mkirchhoff

M Posted 10 years 1 month ago

t 9 min read

The title tags and your meta description are two of the most important factors impacting your click-through rate from organic search results. 

Given the importance of these few sentences, the significance of Google’s SERP changes with the character limits in headlines and page descriptions becomes clear.  Here is what you need to know about the expanded titles and page descriptions and how they will impact your site optimization process.

What are marketers seeing with Google's SERP changes?

The increase of title characters in Google SERPs was first spotted by Ross Hudgens who reported the findings on Twitter May 6.

Google has increased the number of pixels given to each result listing-- bumping the space from 500 to 600 pixels. There is now a wider space given to each result and an increase in the number of characters available for titles and descriptions. Generally, we are seeing a title increase from 50-60 characters to 70-71 characters.

On mobile, the space given for expanded titles has increased even further, with results often receiving as many as 78 character spaces. 

Meta descriptions have expanded from an average of 156 characters on two lines to nearly 300 characters on 3 to 4 lines. 

It is important to note, however, that Google’s meta description cut-off has rarely been a cemented rule. Even before these changes, there were reports of certain meta descriptions being afforded more than the commonly accepted 156 characters. Even now, not every result has seen this increase, and some are still just being given the two lines. This is true even for results appearing for the same query.

What do expanded titles and page descriptions mean for marketers?

Google regularly experiments with their display, so it is unknown whether this change will be permanent or even if it will eventually roll out to impact all sites. For the moment, however, the extra characters provide brands with the opportunity to be more descriptive and demonstrate clear relevance for particular keywords and topics. Specifically, this change will help marketers to target long-tail keywords in their expanded titles.

We would recommend the following:

Titles

• Remember, write for your audience, not for specifically for Google, ensuring audience value for attracting clicks from the SERPs. The goal is to pair audience behavior following SEO best practices for headlines on page titles and image titles
• Keep your targeted and actionable keywords in the first few positions. This will help protect you should the parameters of the results boxes shift again.
• In a semantic world, meaningful and closely-related keywords should also appear in the title.
• If your title exceeds 70 characters be aware that Google may replace your title with one it auto-generates. Also, keep in mind that the words past 70 characters are still important for Google’s interpretation of the page, but those keywords will have less bearing on drawing the conversion from the SERP.
• Optimize your title for mobile first if your website has a majority percentage coming from mobile, meaning write it assuming it will wrap to two lines.

Meta Descriptions

• Include targeted keywords and semantically related keywords in the description.
• Make meta descriptions actionable and include the keyword targets as early in the first sentence as possible.
• For brands that have shorter meta descriptions, particularly those that are 100 characters or less, it is a good idea to expand the text. The widening of the results means that more lines can be covered. In this situation, a short meta description might only take up a single line, which can drastically reduce your visibility on the SERP, particularly when placed next to a site that has over 200 characters.
• As you create new posts or pages, expand your meta descriptions, as this will help them increase their real estate on the SERP. When you fill out the entire description, you impact how much space you take up, helping to draw more eyes towards your results.
• When you write expanded descriptions, remember to always place value for the reader above everything else-- do not add fluff to just increase the word count.

Since SEOs are still testing and experimenting to understand why certain results are showing the expanded meta description and others are not, it is not necessary for everyone to rewrite all of their meta descriptions right now. Instead, using the longer, more descriptive language should be the focus for future pages. The exception would be sites that have extremely short descriptions-- under 100 characters-- which should be amended to avoid being minimized on the SERP.

Google regularly changes and updates the appearance of their search result pages in an effort to make things easier for the end-user. This recent addition to the number of characters to be displayed for query results gives sites more space to describe their worth to users, which can help boost click-throughs for relevant sites.

Brands should be aware of these changes as they develop their pages and pay close attention to the adjustments that the search engine giant will be making in the future. Also, review our insight research on the February change to the paid ads in the SERPs. 

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 10 years 1 month ago

t 9 min read

When people think about SEO, keywords are often the first topic that pops into their minds. It is no wonder that the phrase ‘keyword tool’ receives nearly 10,000 searches every month and ‘keyword planner’ receives over 60,000. Keyword research is an important part of any SEO strategy. It helps you uncover the topics that matter the most to customers and monitor traffic rates so you can grasp the popularity of particular phrases. You can use your keyword tool to help you better understand the seasonality of particular searches and develop a better understanding of your targeted audience and intended customers. It is important to recognize, however, that this is just one small piece of the puzzle. Using a keyword tool successfully will help you plan your editorial calendar, but that is the extent of its usefulness. When it comes to the other important aspects of developing a successful online marketing campaign, this aide will fall short.

