{"id":9018,"date":"2017-12-15T09:01:39","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T09:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/?p=9018"},"modified":"2017-12-15T09:01:39","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T09:01:39","slug":"opportunities-from-longer-snippets-in-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/seo\/opportunities-from-longer-snippets-in-google\/","title":{"rendered":"New, longer snippet descriptions in Google results"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does it mean for your SEO and how should you act?<\/h2>\n

\"\"Around the middle of November, Google started to introduce a new character limit for a key display item which appear in search results – the data “snippet”. Today we’ll take a quick look at what this is and how it leverages on the meta description you write for your page, the character limit guideline for which has also changed.<\/p>\n

What is a “snippet”<\/h3>\n

In its simplest terms a snippet is a short piece of information which Google displays at the top of the search results<\/a> for any given search term. It is very prominent and often used by searchers to get a quick answer to the question they asked and hopefully encourage them to click through to the website in question to gather more detail. Up until recently, the snippet information was taken from the meta description of the page and was typically up to around 165 characters max. But it appears that the maximum character limit is now changing.<\/p>\n

What changed and how can SEOs utilise it?<\/h3>\n

Google has officially announced that both the character limit for snippets and meta descriptions has increased, although there is no definitive number. Data researchers have already started to pull together recommendations which currently sit at the 300 character mark. If you recall, one of the key on-page recommendations for data configuration is a website page’s meta description which has stood at around 160 characters for many years. So quite a change. But how do we as SEO and dental website owners leverage on this latest change?<\/p>\n

Given that the snippet is currently being pulled from the meta description of a web page in most cases, it makes sense to revisit our key pages and update the meta descriptions there to reflect the new character limit i.e. 300. So this is primarily about the real estate on page one of Google’s search results and a further technique you can employ to try to maximise your presence there.<\/p>\n

What to do next….<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

As discussed above, it is prudent to revisit the main pages on your website and boost the number of characters you use for the meta descriptions to the 300 limit or thereabouts. Whilst there in no guarantee that Google will use you result to form a data snippet at the top of the search results, it’s best to be prepared if they do.<\/p>\n

If you have access to a content management system for your dental website<\/a>, then you should be able to access to do this yourself. If not, you should approach your web designer and discuss which pages to be updated on your behalf. If you are paying for a monthly contract, this is something that your designer should be prepared to take on without any additional costs.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/h3>\n

Google is well known for making very regular changes to the way it presents search results and the change to snippet length and how it’s derived is no exception. It really is worthwhile taking advantage of any new opportunities for SEO which Google presents, so please put it on the list of “on-page” website enhancements to be completed.<\/p>\n

If you’d like to discuss these changes or simply SEO for your dental website in general, please get in touch with the digital marketers at Dental Media on 01332 672548<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does it mean for your SEO and how should you act? Around the middle of November, Google started to introduce a new character limit for a key display item which appear in search results – the data “snippet”. Today …<\/p>\n

New, longer snippet descriptions in Google results<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seo"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9018"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9034,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9018\/revisions\/9034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dental-media.co.uk\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}