SEO Blog

Sitelinks have been a part of Google’s organic and PPC results for some time now. They appear just below the Meta title or initial listing on results pages and generally lead to popular pages deeper within the site. However, earlier in the week Google took them to a whole new level, unveiling mega sitelinks.

Is essence, this concept provides brands with the chance to get prime real estate for their name. Organic results are now dominated by up to 10 links listed beneath the primary home page. So if you were to search for Sony, Vodafone, Thomas Cook or any other brand (major or minor) you can expect to see SERPs much like that shown below.
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The battle of the SERPs continues. This time Google has expanded its flights information, providing details on a number of worldwide routes.

Bing of course has been offering its American users details on the latest flights and prices within its results for a number of months. So in many ways, this represents Google’s riposte. However, that might be slightly unfair on it as a standalone service and unique update.

So let’s take a closer look at exactly what this update entails.
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How often have you searched on Google and read the short description and it has either been garbled nonsense or cuts off mid-sentence? It happens. In fact it continues to happen with worrying regularity.

Your default Meta will often be the first area of content that the search engines can find. In many cases this will be your body text on that particular page; however, occasionally it will be your navigation titles, links or even footer text.

Not only is this not exactly the best way of optimising your site, it will also surrender one of your prime opportunities to entice the click. Who is really going to click on a site that has a description reading ‘|Home|Services|About Us|Contact Us|’? It’s an avoidable nonsense.
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When you first start optimising a website you could be forgiven for thinking that your efforts were entirely in vain. More often than not you won’t see any noticeable changes in your online visibility for days, maybe even weeks.

However, the stronger your site becomes, the quicker this process will become.

Take an objective look at it for a moment. Google is good at tracking down new content, however it is already dealing with millions of other new pages on other sites each day. If your site is relatively fresh you might not even have slipped onto their radar yet. You might, for all intents and purposes, be invisible.
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Are negative reviews damaging your search engine traffic?  Unfortunately there’s no magic wand to simply usher away negative reviews or bad press. If Google thinks that another page is relevant to your name or search terms then unfortunately whatever it may be will remain there until something more relevant comes along.  Tough luck.

However, SEO can help you in this regard. As you know, SEO is all about optimising site’s for search engine rankings. More and more though, with the diversification of search elements (think news, images and social media feeds) there is greater scope to achieve decent visibility away from the organic results.
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The Meta description might well be an opportunity to give your page added keyword context, but it does plenty more besides.

When somebody uses a search engine, they type in a search query and have returned to them a series of related lists on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Ordinarily, within the natural results, there will be ten competing sites; starting with the most relevant first.

Each page has a title (your Meta title in fact), which will indicate initial relevance to the searcher. However, beneath this is a short description. This is your Meta description.

By default, your Meta is often the first sentence from your page content or a mixture of text that includes highlighted keywords. Whilst this might be fine in the context of your page, it might not provide the information that will encourage a click. Ultimately, that is what you need [see: Getting More from Your Meta].
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Meta descriptions are one of those things that can be easily glossed over. They don’t have any bearing on the appearance of your page and their influence on your overall ranking could be called into question. But the fact is it does have an effect and it will help you draw in visitors.

You see, rather than simply adding to your keywords, a Meta description will also appear for that particular page within the search engine results pages.

Whenever you search for something on a search engine you’ll get a list of results. These are usually made up of a title and a short two line description. It is the short description that appears directly beneath the title that we are talking about. This is that page’s Meta description.
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Before you start to consider implementing a full-blown strategy, you might well question why it is so important to get your website ranked on a search engine in the first place. Yes everybody talks about getting to number one on Google, but why exactly should you bother?

Well, for starters, Google is the most visited website on the planet. In fact, to contextualise that a little, Yahoo is now the third most visited (behind Facebook) even though Google command 90% of the worldwide search market. This means that Google are leagues ahead of the competition, but Bing (5th) and Yahoo (3rd)provide worthy support; between the three of them there are some significant traffic levels being generated.
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