Nov 4 2022
Companies Need References to Recruit Top Talent—Here’s How to Get Them

Wake up, companies: Worker power is growing.

Everyone’s hopping jobs, demanding livable wages (gasp—the audacity!), and leaving toxic workplaces in the dust. Jumping to new companies is a popular exit path, but some workers are going the freelance route, or more radically, quitting with no plan at all.

When you’re hiring, you’re not only competing with other companies, but also with being your own boss and just vibing at home. If you don’t have a strong employer brand… well, good luck beating the appeal of freelancing in your PJs.

The point is: People won’t jump ship for just a pay raise. Taking a new position is a big risk, and you can’t easily go back if your new job sucks. That’s like asking your ex for a second chance after your Hinge situationship starts flying all their red flags.

In other words: YOUR COMPANY NEEDS REFERENCES. The best candidates want to know it’s safe before they jump, and employee advocacy programs are how you show them where they’ll land.

So if you want a trillion-plus brownie points from HR, send your favorite recruiter this article for a crash course on employee advocacy.

By creating social content for your teammates to share about your company’s culture, projects, and benefits, you’ll help them create a shiny employer brand and attract qualified candidates who… uh, also don’t suck as people. (Brilliant jerks are just liabilities.)

Let’s explore how.

Convincing people to change jobs is HARD

Since Miss Rona came to town (permanently, it seems), workers have been telling their employers to kick rocks. Wages aren’t high enough, everything is getting more expensive, and bosses with boundary issues make work hell for millions.

Quitting’s been normalized, and the hustle culture of the early ‘10s is finally getting kicked in its stubby little shins. (Love that.)

But quitting isn’t a catch-all cure for work malaise. Workers in the service and heavy industries are still leaving their companies in droves; meanwhile, many knowledge workers who hopped jobs early in the pandemic are feeling quitters’ remorse.

This isn’t about money, either. MIT found that bad work cultures are the single-biggest factor behind the Great Resignation. Pay issues are way down in sixteenth place, which makes sense. Workers aren’t robots, and not being respected as a person is a powerful reason to walk.

@pasha

your new resignation template is here 🥰 #comedy #jobs @vince.lam

♬ Dear Manager – Pasha

What’s more, 86% of job-seekers are using social media to research jobs. And a real worker posting “my job treats me well” is way more motivating than bleating “wE aRe roCkStaRs” all over the company LinkedIn.

When it comes to employer brand, worker testimonials are the ultimate green flag.

That’s why employee advocacy is so powerful for recruiting, and why social teams should make it easier (not harder!) to speak out about life at work.

(Already on board? Hootsuite Amplify is right this way, my friend.)

Let employees make the first impression for you

Every employee advocacy program involves getting employees to share company-related content on their personal social accounts.

You might not have reach like reigning TikTok king Khaby Lame, but you could still influence your college roommate to submit a job application. That’s the goal, no matter what type of advocacy content you’re creating.

At Hootsuite, we get high (numbers of engagements) on our own supply (of employee advocacy tools). That was a reach, but you get what I’m saying, right?

Our social team uses Hootsuite Amplify every day to create posts that the rest of the company shares to promote their work and our employer brand. Amplify posts are great at driving sales, too—but that’s another topic.

Shout out to our social team, too, because their advocacy content is KILLING it. Our InMail messages get 213% higher acceptance rates when candidates have three prior touchpoints with the Hootsuite brand. If your favorite coworker from your old job works at Hootsuite, you’ve probably got those three bits of exposure yourself. Hell, you’re reading this article, so that counts, too.

Employee advocacy has a direct impact on our hiring pipeline. A whopping 83.6% of our hires between June 2021 and May 2022 had prior exposure to the Hootsuite brand on LinkedIn.

We got 8.9 million organic impressions in the first half of 2022, and Amplify shares made up 8.4 million of those views. There’s no other way to describe that impact besides massive.

Our VP of Product Marketing and Brand Christine Buck sums it up perfectly: “Amplify lets us show what it’s like to work for Hootsuite through the eyes of the beholder, our employees.” (Although tbh, LinkedIn does help by yelling at all our connections whenever we post.)

This B2B company uses employee advocacy to flood their hiring pipeline with A+ applicants

Antalis is a paper company. Yes, just like THAT paper company, but unlike THAT paper company, Antalis isn’t reenacting Silence of the Lambs during meetings. Instead, they’re using employee advocacy programs to speed-run the whole hiring process—and Hootsuite Amplify makes it all happen.

The Antalis team started by recruiting employees who already had LinkedIn profiles, and got a professional photographer to take fresh headshots. Once they’d banished the grainy iPhone pics, Antalis’ social team started creating content about sustainability and creativity for ambassadors to share through Amplify.

Suddenly, Antalis was telling its corporate story through employees, who were pumped to share content that reflected their passions and values.

Flash forward 12 months: Antalis’ employee advocacy program has been a total smash, and employees have shared over 2,400 posts through Amplify. Job postings take three weeks less to fill, now that candidates can get to know the Antalis brand through employee posts. Direct referrals provided by Antalis employees can (and do!) cut that time down even further.

They’re winning like never before, and we love to see it.

Building your employee advocacy program won’t take long

Employee advocates are powerful influencers, and building your own internal program isn’t rocket science. You just need to know who you want to hire, roughly what they care about, and how to give your teammates shareable posts your target hires connect with.

All you social marketers: Make sure your recruiting team reads this section, so they know exactly how the sausage gets made.

Figure out who you’re struggling to hire

When starting out with employee advocacy, you’ll want to target a few core types of candidates. We guarantee you’ve got at least one department that’s really in need of fresh blood, and your target audience should be the candidates your HR team is most desperate to hire.

Shoot your favorite recruiter a DM, and ask: “Hey—I’m starting to build posts for our employee advocacy program. Could you tell me which roles we’re struggling to hire for right now?”

They’ll know better than us marketers, so go right to the source.

Maybe you’re gearing up for a big marketing blitz, and need more copywriters. Or maybe you’re building a swanky technical product, and need 10 new developers, like ASAP. Maybe good executives are proving hard to come by, so you might even have a hiring gap at the top.

Just pick one or two groups, and focus on them.

Cherry-pick themes that your target hires care about

Once you’ve narrowed down to a few target audiences, talk to your teammates who already work in those roles. Ask them about the parts of their job they find meaningful, and the types of content they engage with on LinkedIn. (It never hurts to ask what work-related meme pages they follow, either.)