To see the optimal success with your keyword research efforts, they need to be a part of a greater SEO platform and strategy. Here are five key types of knowledge where you will need to expand your SEO skills beyond keyword research.

A keyword planner cannot help you understand the top performing pages for your topic

Although your keyword tool will help you uncover various phrases and topics that your intended audience would be interested in reading, you are left starting from scratch when it comes to developing your actual content. Your keyword planner will not tell you what has already been successfully ranking for a particular phrase. When you combine your keyword planner with a recommendations engine that allows you to see the top ranking pages for your targeted keyword, then you have a strong starting point for your content creation. You can uncover what helps those pages rank highly, understand what the audience searching for this keyword is likely to be interested in reading and build from this starting point to create superior content that is worthy of a highly ranking position. When your keyword tools work with this type of recommendation system, you will have a far greater understanding of which keywords you are in a position to rank for and how to go about creating the content that will accomplish this goal.

A keyword tool cannot tell you if you were successful

Once you have created your content for a particular keyword, you likely then want to know the success of your efforts. While you might be able to see your traffic report, you will not be able to see where you are ranking overall and how that ranking is impacted by other SEO efforts, such as backlinks. You also want to be able to tell if the content you develop effectively engages the target audience instead just bouncing off the page. A page reporting tool can help you gain this level of insight. You can see exactly where your content is ranking on the SERPs instead of just estimating based on traffic rates. When you know your rank, you will then be able to gain a better understanding of how well your content efforts have performed.

A thorough SEO platform will also offer you insight into how well your material is performing on social media. You can see likes and shares and compare this activity to your engagement and traffic rates. When customers regularly share your piece, you will have a better idea of how well readers are connecting to your material.

The keyword planner will not tell you how your efforts impact the bottom line

Drawing traffic is just one small part of a successful SEO strategy. It is the first step towards creating a marketing plan that will bring in paying customers. Although it is always nice to see the numbers rise on your traffic reports, to know if your content development has been truly successful, you need to make sure that your research with your keyword tool and your content creation has been helping the bottom line. As you do keyword research and create your content, you want to to have a specific goal in mind for this material, such as revenue or brand reach.

Creating dashboards with the useful metrics can help you compare the data from your marketing efforts and see how well they are helping you to meet your predetermined goals. You can establish keyword groups for particular campaigns and create easy-to-understand graphs and charts that clearly communicate the correlation between your content and your goals. You can use this data and insight to refine your strategy. If you are generating traffic, for example, but have a high bounce rate and few conversions, perhaps your keywords and not well-aligned with your targeted audience. It is only with a platform that can generate this level of insight that you will be able to make these adjustments and avoid wasting time and effort.

The keyword tool does not offer competitive insight

Keyword research will not provide you with any level of insight into what your competitors are doing and how you compare to their progress. Succeeding in the SERPs means not only creating and optimizing content, it also means strategizing better than your competitors. Insights from others in your industry, such as the keywords they rank for and their site statistics, can help you accurately plot your own strategy and make adjustments based upon what has worked or failed for others.

A keyword planner does not offer insight about how other aspects of your site are performing

Although your keyword tool can help you find topics and phrases for which you can optimize your content, it will not do anything to help the rest of your site. Content performance is not established based upon a single page - Google also takes into account the authority of the entire domain as well as the user experience on your site. When you have a well-established, reputable website, your content will naturally rank higher than a new blog (learn how to choose a blog topic), no matter how well a particular page of content might be written. This means that to succeed in SEO, you need to look beyond keywords to the entirety of your website. You need site audits that will help you uncover potential gaps in your overall optimization efforts, such as incorrect redirects, page errors or missed opportunities to rank a particular page of content for a word. You also need a tracker that will help you monitor your progress with off-page SEO, including social signals and backlinks. The stronger you create your website as a whole, the better your individual pages of content will perform.

