How does Google decide what is shown on the index?

We often get asked how to influence or change the way that Google displays a web listing about a business. To break this up, it falls into three sections.

Title:

This comes from the meta title tag that your page has generated. There are things you can do to make this more relevant to users, and also to Google, and these fall into the following key suggestions:

• Ensure every page has a meta title completed.
• Page titles should avoid generic terms such as “Home”, and avoid long and useless titles.
• Avoid stuffing the titles with keywords that have no relevance to the page or are there multiple times
• Stick to 7-8 words maximum
• Avoid repeated titles throughout the website, and make each page title relevant to the subject of the page
• Concisely brand the titles for example: ” Website Design in Staffordshire | SO Marketing” would be a good way to brand the titles and also describe what the page is about

Link:

This is the individual page that it has indexed, most websites will have multiple pages indexed and each one can have its own set of titles and descriptions making the search results better for the user.

Description:

This description is generated by Google based on its preference of either a snippet of the page content or the meta description if it’s completed. Google will try to use the part that it sees as the most relevant to the content of the web page to generate the description value, so it is possible to change and influence this by creating a great meta description differently for each page and this enables Google to understand better what the page is about. The key here like all web content however is to generate good quality unique descriptions as these can very much help the quality and quantity of the traffic your website gets.

For advice on Search Engine Optimisation or any other requirements please contact us on 01538 750 538 or email us at [email protected]