Take some notes, and pick out the key themes that are important to people. Developers might be keen to share ways they build accessibility into your products. Marketers might love silly, meme-y content about moments at work. Executives might be passionate about promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and stories about employee success.

You’ll never know until you ask.

Fire up Hootsuite and start creating posts through Amplify

No more research, my friend—you’re ready to start posting! Open up Hootsuite, and start crafting posts in Publisher around the themes your target hires care about.

Remember: You’re writing on behalf of your teammates, not the company. Use “I” instead of “we,” and go conversational instead of corporate. And if you’re ever stuck, just look your coworkers up on LinkedIn. Peoples’ organic posts are great inspiration for posts that feel real and trustworthy, and that’s the exact impression you want to give potential hires.

Once you’re done drafting a post in Publisher, just click “send to Amplify.” Your whole team will have access to the post on Amplify, and they’ll be able to share it on all their own social profiles right from their Hootsuite dashboard.

Boom, done—that wasn’t hard, right?

Measure the results and tweak your strategy

Once you’ve run your first few Amplify campaigns, open up Hootsuite Analytics and peek at how you’re doing.

At a glance, you’ll be able to check how many active Amplify users you’ve got, the sign-up rate, the number of impressions you’ve got from employee shares, and which posts are most popular. (And much more, too!)

This data is—pardon me—freaking gold. You’ll spot what’s working, change what isn’t, and prove your impact on hiring to all those sweaty stakeholders.

That’s exactly how we measured the 213% increase in InMail acceptance rates our Amplify campaigns drive, and there’s really no arguing with those numbers.

Once you’re hooked up, you’ll get just as much mileage out of your data. If Amplify posts about your company benefits are sealing the deal with new hires, you’ll know to write more. If you’re fighting to get teammates sharing, you’ll know to adjust your voice or the types of posts you’re creating.

Nothing’s camouflaged, and everything’s easy to measure.

So, what’s next?

By this point, you’re pretty much an expert on employee advocacy for hiring. And you know that the most competitive brands are turning employees into ambassadors to attract top talent. (Shout out to our friends at Duolingo and McDonald’s—you’re ALL doing great).

Don’t worry, you’re just in time to join the party. The tools and expertise you need are right here, so let’s get you plugged into Amplify so you can start leading employee advocacy campaigns and building your employer brand, ASAP.

Your people team says thank you in advance.

Ready to help HR hire better candidates, faster? Watch our panel webinar on employee advocacy.

Request a Demo

Hootsuite Amplify makes it easy for your employees to safely share your content with their followers—boosting your reach on social media. Book a personalized, no-pressure demo to see it in action.

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Nov 4 2022
Scarcity Marketing & The Fear of Missing Out – Ep. 292 via @sejournal, @lorenbaker

Countdown clocks, limited seating, only X items left in stock … does scarcity marketing work for you? If so, why?

Scarcity marketing and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a phenomenon that can be applied to all forms of marketing – especially digital.

Mindy Weinstein, Ph.D., author of The Power of Scarcity, joins me on the SEJShow to talk more about the concept – and how it can help you drive results.

Marketing is so much psychology; it doesn’t matter if you’re doing SEO, paid search, or social. You’re trying to reach a person. I feel like it’s a lot harder than before because it’s a matter of not just reaching them but cutting through the noise and then using the right words. –Mindy Weinstein,1:51

Because of scarcity, there is excitement and there is loyalty. Think of Nike and some of these big companies that people watch for the drops. It goes beyond just creating quick revenue, as I need sales right now, which is what most of us associate with scarcity. –Mindy Weinstein, 29:02

You’re bringing their focus, especially for people all over the place, and you’re giving them the direction to tell them what to do, which many audiences actually crave. They don’t necessarily want to make that decision, and they need you to guide them to make the decision or to make the sale. I think that’s something that can be lost in digital marketing.
–Loren Baker, 19:20

[00:00] – Mindy’s background.
[05:17] – What is scarcity marketing?
[06:00] – Four types of scarcity.
[10:14] – How to take scarcity marketing from the traditional to the digital side.
[16:01] – Examples of using scarcity marketing in websites.
[20:20] – Examples for service-based businesses.
[25:19] – How McDonald’s used scarcity marketing.
[32:27] – Ways search marketers can incorporate scarcity marketing into campaigns.

Resources Mentioned:
The Power Of Scarcity Book – http://powerofscarcity.com
Market MindShift – https://www.marketmindshift.com/

It’s multi-layered. It’s more than just thinking buy now, or miss out, or you have only one day left. There’s so much to it, it doesn’t always work and it only works for specific audiences depending on the type of discourse you’re using. –Mindy Weinstein, 2:39

Just telling you have these products as best sellers or most popular on your website helps someone as they’re searching on your website. –Mindy Weinstein, 7:50

You want to have the regular price because it elicits a feeling of loss aversion that we don’t want. –Mindy Weinstein, 33:54

For more content like this, subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/searchenginejournal

Connect with Mindy Weinstein:

Mindy Weinstein is the founder and CEO of Market MindShift and a national speaker with an extensive background in digital marketing strategy. She has trained companies across all industries, from Facebook to World Fuel Services.

Mindy is also the leading expert on persuasion-related concepts, with years of experience in the business. The research she conducts helps companies better understand how to persuade their customers-and; she isn’t afraid to think deeply!

Her book, The Power Of Scarcity, is available on November 8, 2022.

Connect with Mindy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mindydweinstein/
Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mindyweinstein

Connect with Loren Baker, Founder of Search Engine Journal:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker
Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker

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Nov 4 2022
Are Internal Links A Ranking Factor? via @sejournal, @kristileilani

You hear about internal links all the time. But how important are they?

Do internal links affect search rankings, and if so, how can you best optimize them for SEO?

That is what we will explore by diving into Google Search Central, patents, tweets, and office hour videos.

The Claim: Internal Links As A Ranking Factor

What are internal links?

Internal links are simply hypertext links connecting two pages on the same domain. For example:

  • A link from one Search Engine Journal article to another within the searchenginejournal.com domain would be an internal link.
  • A link from a Search Engine Journal article to an article on Google Search Central would be an external link.