A keyword tool is helpful for brands as they develop their editorial calendar. For your content to gain readership, you want to make sure that you cover topics that your intended audience wants to read, and this research will help you find the popular subjects to focus your efforts. Brands need to carefully avoid the mistake, however, of relying too much on keyword research and neglecting the rest of the instruments needed to create a thorough, successful online marketing strategy.

mkirchhoff

M Posted 10 years 1 month ago

t 9 min read

Google continues to invest in the user experience and expand the diversity of universal results above the traditional text results, so it is imperative that content marketers stay up-to-date and evolve their universal content capabilities and offerings. BrightEdge Research has clearly indicated that users find images engaging and useful. Tweets with images receive 5 times the engagement, Facebook posts with images receive 39 percent more interaction and articles with images have 94 percent more views than those without.

For certain queries that are more visually relevant, Google has been working over the past year to improve the user experience. Last summer they introduced a carousel display for particular queries on mobile. When announcing the change, the search engine specifically mentioned that those looking for results such as Houzz idea books, Food Network recipes, Vines and Pinterest pins would be able to easily scroll through the different options to find the results that were the most applicable to them.

On May 17, 2016 the search engine giantannounced another change in their display. They began to use rich cards in the carousel for certain queries. Right now, this change is impacting movies and recipes. It is initially rolling out on mobile, but some are appearing on desktop as well. The possibility of the changes being introduced for other queries also remains open in the future.>

What does this mean for marketers?

Rich cards help to create a visually appealing listing for brands, allowing them to prominently display certain features that will draw in users. A great example would be a delectable image of a dish for a certain recipe site. When rich cards are used correctly, they can be an excellent way to attract traffic. Google says that they are experimenting to find more ways for websites to create rich previews, so even if you do not deal directly with recipes or movies, you still want to pay attention to these developments. Google has said that these changes will be initially rolling out over mobile, but that it is possible that they will be expanding to desktop.

This result for the best movies in 2015 was pulled off of desktop on May 24, 2016. The carousel on mobile covers the first 4 results on the SERP, which leaves only 1 regular result above the fold and will undoubtedly increase competition for this position. This forces brands to pay more attention to their optimization efforts, including their on-page optimization, content development process and distribution efforts. Organizations must again remember to prioritize data-driven content development strategies and the importance of having consumer value the primary focus of the entire optimization process.

Fact 1: The new display system also encourages brands to pay more attention to their rich markup. Using schema is a commonly overlooked opportunity, but with the increase in rich displays, brands need to make sure they do not neglect this step. If Google creates more rich displays in the future that are more applicable to your industry, doing the markup now will ensure that you are prepared and optimized from the first roll out.

How should marketers maximize their appearance in the rich card carousel?

All sites, but particularly those that deal with recipes and movies, need to maximize their schema. Google has issued guidelines to help brands who have recipe or movie-oriented sites optimize their appearance.

Fact 2: The search engine recommends that brands use JSON-LD in their markup to ensure that the data is properly understood and displayed.

Fact 3: They have also developed a new Search Console rich card checking tool that will help you see how many rich cards your site has been optimized for to ensure that you have done your markup correctly. If you have a recipe that you would like to have appear as a rich card, you need to follow Google’s system, which is explained here. You also want to make sure your markup includes a visually appealing image that will attract the desired attention when included on the carousel.

Fact 4: It is also important to note that Google has issued a few rules for website publishers to keep in mind when determining if their website would be eligible for this type of markup and rich card display:

• The markup has to be for a single, specific dish-- general topics such as ‘party ideas’ or lists of recipes on a single page will not be displayed in this format.
• If the recipe markup has a single review included, the quote must come from a real person or organization.
• You will need to provide an Item List markup to create a summary of your recipes that are on the list if you want the recipes included in a host-specific list.
• If you do have a host-specific site, then that site must include a summary page that has all the recipes in the collection. This is so that users who click on the summary link from the SERP can trust that they will see a page that includes all the recipes that are related to their search.

If you have a website that focuses on movies, Google currently only has the display host-specific carousel. You can markup your page for an ItemList, but this feature is still in experimental mode and will not currently show up on the SERPs. You should also note that Google currently wants links to sites that support autoplay. For more information about how to markup your site for a movie, visit the Google recommendations here.

Google continues to make changes and adjustments to the appearance of their search results in an effort to make results more relevant and attractive for their end user. The creation of the results carousel and the rich card is only the latest development in this process, although more are sure to come. Brands who want to ensure that their websites remain relevant and appealing to users should pay attention to these developments. Since the search engine is making it clear that they are paying attention to the visual appeal of rich markups, all websites should be taking advantage of the schema to make sure they are ready to maximize the appearance of their content whenever the opportunity arises. Learn more about SERPs and universal SERP elements in this post.