What Will Google’s New, Longer Snippet Mean for SEO in 2018?

Hot off the presses! Google is expanding the length of meta descriptions. It’s prime time to propel your SEO strategy into 2018.

But what will this mean for your recruiting website? How can you get the most out of this change? And could acting fast on Google’s meta description expansion news give you a leg up on the competition?

Let’s find out!

What Is a Meta Description?

As a recruiter, you know that the eyes are the window into your soul. Your meta descriptions are a window into each webpage. They serve two primary purposes.

Encouraging Clicks

They appear under your page title (determined by your meta title) in search results. They give searchers a sneak peek into what’s on your page. With the wealth of information online, a title could never do this alone.

The meta description is your chance to quickly:

• Demonstrate your authority on a topic
• Build trust
• Entice the searcher
• Earn a click

And you do all this while hanging out on the page with 9 competitors trying to craft a meta description more compelling than yours.

Helping Google Understand the Pages Relevance to the Search

Meta descriptions aren’t a ranking factor in the current Google algorithms. But they do give you an opportunity to help Google better understand what your page is about.

They do this through primary keywords and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

LSI are words or phrases that help give context to your keywords. If I have the word “content”, am I talking about blogs and videos created for marketing purposes? Or am I referring to “being content” with life?

Supportive words through an LSI strategy helps ensure that the context is very clear. In doing so, your page can be properly indexed in search results based on its topic.

But up until now, meta descriptions were very limited. You only had 160 characters including spaces to work with. While this may seem like a lot, those characters were gone before we knew it.

It made it hard to communicate what the page was really about — especially for long-form content.

Why Google’s Meta Description Expansion Is So Important

Google’s meta description expansion will be a game-changer. Those who act to update their meta descriptions to the new generous 230 characters will benefit. Those who don’t will miss out.

Like never before, you’ll be able to effectively communicate with searchers regarding the relevance of the page to their search.

When you can better communicate the relevance of your page to searchers, you earn:

1. More clicks
2. More highly qualified clicks

Why does this matter? Google rankings are not static. They are constantly in flux.

Google monitors how many people click on your page when it appears in a search. They also look at how that person interacts with your page.

Do they stay a minute or so? Do they click on anything?

By having this extra space to communicate what your page is about, you not on get the clicks, but you get fewer low-quality mis-clicks.

This makes Google’s meta description expansion potentially great for your SEO.

What You Should Know About the Snippet Expansion

While this is exciting news, there are some things you need to know.

How Long Are the New Descriptions?

The 230 characters is a maximum number of characters that will show. The full 230 characters may not appear in every search query.

Some searches are more complex than others. This will warrant longer snippets. Ultimately, Google will decide whether longer snippets will be beneficial to the searcher.

Having longer snippets means being ready when they do.

Should You Change Existing Descriptions?

As of the publishing of this article, this is a very new update. As with any new changes, there will be mixed advice out there.

There is some debate regarding whether you should go back and change existing meta descriptions.

Google advises against it. They state that the meta description will become more dynamic and expanding existing descriptions may be unnecessary.

Google has long used a dynamic process when displaying meta descriptions. If they feel that a block of text on the page is more relevant, they will show it instead of the meta description that you designed.

However, many SEO experts agree that, based on this news, we should be increasing the lengths of our meta descriptions going forward.

And given the potential benefits of these longer descriptions, we would advise increasing the length of key meta descriptions of your site.

This snippet will appear to searchers at least some of the time. It could be the determining factor when you appear in results with your competitors.

This expansion will be an integral part of SEO strategy in 2018.

How to Effectively Use This Added Space

As with any new tool, gaining a competitive advantage means using it effectively.

Google’s meta description expansion could be the best thing that’s happened to your recruitment site in years. Or — if not used effectively — it could become wasted space.

Here’s how to use this space most effectively.

Write Compelling Descriptions

The meta description’s primary job is to entice clicks. Spend adequate time crafting effective ones.

Get attention with:

• Profound statements
• Startling Stats
• Questions

Then give people a reason to click.

Use Keywords Appropriately

Your primary keyword and LSI keywords should fit naturally into the longer description. No keyword stuffing.

Not only does over usage of keyword make things less readable; it may impact your rankings.

Add Some Detail

Google’s meta description expansion gives you a great opportunity to give a better synopsis of your content.

You could use this space to do an intro to a story that ends with a cliffhanger that earns clicks. Or you can outline the topics you cover in an article.

When searchers are searching, they’re often looking for something very specific. You can use this space to showcase that your content is comprehensive and includes a section on the sub-topic the searcher is looking for.

Don’t Wait

Taking advantage of Google’s meta description expansion is just what you need to boost your SEO in 2018. Give searchers a clear view of your webpage to earn more highly-qualified clicks.

Boost your rankings by delivering what searchers — your potential customers — want.

Find out how we can help you get the most out of Google’s meta description expansion. Contact us today.