Peruse articles from the top SEO blogs and experienced marketers. You will likely find advice on properly optimizing internal links to increase visibility for your key pages in search results. For example:

[Recommended Read:] Google Ranking Factors: Fact or Fiction

The Evidence For Internal Links As A Ranking Factor

Google’s page on How Search Works explains how links help Google discover new content.

“Because the web and other content is constantly changing, our crawling processes are always running to keep up. They learn how often content they’ve seen before seems to change and revisit as needed. They also discover new content as new links to those pages or information appear.”

In 2017, Gary Illyes, Chief of Sunshine and Happiness at Google, was asked if breadcrumb navigation links passed value. His response:

“We like them. We treat them as normal links in, e.g., PageRank computation.”

It sounds like he confirmed that internal links could influence a page’s performance in search results.

Does Google look at the anchor text of internal links? John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google,  tweeted a response to this question later in 2017:

“Most links do provide a bit of additional context through their anchor text. At least they should, right‽”

During a Google Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangout in 2018, Mueller was asked if updating the anchor text of internal links to help users could affect rankings.

He responded that if you were making the anchor text more useful to users, it would also be more beneficial for search engine crawlers.

Later in 2018, when asked about ranking changes related to mobile-first indexing, Mueller stated, “…if your mobile site doesn’t have all of the content you need for ranking (including internal links, images, etc.), then that could have an effect.”

On Twitter, in response to a question about the results of a Lighthouse audit in 2020, Mueller said, “…internal links with useful anchor text help users, and they help search engines.”

In a Google Webmaster Central Office Hours later in 2020, Mueller was asked how internal linking would work for two pages about cheese on the same website. He noted that there didn’t need to be a change to the anchor text that separated a page to buy cheese from a guide to cheeses.

In 2021, during Google SEO Office Hours, Mueller discussed how Google might choose a website’s homepage, category page, or other pages as the most relevant for a specific keyword search result.

He suggests you use internal linking to let Google know the most important pages on a website. For example, if you have one more important product to your business than others, link to that product specifically from your homepage and other essential pages throughout your website.

This would help Google recognize that one product is more important than the others on the site.

Mueller answered another question about internal links in 2021. Are internal links diluted if you use too many on a page?

Mueller’s response ultimately boiled down to site structure. If Google can still understand the site structure and see the differentiation in the importance of some pages over others, then the number of internal links is acceptable. He gives a similar answer to this question again in 2022.

In 2022, Mueller was asked if placing a link in a header, footer, or content makes a difference. He responded that it didn’t mean anything. He answered similar questions during future office hours.

Later, in March 2022, Mueller was asked if internal links are still crucial to SEO if structured data for breadcrumbs are present. He states that “…internal linking is super critical to SEO.” He calls it one of the biggest things you can do on a website to guide Google to your most important content.

The evidence is pretty straightforward. Internal links help people and search engines understand your site. Google gives internal links weight and uses them to help determine which pages are your most important.

So, what makes a good internal link?

[Learn More:] Google Ranking Factor Insights

Google’s Advice For Effective Internal Links

Many of the Google employees’ responses focused on improving users’ experience and helping search engines understand your site. What are the most effective ways to indicate your essential pages using internal links?

Google’s documentation provides clear answers.

Google’s explanation for How Search Works For Site Owners reiterates the role that links play in helping Google discover new content.

“The first stage is finding out what pages exist on the web. There isn’t a central registry of all webpages, so Google must constantly look for new and updated pages and add them to its list of known pages. This process is called ‘URL discovery.’

Some pages are known because Google has already visited them. Other pages are discovered when Google follows a link from a known page to a new page: for example, a hub page, such as a category page, links to a new blog post.”

They recommend that creators use Google Search Console to learn how to make their site more accessible to crawlers. GSC offers reports that help website owners identify their top-linked pages and pages with the most internal links.

Google’s official Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide discusses internal linking, beginning with the use of breadcrumbs.

“A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page. Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first, leftmost link and list the more specific sections out to the right. We recommend using breadcrumb structured data markup when showing breadcrumbs.”

The guide also references internal links as part of a naturally flowing hierarchy.

“Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure. Make sure all of the pages on your site are reachable through links, and that they don’t require an internal search functionality to be found. Link to related pages, where appropriate, to allow users to discover similar content.”

As for advice on how to help your website’s SEO, Google recommends writing good link text.

“Links on your page may be internal – pointing to other pages on your site – or external – leading to content on other sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page you’re linking to is about.”

It continues:

“You may usually think about linking in terms of pointing to outside websites, but paying more attention to the anchor text used for internal links can help users, and Google navigate your site better.”

Of course, Google also warns not to use “excessively keyword-filled or lengthy anchor text just for search engines” or links that don’t help users with navigation throughout the website.

In a Google Search Central Blog article from 2008, Google discusses the importance of link architecture.

“Link architecture – the method of internal linking on your site – is a crucial step in site design if you want your site indexed by search engines. It plays a critical role in Googlebot’s ability to find your site’s pages and ensures that your visitors can navigate and enjoy your site.”

The article goes on to answer questions about internal linking. The answers, in short:

  • Google doesn’t recommend using nofollow with internal links for PageRank sculpting or siloing.
  • Google doesn’t have a problem with cross-themed internal linking, such as a website discussing biking and camping.

Under Advanced SEO documentation, Google discusses the importance of internal links for your website’s sitelinks in search results.

“Ensure that your internal links’ anchor text is concise and relevant to the page they’re pointing to.”

In another Google Search Central Blog article from 2010 offering website advice for non-profits, Google noted that:

“20% of our submissions could improve their sites by improving the anchor text used in some of their internal links. When writing anchor text, keep two things in mind:

  • Be descriptive: Use words relevant to the destination page, avoiding generic phrases like “click here” or “article.” Make sure the user can get a snapshot of the destination page’s overall content and functionality by reading the anchor text.
  • Keep it concise: Anchor text that contains a few words or a short phrase is more attractive and convenient for users to read than a sentence or paragraph-long link.”

Does the number of internal links matter?

Matt Cutts, former head of Google’s webspam team, answered this question in a Google Search Central video in 2013. He responded that internal links would not cause trouble. Website templates and architecture will naturally lead to many internal links with matching anchor text. So long as it is natural and for user experience, it is okay.

[Deep Dive:] Your Complete Guide To Google Ranking Factors

Our Verdict: Internal Links Are A Ranking Factor

Ranking factors: confirmed

Google’s documentation about how search works and its starter guide on how site owners can help Google understand their content explain internal links’ importance.

