How Search Engines Read and Process Webpage Content
I love Moz’s definition of search engines as “answer machines“, crawling an enormous amount of data published every day to deliver an answer to your questions. Bloggers alone publish 7.5 million posts per day and the Google Search index contains hundreds of billions of webpages.
Moz says “…title tags are a major factor in helping search engines understand what your page is about, and they are the first impression many people have of your page”.
So when starting a web optimization project, the first task should be examining the site’s title tags and meta descriptions.
Title Tags
Title tags are HTML elements that Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) use to show your page title as a clickable link. They are also the second most important on-page factor for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) per Moz.
Since Google will only display the first 50-60 characters of a title tag on a SERP, you should limit your title tag (which includes the company name), to under 60 characters.
It is also very important that each page have a unique title tag. Most Content Management Systems (CMSs) will alert you to duplicate title tags if you copy a page.
For example, REI’s homepage title tag is 53 characters long. As you can see from the screenshots below, it is rendered completely on the SERP.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are HTML attributes displayed below the title tag hyperlink on the SERP that provide a brief summary of your web page.
Meta descriptions can be of any length, but Google will only display the first 155-160 characters of this attribute.
As with title tags, it is important that the meta description on each page is unique.
A Note of Caution
It’s very easy to copy over and retitle pages in some CMSs and completely miss updating the meta descriptions.
This can lead to a situation where you’ve published new content, but search engines WILL see the following mismatch using a produce example:
Honey Crisp Apples | Santa Clara Produce
Honey Crisp Apples are a cross between a Macoun apple and Honeygold apple from the University of Minnesota and have become the most popular apple in the United States
Hass Avocado | Santa Clara Produce
Honey Crisp Apples are a cross between a Macoun apple and Honeygold apple from the University of Minnesota and have become the most popular apple in the United States
In the event a page has no description given, search engines may display the meta description from the site’s homepage.
Where it all comes together – Google Sitelinks
Google sitelinks are an automated SERP that show a customer results Google thinks will be useful. These results are meant to save customers time by allowing them to quickly find the information they’re looking for.
As a bonus, these results command a large amount of space at the top of a customer’s screen. See the sitelink example below for REI.com:
Note that each page title and meta description below is unique. Each meta description also contains appropriate keywords such as Women’s, Men’s and Outlet. I will cover the topic of keywords in a future post.
How to Find and Fix
If you’re curious about your company’s search results, open a private browser window and search on your company’s name (not url).
On the sitelinks page, review the titles and descriptions for each page. Are they all unique? Are they all accurate? Could these be keyword optimized?
If not, start a conversation with your web team to get this information updated. Your customers will thank you!