A snippet is a block of information about a site page that is displayed in search results. The quality of the snippet affects how much your site will be visible and interesting to users. If the snippet is relevant to the user’s query and stands out from the competition, then this can significantly increase its clickability (CTR — the ratio of clicks to impressions).
When should the snippet be improved?
Before you start work, we recommend checking your website by the checklist:
- The site’s pages confidently occupy the TOP 10 in search phrases.
- If users do not see the site in the search results, then there is no point in working on improving the snippet.
- The promoted page of the site is relevant to the user’s intent and carries value.
- If the page is poorly designed, then users will immediately leave the site, which will ultimately reduce behavioral indicators and only worsen the visibility of the site.
- Competitors have stronger snippets in the output, or a decrease in CTR was noticed without a deterioration in the site’s position.
- If the site already has a consistently high CTR and has a more attractive snippet compared to competitors, then there is no need to change anything, since there is a risk of making it worse.
4 ways to improve the snippet in Google
It is possible to influence the snippet only indirectly, since it is formed on the side of the search engine. Moreover, even for the same page, search engines can generate different snippets for different queries. Let’s look at some basic ways to refine the site in order to increase the chance of getting a better snippet and increase the CTR of the page and the site as a whole.
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Method 1: Emoji
The easiest and fastest way is to add emoji to the site. Emojis or emojis are a set of symbols or pictures that can be used to express emotions when writing.
To add an emoji to a snippet, add a suitable option:
in the Title — to display in the title
in the Description — to display in the descriptive part
in the breadcrumb markup — to display in the navigation chain
Method 2: Prices and rating
To get information about the price, availability and rating, it is enough to use a micro markup like Product+Offer or Product+AggregateOffer. For Google, we recommend using JSON-LD, since in practice Google takes markup data into a snippet much more often compared to other methods.
Markup can be done not only for the product, but also for the category, which significantly improves your snippet compared to competitors who do not use this technology.
In the values marked with an asterisk (*), you need to insert your own values. For indicators of ratings and reviews, you can use the sum of values from all product categories or make a formula based on the number of products.
We do not recommend putting all 5 stars in the rating value. According to research, the best response occurs with a rating from 4.5 to 4.9.
Method 3: Tables
Recently, Google has been adding values from simple tables to snippets of information sites and service sites. A simple table is a table of 2 columns with fairly short values in the cells. This can be a comparative list, price list, characteristics, etc. Usually Google takes from 3 to 6 lines in the output.
We recommend adding such information to your pages, this will make the snippet larger and more noticeable by 40-50% than that of competitors.
Method 4: Highlighted Descriptions
Perhaps the most difficult, but the most effective way to raise CTR is to get into the highlighted Google descriptions. This method allows you not only to appear on the first screen, but also to be in the output for other queries in a special block “Similar questions”.
To increase the chance of getting into the highlighted descriptions, follow the following recommendations:
- Optimize the content for questions (who, what, where, how, etc.);
- Check the presence of a block of highlighted descriptions for the queries of interest and analyze the content and pages that got there to make a better and more complete response;
- Structure the document using headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.;
- Publish the content you want to see in the highlighted descriptions as close as possible to the beginning of the document;
- Add unique media content to the page (images, videos, infographics).
- Examples of highlighted descriptions and the link to the “Similar queries” block
Conclusion
We have considered several ways to increase CTR in Google by improving snippets. Many of them can be implemented in one evening! If you want to learn more ways and get individual recommendations for increasing CTR and traffic, leave a request on our website. We will be happy to help.
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