You can also find advice on Twitter and YouTube from Google representatives about optimizing internal links to help Google determine the most critical pages on your website.

Internal links are a part of the ranking factors that help determine where your webpages will rank in search results.

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Ranking Factors: Fact Or Fiction? Let’s Bust Some Myths! [Ebook]

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Nov 4 2022
10 Steps To Boost Your Site’s Crawlability And Indexability via @sejournal, @BrianFr07823616

Keywords and content may be the twin pillars upon which most search engine optimization strategies are built, but they’re far from the only ones that matter.

Less commonly discussed but equally important – not just to users but to search bots – is your website’s discoverability.

There are roughly 50 billion webpages on 1.93 billion websites on the internet. This is far too many for any human team to explore, so these bots, also called spiders, perform a significant role.

These bots determine each page’s content by following links from website to website and page to page. This information is compiled into a vast database, or index, of URLs, which are then put through the search engine’s algorithm for ranking.

This two-step process of navigating and understanding your site is called crawling and indexing.

As an SEO professional, you’ve undoubtedly heard these terms before, but let’s define them just for clarity’s sake:

  • Crawlability refers to how well these search engine bots can scan and index your webpages.
  • Indexability measures the search engine’s ability to analyze your webpages and add them to its index.

As you can probably imagine, these are both essential parts of SEO.

If your site suffers from poor crawlability, for example, many broken links and dead ends, search engine crawlers won’t be able to access all your content, which will exclude it from the index.

Indexability, on the other hand, is vital because pages that are not indexed will not appear in search results. How can Google rank a page it hasn’t included in its database?

The crawling and indexing process is a bit more complicated than we’ve discussed here, but that’s the basic overview.

If you’re looking for a more in-depth discussion of how they work, Dave Davies has an excellent piece on crawling and indexing.

How To Improve Crawling And Indexing

Now that we’ve covered just how important these two processes are let’s look at some elements of your website that affect crawling and indexing – and discuss ways to optimize your site for them.

1. Improve Page Loading Speed

With billions of webpages to catalog, web spiders don’t have all day to wait for your links to load. This is sometimes referred to as a crawl budget.

If your site doesn’t load within the specified time frame, they’ll leave your site, which means you’ll remain uncrawled and unindexed. And as you can imagine, this is not good for SEO purposes.

Thus, it’s a good idea to regularly evaluate your page speed and improve it wherever you can.

You can use Google Search Console or tools like Screaming Frog to check your website’s speed.

If your site is running slow, take steps to alleviate the problem. This could include upgrading your server or hosting platform, enabling compression, minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, and eliminating or reducing redirects.

Figure out what’s slowing down your load time by checking your Core Web Vitals report. If you want more refined information about your goals, particularly from a user-centric view, Google Lighthouse is an open-source tool you may find very useful.

2. Strengthen Internal Link Structure

A good site structure and internal linking are foundational elements of a successful SEO strategy. A disorganized website is difficult for search engines to crawl, which makes internal linking one of the most important things a website can do.

But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what Google’s search advocate John Mueller had to say about it:

“Internal linking is super critical for SEO. I think it’s one of the biggest things that you can do on a website to kind of guide Google and guide visitors to the pages that you think are important.”

If your internal linking is poor, you also risk orphaned pages or those pages that don’t link to any other part of your website. Because nothing is directed to these pages, the only way for search engines to find them is from your sitemap.

To eliminate this problem and others caused by poor structure, create a logical internal structure for your site.

Your homepage should link to subpages supported by pages further down the pyramid. These subpages should then have contextual links where it feels natural.

Another thing to keep an eye on is broken links, including those with typos in the URL. This, of course, leads to a broken link, which will lead to the dreaded 404 error. In other words, page not found.

The problem with this is that broken links are not helping and are harming your crawlability.

Double-check your URLs, particularly if you’ve recently undergone a site migration, bulk delete, or structure change. And make sure you’re not linking to old or deleted URLs.

Other best practices for internal linking include having a good amount of linkable content (content is always king), using anchor text instead of linked images, and using a “reasonable number” of links on a page (whatever that means).

Oh yeah, and ensure you’re using follow links for internal links.

3. Submit Your Sitemap To Google

Given enough time, and assuming you haven’t told it not to, Google will crawl your site. And that’s great, but it’s not helping your search ranking while you’re waiting.

If you’ve recently made changes to your content and want Google to know about it immediately, it’s a good idea to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console.

A sitemap is another file that lives in your root directory. It serves as a roadmap for search engines with direct links to every page on your site.

This is beneficial for indexability because it allows Google to learn about multiple pages simultaneously. Whereas a crawler may have to follow five internal links to discover a deep page, by submitting an XML sitemap, it can find all of your pages with a single visit to your sitemap file.

Submitting your sitemap to Google is particularly useful if you have a deep website, frequently add new pages or content, or your site does not have good internal linking.

4. Update Robots.txt Files

You probably want to have a robots.txt file for your website. While it’s not required, 99% of websites use it as a rule of thumb. If you’re unfamiliar with this is, it’s a plain text file in your website’s root directory.

It tells search engine crawlers how you would like them to crawl your site. Its primary use is to manage bot traffic and keep your site from being overloaded with requests.

Where this comes in handy in terms of crawlability is limiting which pages Google crawls and indexes. For example, you probably don’t want pages like directories, shopping carts, and tags in Google’s directory.

Of course, this helpful text file can also negatively impact your crawlability. It’s well worth looking at your robots.txt file (or having an expert do it if you’re not confident in your abilities) to see if you’re inadvertently blocking crawler access to your pages.

Some common mistakes in robots.text files include:

  • Robots.txt is not in the root directory.
  • Poor use of wildcards.
  • Noindex in robots.txt.
  • Blocked scripts, stylesheets and images.
  • No sitemap URL.

For an in-depth examination of each of these issues – and tips for resolving them, read this article.

5. Check Your Canonicalization

Canonical tags consolidate signals from multiple URLs into a single canonical URL. This can be a helpful way to tell Google to index the pages you want while skipping duplicates and outdated versions.

But this opens the door for rogue canonical tags. These refer to older versions of a page that no longer exists, leading to search engines indexing the wrong pages and leaving your preferred pages invisible.

To eliminate this problem, use a URL inspection tool to scan for rogue tags and remove them.

