Leveraging the Longer Search Snippets of Google


With Google’s recent announcement regarding the display of longer snippets or meta descriptions in search results, it could possibly bring a change in your SEO strategy. This also impacts the strategies for SEO, UAE similarly.

The Need for Meta Descriptions
Meta description is known to describe the content that is being featured in the webpage.
The best way of writing it would be by including relevant keywords in order to attract users to click the link. As meta descriptions get displayed in the search results, the language used in it could be used for persuading consumers to click on the results. Rankings are indirectly influenced with the help of a high organic CTR or click-through-rate.
Most of the time Google may display meta descriptions in search results, but may not happen all the time.
Latest Snippet Length Changes
Google made a decision to increase the earlier length recommendation in text snippet seen in regular organic results.
Webmasters were able to pick up on the changes that started taking place in the SERP snippets by November end. The change was seen to be happening since quite some time. In the year 2015, Moz stated that Google search snippets were already breaking the 155-charcter limited, though rarely.
Many people had already started noticing these changes. In the earlier years, the length of meta descriptions were about 160 characters long.
According to RankRanger, the length of search snippets could be anywhere between 160 characters and 230 characters. One of the changes that would be seen often would include a text display as long as six lines instead of two or three lines in the form of meta description on the result pages of search engines.
The extension of the snippets will also allow users to find their answer in the snippet itself even without having to click the webpage for gaining more information. The guidelines for the snippet length have also been updated by Google. Currently, there is no such strict criteria that guides the length of the meta descriptions.
Impact on SEO
Even when it comes to SEO services, Dubai, the new regulations will have an impact. Some of the common queries concerning the impact on SEO are:
  • How will it affect writing meta descriptions in the future?
  • What will be happening to the previous meta descriptions having the limit of 160 characters?
  • Is it necessary to rewrite all the previous meta descriptions?
Most likely, all existing meta descriptions will not have to be altered. Google can feature a snippet by pulling content from the webpage itself. This way, it is still possible to be benefitted by the longer snippets without putting extra amount of effort.
You can take advantage of the extra length, as per your goals and the content type. It will help in providing a better summary that may be needed for certain content types. Even more keywords can be used in the descriptions.
Additional Effects
Having additional lines indicate more real estate to be covered in the first page of the search results. With longer snippets, users are less likely to move to the second page. This makes the ranking of Page 1 more competitive than before.
 

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