Fun and profit with the Google Snippet Trick: Three Easy Tips

February 9, 2008 • posted by Heather

Google Snippet Trick

Creating the meta description tag can be a big bummer to SEO copywriters and marketers. On one hand, the meta description is the place for a marketing statement. It’s the verbiage that’s supposed to make your site stand out on the search engine results page.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. More often than not, instead of the submitted description, Google displays a “snippet” of text that appears around the search term. Yes, it’s still important to create a unique description anyway – but just know that Google won’t always use it.Relax. This is a situation that you can (kind of) control. You just have to play by Google’s rules. The key is using your keyphrases in a very specific way that increases the probability of a good description – even if it is in a snippet form. So, you could transform something like this:

google1

Into something like this:

google2

Here’s how to do it:

1. Focus on your top two keyphrases only. You can use the Google Snippet trick with other keyphrases if it flows within the writing – it’s just not as easy.

2. Use your most important keyphrase in your headline. No, this doesn’t mean that you write a crappy headline. As we’ll discuss in a future post, headlines should be benefit-rich, customer-savvy and oh-so enticing. Doing it right will help your conversions. Really.

3. Use your second most important keyphrase in your first or second sentence. Again, you’ll want a benefit statement as close to the keyphrase as you can get it. If a benefit statement won’t work, try to include a call-to-action. The key is to have highly-compelling verbiage around the keyphrase as much as possible.Be warned – the Google Snippet Trick doesn’t always work. But it works often enough (and is easy enough to do,) that implementation is a snap. And heck, it allows you to somewhat control a previous uncontrollable situation (what Google includes as the description.) What could be better?

Thanks to Detlev Johnson who gave a shout-out to the Google Snippet Trick during a SearchMarketingNow.com Webcast.