If your website is geared towards international traffic, i.e., if you direct users in different countries to different canonical pages, you need to have canonical tags for each language. This ensures your pages are being indexed in each language your site is using.

6. Perform A Site Audit

Now that you’ve performed all these other steps, there’s still one final thing you need to do to ensure your site is optimized for crawling and indexing: a site audit. And that starts with checking the percentage of pages Google has indexed for your site.

Check Your Indexability Rate

Your indexability rate is the number of pages in Google’s index divided by the number of ages on our website.

You can find out how many pages are in the google index from Google Search Console Index  by going to the “Pages” tab and checking the number of pages on the website from the CMS admin panel.

There’s a good chance your site will have some pages you don’t want indexed, so this number likely won’t be 100%. But if the indexability rate is below 90%, then you have issues that need to be investigated.

You can get your no-indexed URLs from Search Console and run an audit for them. This could help you understand what is causing the issue.

Another useful site auditing tool included in Google Search Console is the URL Inspection Tool. This allows you to see what Google spiders see, which you can then compare to real webpages to understand what Google is unable to render.

Audit Newly Published Pages

Any time you publish new pages to your website or update your most important pages, you should make sure they’re being indexed. Go into Google Search Console and make sure they’re all showing up.

If you’re still having issues, an audit can also give you insight into which other parts of your SEO strategy are falling short, so it’s a double win. Scale your audit process with free tools like:

  1. Screaming Frog
  2. Semrush
  3. Ziptie
  4. Oncrawl
  5. Lumar

7. Check For Low-Quality Or Duplicate Content

If Google doesn’t view your content as valuable to searchers, it may decide it’s not worthy to index. This thin content, as it’s known could be poorly written content (e.g., filled with grammar mistakes and spelling errors), boilerplate content that’s not unique to your site, or content with no external signals about its value and authority.

To find this, determine which pages on your site are not being indexed, and then review the target queries for them. Are they providing high-quality answers to the questions of searchers? If not, replace or refresh them.

Duplicate content is another reason bots can get hung up while crawling your site. Basically, what happens is that your coding structure has confused it and it doesn’t know which version to index. This could be caused by things like session IDs, redundant content elements and pagination issues.

Sometimes, this will trigger an alert in Google Search Console, telling you Google is encountering more URLs than it thinks it should. If you haven’t received one, check your crawl results for things like duplicate or missing tags, or URLs with extra characters that could be creating extra work for bots.

Correct these issues by fixing tags, removing pages or adjusting Google’s access.

8. Eliminate Redirect Chains And Internal Redirects

As websites evolve, redirects are a natural byproduct, directing visitors from one page to a newer or more relevant one. But while they’re common on most sites, if you’re mishandling them, you could be inadvertently sabotaging your own indexing.

There are several mistakes you can make when creating redirects, but one of the most common is redirect chains. These occur when there’s more than one redirect between the link clicked on and the destination. Google doesn’t look on this as a positive signal.

In more extreme cases, you may initiate a redirect loop, in which a page redirects to another page, which directs to another page, and so on, until it eventually links back to the very first page. In other words, you’ve created a never-ending loop that goes nowhere.

Check your site’s redirects using Screaming Frog, Redirect-Checker.org or a similar tool.

9. Fix Broken Links

In a similar vein, broken links can wreak havoc on your site’s crawlability. You should regularly be checking your site to ensure you don’t have broken links, as this will not only hurt your SEO results, but will frustrate human users.

There are a number of ways you can find broken links on your site, including manually evaluating each and every link on your site (header, footer, navigation, in-text, etc.), or you can use Google Search Console, Analytics or Screaming Frog to find 404 errors.

Once you’ve found broken links, you have three options for fixing them: redirecting them (see the section above for caveats), updating them or removing them.

10. IndexNow

IndexNow is a relatively new protocol that allows URLs to be submitted simultaneously between search engines via an API. It works like a super-charged version of submitting an XML sitemap by alerting search engines about new URLs and changes to your website.

Basically, what it does is provides crawlers with a roadmap to your site upfront. They enter your site with information they need, so there’s no need to constantly recheck the sitemap. And unlike XML sitemaps, it allows you to inform search engines about non-200 status code pages.

Implementing it is easy, and only requires you to generate an API key, host it in your directory or another location, and submit your URLs in the recommended format.

Wrapping Up

By now, you should have a good understanding of your website’s indexability and crawlability. You should also understand just how important these two factors are to your search rankings.

If Google’s spiders can crawl and index your site, it doesn’t matter how many keywords, backlinks, and tags you use – you won’t appear in search results.

And that’s why it’s essential to regularly check your site for anything that could be waylaying, misleading, or misdirecting bots.

So, get yourself a good set of tools and get started. Be diligent and mindful of the details, and you’ll soon have Google spiders swarming your site like spiders.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 4 2022
Google Shopping Free Listings: An In-Depth Guide via @sejournal, @AdamHeitzman

Whether you run an ecommerce or brick-and-mortar retail business, chances are you’ve heard a thing or two about Google Shopping.

But what is Google Shopping, exactly? Is it worth using? And, if so, how should you use it?

This post will cover all the fundamentals of Google Shopping and explain everything you’ll need to get up and running on the world’s most popular retail search engine.

So let’s kick off with some basics.

What Is Google Shopping?

Google Shopping is a comparison shopping engine provided by Google that allows consumers to research, compare, and purchase products from a broad range of online vendors.

Products listed on Google Shopping often appear as ads within regular Google Search results, usually inside a carousel at the top of the results page.

Users can also access the platform by heading directly to the Google Shopping website or by selecting the Shopping tab in Google Search.

Google Shopping organizes millions of products and reviews into an easily searchable and visual format, making it easier for consumers to find the right product at the best price. Shoppers can also use the platform’s many filters to refine further their product searches, including by price range, location, or brand.

Moreover, product listings that include the Google Cart icon can be bought directly through the platform (so that shoppers don’t need to visit third-party stores) and come with a Google-backed guarantee for additional peace of mind.

How Does Google Shopping Work?

Merchants must submit a file known as a product feed to Google to have their products featured on Google Shopping.

The product feed contains all the relevant data from the merchant’s inventory, including product titles, descriptions, images, and prices.

Google’s algorithm processes this data to surface the merchant’s products whenever users search for related product queries.

When users click on one of these product listings, they’re taken to the merchant’s website to complete the purchase (provided the item can’t be bought directly through Google Shopping).

