70-character limit apply to the SERP title.
- It has been estimated that Google can show as many as 206 or more characters in SERP snippets.
Orange County SEO team knows of various tools you can use to improve your SERP snippets and increase the chances of users clicking through to your site from the search engine results page. The one we will address here is Google sitelinks.
What is Google Sitelinks?
One reason that Google now features fewer results in the SERP is because they are favoring the inclusion of sitelinks. Sitelinks are indented search results that represent internal pages found on your site, should they appear in your search results. For example, a search for “Crest Media” will turn up the following sitelinks (since this is only for demonstration, we did not hyperlink them here):
- About Us
- Blog
- Contact Us
- Internet Marketing
- Team
- Web Development
Does everyone receive sitelinks in their search listings? Not yet. Right now, Google appears to be handing out the privilege of sitelinks only to site listings it feels are worthy of inclusion. So by working on your overall site quality, you can potentially receive sitelinks as opposed to a blasé SERP snippet.
How does Google choose who will receive sitelinks as opposed to SERP snippets? Here is what Google Webmaster Tools has to say about the process of generating sitelinks:
“We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.”
“At the moment, sitelinks are automated. We’re always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future. There are best practices you can follow, however, to improve the quality of your sitelinks. For example, for your site’s internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that’s informative, compact, and avoids repetition.”
As you can see, there is no surefire way to get your SERP listing to include sitelinks along with your SERP snippet. But based on what Google told us in the information above, it seems logical to conclude that improving the overall quality of your site may improve your chances of generating sitelinks on the SERP. With the help of an SEO company that can do this for you, your SERP snippet can stand out among the crowd.
Оставить заявку
No comments yet