Most SEO providers have seen the snippets and titles Google serves up in SERPs, but some may not have noticed that Google has changed the way it chooses what content to display when those snippets and titles appear. Evidence suggests this change stems from new ways Google developed to understand page elements and page layouts.
Google’s Choice
When search results appear after a Google query, Google now has more of a say-so about the way the URL, title and snippets appear than the page author or website owner. In the past, search engine optimisation efforts counted on Google to rely on targeted keywords, key phrases and meta data to determine the format a page takes in search results. Now, Google has the ability to insert synonyms to search words and to highlight those words in the excerpts it displays. Also, Google can choose between the actual title of a page, its meta title or content from any element of the page when it lists a title for that page as a search result. This means that the same paged could have multiple titles in SERPs depending on the search query.
Google will create its own title for a page if it thinks it can more accurately reflect the relevance of a page to a search query. Google has referred to this new capability in its blog and has reported that its own dynamically-created titles often produce higher clilckthrough rates than the organic titles a page bears. This means that if an author or developer forgets to assign a title tag to a post, Google will take up the slack. Google can also compensate for times when content creators add low-quality titles to their pages.
Page Structure and SERP Content
According to information from Google, the company attributes to its changes in the way it displays content in SERPs based on an improved ability to understand Web page elements. This has steered Google away from header and menu content toward content contained in side a Web page when it decides what previews to show Google users.
Google’s patent pertaining to this practice suggests the search engine weighs the position of a page within SERPs and the content of its original snippet as part of the criteria it uses to decide whether to rewrite titles or present extended snippets in search results. In the end, Google is now more flexible in the way it matches online content to user search queries and attempts to display search results in a way that emphasizes relevance.
How This Affects SEO Australia
SEO companies should not rely solely on meta information as a way to provide Google with alternate ways to match content with queries. Now, everything is on the table including URLs, ALT tags and headings. The challenge for every SEO company is to make sure every client page has enough variety within page elements to offer Google many alternate ways to express relevance within its SERPs.