Until April 2020, merchants had no option but to pay for product listings in Google Shopping.

Since then, however, Google has introduced free product listings within the Google Shopping tab and Google Search.

Google Shopping Ads

google search result for xboxScreenshot from search for [xbox one series x], Google, October 2022

You can pay for more prominent product listings by creating Shopping ad campaigns in Google Ads.

As with other ad formats, the placement of your Shopping ads is determined in an ad auction, and you get charged on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.

Unlike traditional text ads, Google Shopping ads are visual, showing an image of the product and information like title, price, and shop name.

They can appear within the Shopping tab, Google Search, Google Images, and on Google Search Partner websites.

google search result for xbox one

Google Shopping Free Listings

You can now list your products on Google Shopping for free, just as you can list your website on the Google Search index without needing to pay.

Of course, free listings don’t enjoy the prominence of sponsored listings, but they do appear across the Google ecosystem, including on the Shopping tab, Google Search, Google Images, and YouTube.

Here’s an example of free listings appearing on Google Search within a product knowledge panel:

google result for xboxScreenshot from search for [xbox one series x], Google, October 2022

Should I Be Listed On Google Shopping?

In short, yes!

Here are some of the major ways Google Shopping can benefit your ecommerce or retail business:

Greater Product Visibility

Powered by the world’s most popular search engine, listing your products on Google Shopping can significantly boost your customer reach.

Moreover, using the service allows your brand to appear several times within a single Google Search results page, thereby multiplying your exposure to potential customers.

For example, if you combine free and paid Google Shopping listings with traditional Search ads — and your website ranks organically for the query in question — Google could display all four in the search results simultaneously.

Exposure To Users With High Purchase Intent

Naturally, users that head directly to the Google Shopping platform generally do so intending to buy something. So it’s a no-brainer to try to get your products listed for free on one of the world’s most popular storefronts.

Moreover, free and paid Google Shopping listings only appear in Google Search if they are deemed to be a relevant match for the user’s search intent.

Visual Appeal

Shopping ads are more eye-catching than their text-only counterparts.

Whenever users search for a specific product or conduct some research to find out what colors, styles, and sizes are available, they are more likely to find results that feature actual product images useful.

This, in turn, can translate into more clicks and higher conversion rates.

How To Add Products To Google Shopping

Now that you’re up to speed on the basics of Google Shopping and how it can help your business grow, let’s look at what you need to do to get set up on the platform.

1. Create A Google Merchant Center Account

google merchant center dashboardScreenshot from Google Ads & Commerce Blog, October 2022

The first step towards listing your products on Google Shopping is to set up a Google Merchant Center account.

This will serve as a central hub where you can manage how your product catalog appears throughout Google.

The setup process is pretty self-explanatory.

You’ll be asked to provide some basic business information, choose how you want your customers to check out (e.g., on your website or through Google), and be instructed to verify your website.

You’ll also be given the option to opt-in for free product listings!

2. Create High-Quality Product Images

We’ve already seen how product images play a central role in Shopping ads, which is why you need to ensure all your product images are of high quality.

This means each image should present the product clearly and accurately using a clean background.

So be sure to avoid any image overlays, image borders, or multicolored backgrounds. You should also stick to one product per image unless the product is part of a bundle.

3. Upload Your Product Feed

The next step is to submit your product feed. As we mentioned earlier, the product feed is a file that lists all the products you want to promote through Google Shopping.

You can format the product feed in a spreadsheet, giving each product its own row and specifying the product attributes in different columns.

You can find a template data feed within Google Merchant Center.

Here are some of the attributes that Google will need to generate both paid and free product listings:

  • Identification: Such as a stock keeping unit (SKU) to uniquely identify the product.
  • Title: An accurate, top-level description of the product.
  • Description: A more detailed description of the product.
  • Availability: Specifying whether the product is currently available.
  • Price: Detailing how much the product costs.
  • Link: Specifying the URL of the product landing page.
  • Image link: A URL to the product’s main image.

Once you’ve completed your product feed, upload the file to Google Merchant Center.

After submitting your product feed to Google Merchant Center, each product will be assigned a product status: Active, Pending, Disapproved, or Expiring.

You can find instructions on how to check your product statuses, as well as a detailed breakdown of each status and what it means, here.

For more guidance on creating and uploading your product feed, check out this video from Google:

Note: Each file is limited to a maximum of 100,000 items by default. (Although you can modify this by sending a request.)

4. Link Your Google Merchant Center And Google Ads Accounts

To promote your products through Google Shopping ads, you’ll need to set up an Ads account (if you haven’t already) and connect it to Google Merchant Center.

Click the Account linking option within the Google Merchant Center settings menu to link both accounts.

Then, click Link account beneath the Google Ads section.

5. Set Up Your Google Shopping Campaign

Once both accounts are linked, you’ll need to create a Google Shopping campaign.

You can set this up in either Google Merchant Center or Google Ads. Here’s the process for the latter:

  • Select Campaigns, then New Campaign.
  • Choose your campaign objective and select Shopping under Campaign type.
  • Specify your campaign settings, such as campaign name, locations, bidding strategy, daily budget, and campaign schedule
  • Choose which type of ad group you want to build for your campaign (a Product Shopping ad group is best for Google Shopping newcomers)
  • Name your ad group, specify your maximum CPC bid (or cost-per-engagement bid if you choose a Showcase Shopping ad group), and save!

Final Thoughts

Google Shopping provides consumers with a simple yet powerful way to discover the products they want at the best price, all in one place.

Not only does the platform save shoppers from the hassle of visiting different online stores one by one just to find the right deal, but it also empowers them to make better-informed buying decisions by neatly collating various product data and customer reviews.

For ecommerce and retail businesses, Google Shopping offers the potential to reach a huge audience of highly-motivated customers.

Moreover, Google’s recent decision to open up the platform to all merchants, free of charge, has created an unprecedented opportunity for businesses like yours to acquire new customers at minimal expense.

With that said, it’s time for you to seize this opportunity and start making the most of Google Shopping within your own business, whether you start with free listings, Shopping ads, or both.

Happy selling!

More resources: 

Featured Image: 13_Phunkod/Shutterstock
Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 4 2022
Smarter Link Building: How To Use Machine Learning To Accelerate Organic Growth via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

How can you improve your link building strategy?

Which modern techniques can help you boost organic growth?

