In the previous 4 posts of this series, we’ve talked about on-page SEO optimization. Today I’d like to focus on an often overlooked aspect of SEO. If you’ve applied all the previous lessons of this series, then you will already have great content and a great headline for your post. And if you are promoting your content on social media, chances are that your post will organically appear in search result soon.

So what is the only remaining hurdle for people to actually click and visit your website to read your post?

The answer lies in your search result snippet, the way your content appears on Google. In other words, how click-worthy is your search result snippet? And there is more to this than meets the eye…

Search Results Visualization

What is a search result snippet?

The answer is closely tied to search engine results pages (SERP):

• A search engine results page (SERP) is the listing of results returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query.
• It consists of a list of items with titles, a reference to the full version, and a short description.
• A “search result snippet” is how your post or podcast show notes page shows up as a single item on this list.

How do you ensure a great search result snippet?

Once again, Yoast to the rescue. The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress is useful because it displays a “Search Result Snippet Preview”.

• This allows you to change and edit the way the title and description of the post is displayed in the SERP snippet.
• It also lets you change the title and description you would like to display in the search results.
• In short, it lets you design what people will experience as they find your content in search results.

Why should you optimize the Search Result Snippet?

It is important to optimize the way your post shows up in search results. Google rewards well-designed search result snippets with increased ranking — not dramatically, but enough to matter at the margins. More importantly, the click-through rate is where the real leverage lives.

If your search result snippet looks unattractive, makes no sense, or the post title gets truncated mid-thought, users scroll right past you.

A well-crafted search result snippet can dramatically increase clicks from the same ranking position — which means more traffic without touching a single other SEO variable.

Here is an example of a post before optimization, and the reasons it would be bad to leave it this way:

• The post title is too long, and thus gets “cut off”, and Google had to add an ellipsis a the end.
• The sentence below the title makes no sense and does not help the searcher identify what this post is about. This is because the meta description was not entered on Yoast, and so Google just displays the first words appearing in this post.
• Some premium themes have shortcodes that appear in the SERP snippet, and this can be confusing.

Here is an optimized example

Google rewards you for optimizing the appearance of search results snippets. Here is the same example as above, but this time with the post title length fixed, and with the correct meta description added.

• As you can see, the content makes sense and will result in a higher percentage of clicks.

Additional tips to design a successful SERP snippet

You might think of ways to tease people with a hint of what they will learn reading your post.

• To my eye, keeping it super short with a teaser is most effective.
• One line is better than two.
• Asking a question can be inviting readers to click.
• Of course, your target keyword should still be present in the meta description.

What if you’re not using WordPress or Yoast SEO?

No problems, here are some great resources for you. They work with any blog platform. My favorite is the Mangools SERP simulator, where you can simply enter your title tag and meta description to see your website’s SERP snippet preview.

• Mangools SERP Simulator
• SERP Snippet Optimzation Tool
• Snippet Optimizer

Conclusion

You’ve already done the hard part. You wrote the content. You optimized the headline. You thought carefully about what your reader actually needs. And then, with the finish line in sight, most people just… hit publish and move on.

Don’t be most people. Your search result snippet is the one thing standing between a well-ranked page and a click that never happens. It takes four minutes to get right. The tools are free. The upside is real traffic you’re currently leaving on the table.

WordPress with Yoast makes it frictionless. If you’re on something else, the third-party snippet visualizers above will do the job equally well. The platform is not the excuse. (It never is.)

If you’re using podcasting as a content strategy — which is the whole point — then every episode and post deserves a search result snippet that actually represents what’s inside. Optimize the snippet. Then publish.