What are the most important link metrics to consider for organic search visibility?

Google knows, and its machine learning capabilities know – but do you?

With Google now able to understand the broader context of your content through machine learning and natural language understanding, we see that relevancy significantly impacts your search rankings.

It’s time to use machine learning’s progress in relevancy to help you tailor your link building strategy.

On October 26, I moderated a webinar with Beth Nunnington, VP of Digital PR and Content at Journey Further, and Steve Walker, Technology Director.

Nunnington and Walker demonstrated how relevant branded content is the key to increasing visibility and traffic for winning SEO performance, with machine learning in mind.

Here is a summary of the webinar. To access the entire presentation, complete the form.

Key Takeaways

  • Focus on improving keyword relevance through digital PR.
  • Don’t rely on volume or ‘domain authority’ metrics for measuring success.
  • Understand that the relevance of your link profile can give you a competitive advantage.
  • ‘Link bait’ creative campaigns will only get you so far.
  • Product-focused PR gets results and can be used to target specific areas.

[Get access to the full on-demand webinar] Instantly access the webinar →

Top Considerations For Organic Growth

Link and content relevance can drive organic performance.

And when it comes to building relevance, there are four key areas of relevance that you need to consider:

  • Audience interest.
  • Brand authority.
  • Keyword relevance.
  • Topical relevance.
Smarter Link Building: How To Use Machine Learning To Accelerate Organic GrowthImage created by Journey Further, Oct 2022

When it comes to developing your digital PR or content marketing strategy, topic relevance must be one of your biggest focuses.

[See how Ikea does it] Instantly access the webinar →

Next up is link building.

Google thinks relevance is important, and John Mueller mentions that the total number of links doesn’t matter.

Smarter Link Building: How To Use Machine Learning To Accelerate Organic GrowthImage created by Journey Further, Oct 2022

So, if the number of links doesn’t matter, how do you measure relevance?

Machine learning can help with that. Here’s how.

How To Use Machine Learning To Measure Relevance

Machine learning allows you to measure and understand content at scale.

With the use of tools, you can get a quantitative score that can measure the relevance of an article.

By submitting the entire link profile of your website into these tools, machine learning can then read all of those links, plus all those articles that have the links within them.

Then, you’ll get a list of the most prevalent topics, keywords, entities, sentiments, and scores.

With it, you can gain insights into topics, themes, and concepts that you can use to improve your strategies.

Smarter Link Building: How To Use Machine Learning To Accelerate Organic GrowthImage created by Journey Further, Oct 2022

[See in machine learning in action] Instantly access the webinar →

Drive Organic Growth With Relevance

Several studies have shown that relevancy positively correlates with organic market share.

The key to driving quality over quantity is to focus on content relevant to the keywords you want to rank for and your target audience.

[Find out how a search engine and a robot view the backlink profile of a business] Instantly access the webinar →

[Slides] Smarter Link Building: How To Use Machine Learning To Accelerate Organic Growth

Here’s the presentation:

Join Us For Our Next Webinar!

How To Build A Winning MarTech Stack In 2023

Join iQuanti’s Vishal Maru, VP of Digital Solutions and Shaubhik Ray, Senior Director of Digital Analytics, as well as Tealium’s Josh Wolf, Director of Partner Solutions Consulting, as they discuss the implications, pros, and cons of the leading MarTech platforms.

Reserve my Seat

Image Credits

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

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Nov 4 2022
Smartphone data from drivers could help spot when bridges need urgent repairs

Smartphones could be used to monitor the safety of bridges much more quickly and cheaply than currently possible, providing engineers with data they can use to fix the structures before they become dangerously unstable.

Usually, bridges’ state of repair is monitored in one of two ways: either engineers visually inspect them for cracks and faults, or sensors collect data about their vibrations and movements. But a new method developed by researchers at West Point Military Academy and other universities avoids the need for either by collecting accelerometer data from smartphones in cars as they drive over the bridges. 

In tests that involved driving across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and a reinforced concrete bridge in Italy, they found that just two smartphones could provide data of similar accuracy to 240 stationary sensors. The phones pick up on naturally occurring vibrations from the bridges, allowing researchers to monitor their structural changes over time. Their research is described in a study published in Communications Engineering today.

The researchers estimate that monitoring this sort of smartphone data throughout a bridge’s life could extend the longevity of the structure by 30%, simply by helping maintenance crews to make more timely repairs. 

Making sure bridges are well maintained is vital, as demonstrated just a few days ago when a bridge collapsed in Gujarat, India, killing 135 people. It’s a problem in other countries too. Although bridges in the US are required by law to be visually inspected every two years, that doesn’t eliminate catastrophes like the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis in 2007, which killed 13 people and injured 145. 

Maintaining bridges is expensive. There are 600,000 of them in the US, and the organizations that own and maintain them can easily pay $50,000 for sensor equipment alone, with further costs incurred by the need to maintain them and analyze the data they generate. Smartphones are a much cheaper option.

However, work still needs to be done to make this technique a reality, says Ahmet Emin Aktan, a professor of civil, architectural, and environmental engineering at Drexel University, who was not involved in the study. He believes it’ll be a long time before the technique becomes widely adopted. 

Aktan expects visual inspections to remain the primary method of monitoring bridges for the next 10 to 20 years, because both sensors and smartphones can produce data that’s harder to interpret than what engineers see with their own eyes. Even something as ordinary as weather or variations in traffic load can affect the way structures behave and move, which can then affect the data. For example, they become stiffer in colder weather.

But eventually, he says, it’s likely that the industry will want to use a combination of that visual observation with the data collected from smartphones.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 4 2022
Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Elon Musk took over

In the days after Elon Musk’s October 27 purchase of Twitter was confirmed by his tweet saying “the bird is freed,” many Twitter users have threatened to leave, unhappy about the new ownership.

People always threaten to leave Twitter and then often fail to follow through—but new data suggests that a significant number of users really are  abandoning the platform this time.

The firm Bot Sentinel, which tracks inauthentic behavior on Twitter by analyzing more than 3.1 million accounts and their activity daily, believes that around 877,000 accounts were deactivated and a further 497,000 were suspended between October 27 and November 1. That’s more than double the usual number.

“We have observed an uptick in people deactivating their accounts and also Twitter suspending accounts,” says Christopher Bouzy, Bot Sentinel’s founder. 

Bouzy and Bot Sentinel arrived at their numbers by looking at the proportion of users they analyze who had deactivated their accounts or been suspended after Musk’s Twitter takeover, and then applying that percentage to Twitter’s overall user base, which currently stands at around 237 million “monetizable daily active users”.

From October 27 through November 1, Bot Sentinel found that 11,535 accounts they were monitoring had been deactivated—meaning someone chose to close an account down. A further 6,824 were suspended, which happens when Twitter proactively removes accounts for inactivity, inauthenticity, or violation of site rules. That’s approximately 0.59% of the accounts Bot Sentinel monitors.  In the week before Musk bought Twitter, only 5,958 accounts were deactivated or suspended, suggesting a 208% increase in account losses in the days after the purchase went through. 

“We believe the uptick in deactivations is a result of people upset with Elon Musk purchasing Twitter and deciding to deactivate their accounts in protest,” says Bouzy, pointing to the anecdotal evidence of people posting about quitting the site. 

Manoel Ribeiro, an academic at EPFL Lausanne in Switzerland who studies niche internet communities including the alt-right and how they are affected by moderation policies and algorithms, agrees. “There seems to be indeed an attempt from many to migrate to other platforms, such as Mastodon,” he says.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Elon Musk did not immediately respond to an email.

Bouzy believes the uptick in the number of account suspensions is in part due to hate speech from a proportion of the user base testing what they can and can’t say on the site now that it is under Musk’s control. “We also believe the increase in suspensions is from Twitter taking action on accounts purposely violating Twitter’s rules to see if they can push the limits of ‘free speech,’” he says. It’s unknown what proportion of those suspended by Twitter have been judged to be inauthentic (i.e., bots) as opposed to breaching the platform’s rules on acceptable speech.

Separate analysis by the Network Contagion Research Institute, a research group, shows that use of the N-word on Twitter increased by almost 500% in the 12 hours after Musk announced he had completed the deal. Simultaneously, various examples of derogatory “copypasta” (blocks of text copied and pasted into posts, popular with users of image boards like 4chan), are being posted with impunity.

The uptick in hate speech comes right as the company has frozen access to content moderation tools for much of its trust and safety team. Only 15 people have access to tools that enable them to remove posts, according to Bloomberg; hundreds usually have that ability. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, tweeted that the move was planned as part of the corporate transition, to “reduce opportunities for insider risk.” The platform also has automated moderation tools that work alongside human moderators, Ribeiro points out.

For Savvas Zannettou, assistant professor at Delft University of Technology and a core member of the iDRAMA Lab, a multi-institution research group that analyzes fringe online communities, it’s the first indication of a larger problem for Twitter. “I think this is the first chapter of the mass exodus from the platform,” he says. “I believe that as the new Twitter starts rolling out changes, it’s likely that there will be additional waves of users leaving Twitter.”

Bouzy also reckons the hostile environment on Twitter will promote user attrition in the long run. “I believe if users continue to deactivate their accounts en masse, it will become a significant problem for the platform,” he says. “If left-leaning and marginalized people leave the platform, Twitter will not differ from Parler or Truth Social.”

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 4 2022
Anatomy of Google’s Organic Search Snippets

Over the years Google has changed its search result pages, yet three elements of organic snippets remain:

  • Title,
  • URL,
  • Description.

Here’s how Google’s standard snippets function and how to optimize them for more clicks.

Title

The title is the most visible part of the search snippet and the only clickable element from a desktop browser.

Screenshot of a desktop snippet from The VergeScreenshot of a desktop snippet from The Verge

The title is the only clickable element from a desktop browser. This example is from The Verge.

On a mobile device, the entire title and URL area is tappable. Image thumbnails are clickable (desktop) and tappable (mobile).

Hence titles presumably impact click-throughs. Google seems to confirm this, claiming titles are the “primary piece of information people use to decide which result to click on.”

For years Google used a page’s title tag on the search snippet. This changed in August 2021 when Google announced it would henceforth use multiple sources of info on a page when generating snippet titles. Thus Google now uses for the snippet the most prominent headline of a page to align it with searchers’ expectations.

So there is much less control over the snippet’s title. But you can still optimize clicks by:

  • Ensuring the page’s visible headline is the same as the title tag.
  • Including target keywords in both — the page’s visible headline and title tag — since searchers look for the words they type. Avoid keyword stuffing, however, as Google could rewrite over-optimized titles.
  • Focusing on the first 60 characters (roughly) of both the title tag and visible headline. Google may truncate the rest.

URL

Google used to show the entire URL below the title of the snippet.

But the URL is now more like a breadcrumb indicating the linked page’s position in the site’s hierarchy. In my experience, Google typically determines this part of the snippet correctly without additional help.

Nonetheless, you can help ensure it’s accurate by using the BreadcrumbList schema type.

Screenshot of a snippet from Digital TrendsScreenshot of a snippet from Digital Trends

A snippet’s URL now resembles a breadcrumb indicating a page’s position in the site’s hierarchy, such as in this example from Digital Trends.

Description

The snippet’s description is usually two lines.

Google has extensive documentation on how to write good meta descriptions to help it generate useful snippets. But Google often ignores meta descriptions and uses on-page text based on each search query.

Yet meta descriptions remain helpful, especially when a page has little text. And Google claims to use meta descriptions if appropriate for the query.

Meta descriptions remain useful when relevant to a query, such as this example for “buy a laptop,” wherein those terms appear in bold.

To help Google generate helpful snippet descriptions:

  • Include factual data in meta descriptions — all the details reflecting the page’s purpose that can fit in two lines — such as product names, prices, author, and key specifications. For example, the meta description for the home page of a local company should include the business’s name, location, hours, and key products and services.
  • Add the target keywords to a page’s meta description, as they will appear in bold in the snippet. Bold text attracts searchers. But don’t overdo it.
  • Ensure meta descriptions are not too short since Google occasionally uses them regardless of length. An example is a product category page with no text.
  • Summarize in the meta description a page’s content, using meaningful conclusions and takeaways. This will also help it get featured.
  • Use lists in meta descriptions. Google tends to use them in snippets.
  • Structure a page using H2 and H3 headings. Google views the structure as a summary. Meaningfully include target keywords in those headings to increase the chances of bold text in search snippets.

More Snippets

There are many opportunities beyond standard snippets to generate clicks from organic search results. These include rich snippets, structured snippets, mini sitelinks, and image thumbnails.

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