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Your Goal: Usable Search Result Excerpts

Awhile back, I wrote an article called "How To Create an Editorial Process" after realizing a few of my clients needed a detailed, how-to process to ensure new content showed up on their websites on a regular basis. From time to time, Google sends to my website people who use the search phrase, "how to create editorial process."

Here are the top four search results, as of today, for that search phrase:

While ranking second for this search phrase is wonderful, my goal is to influence the search result excerpt Google provides. I want an excerpt that immediately tells what you will find when you click the link and go to my website. The link label, the first line of the search results, is the first thing people see and scan. My goal is to make that line, that first link, really work hard.

Let's look at the title of the first search result, the first line, also called a 'link label':

Not very helpful is it? I wonder what "Instructions for ..." means? If you are looking for examples of editorial processes online, that fragment sounds more useful than the first part of the page title, NCP Cardiovascular Medicine. The page title for this web page might better have been:

Why? Google and other search engines cut off page titles to save space and make it easier for their visitors to skim headlines. If your goal is a useful search result and first line link label, you must organize your page titles so they display critical information first. It also is important to organize the parts of your page title in a way that implies the relationships between the web page and other content on the website.

Let's look again at the title of this first search result:

I would guess (correctly!) that the website is provided by NCP Cardiovascular Medicine, that they have a section of their site that describes their journal (About the Journal), and that within that section are instructions for people who want to publish content in their journal (Instructions for Authors).

So their page title is well-formed. It describes the relationships between their site and its content. The order of the elements in their page title, however, is not optimized for search engine results.

If you are looking for examples of editorial processes in this set of search results, only my web page shouts something useful in detail. As you will see, that is no accident. It took me awhile to realize that well-formed web pages with titles organized a certain way improved my search results and, oddly enough, helped people skim search results.

Are Your Page Titles Well-Formed?

As noted above, the page titles on your website should be organized to make the most of how they will appear in search results. This is the ideal format to use:

If your page is a child or grandchild page, your page title should follow this format:

Many online articles about search engine optimization would say these titles are too long. I disagree as long as the Site Tagline, in particular, is pithy and keyword rich.

While I do not know the ingredients of the Google search algorithm, I suspect it looks for anything that can help determine the value of a specific web page full of content. A clean, well-formed page title with the site name and helpful site tagline clearly helps achieve that goal.

That said, a journal about cardiovascular science probably needs a good site tagline much less than a business, especially a local business.

The site tagline should be 5-10 words that state your business value proposition, hits your top 3-5 keywords (more below about keywords), and mentions physical locations. A yoga studio, for example, would benefit from a tagline that includes geographic information like town name, city name, or state name:

This sort of page title would better help local people who are athletes (think golfers) in search of classes at a yoga studio in or near Podunk, Illinois. Certainly more so than this page title which is more common:

One arcane note about page titles: the separator you use in between the pieces of your page title. These can be right angle brackets, a vertical line (also called a "pipe" character), a colon, a dash, two dashes, or anything in between. Consistent use of one type of separator is more important than which one you use. Since Google crops page titles, I recommend single space separators with a space on either side.

Finally, well-formed page titles also help visitors who bookmark your web pages. In their list of bookmarked pages, they will see the page title which, if it is descriptive and placed first, will help them find you in the future when they pore through their bookmarks looking for your page.

Are Your Web Pages Well-Formed?

If you've used Microsoft Word or similar publishing tool, then you are familiar with headings and styles. Perhaps you don't realize, however, that these headings are meant not only to break up content. Headings also can describe relationships between content.

Let's look at this set of headings:

Would you guess that White Corn and Yellow Corn are types of corn? And that corn is a type of vegetable? And that vegetables are a type of food? In this example, careful use of headings helps make these relationships clear.

Web pages can show the same useful relationships. However, looking at the source code of thousands of web pages since 1993, I can tell you first hand that very few web pages make effective use of headings.

Why is this important to search optimization?

In the same way that making your page titles well-formed helps search engines (and people scanning their search results) to make sense of your web page content, a web page that uses headings helps search engines make sense of content within your web page. Headings show the ways one piece of your web page content relates to other content within the page and how the page relates to your site.

A Perfectly-Formed Web Page

If you buy this argument, then how do you make a web page well-formed? Let's start with an example of a perfectly formed web page then discuss what most people have, imperfectly structured pages that could be made better.

A side note: I was taught never to assume anything is entirely one way or another. While I tout the example below as being 'perfect,' in fact someone else might have a better way to organize content using headings. My perfect example simply describes what I've learned using headings (and their close siblings, taxonomies) over many years.

Here is how I try to structure every web page I build for myself and for my clients:

Can you see how structuring a web page this way uses headings (H1, H2, H3) to indicate relationships between content? If the website name is always H1, and page titles tagged with H2 headings, the implication is that every web page is part of the site, the way corn is a vegetable and vegetables are food, from the example above.

In the same way, using the H3 heading to mark off content within a web page shows that these headings are subservient to the page title, which uses an H2 heading.

Some readers might wonder how you use a heading 1 for the website title. It is a trick I found online years ago (sorry, I've lost the URL but will try to find it). I use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to hide the page title text from all but search engines and web browsers that do not read CSS. The CSS style displays the website logo instead of the website title text.

Here's the CSS code, if you are interested:

Just some quick comments to explain this code, and then we'll move on. Note how the SPAN tags, <span>Web Site Title</span>, in the example above is styled to be hidden. And how the H1 heading is styled to display an image, the url("") code. The height and width values should at least be the height and width of your logo image. You also can use height, width, margin, and padding to place your website logo anywhere at the top of the web page.

An Imperfectly-Formed Web Page, Improved

Let's move on to discuss where most people are with the internal structure of their web pages. Hopefully it is clear enough that, while having perfectly-formed pages might be a good thing, using headings in a thoughtful way is more important.

At the least, your page titles should all be tagged with heading 1 or heading 2 tags. Whatever tag you choose, it should be consistent on all your web pages. If you do not follow the 'perfect' format above, tagging your website title with heading 1 (H1), then you should use the highest heading possible to tag your page titles.

Then within each of your web pages, be sure to use the next level down heading for all the sub-headings within your page content. If you tag your page titles with heading 1 (H1), then your sub-headings should always be tagged with heading 2 (H2).

You do not want to tag your page titles with heading 3 or 4 (H3 or H4), then tag your sub-headings with heading 2 (H2). Most often I see web page titles tagged with paragraph tags (P) and made bold with the bold tag (B) or strong (STRONG) tag. This approach completely ignores the power headings can offer you in telling search engines how the content of your site is organized.

What About Elements on the Side of Web Pages?

Thoughtful readers might wonder how you tag the newsletter sign up box, navigation links, and other stuff that winds up on the sides, top, and bottom of web pages. Some of these items use headings to announce them while other items do not.

I pondered this problem for awhile, and tried different approaches. My solution is to tag any heading for these items with a heading 2 tag (H2), the same heading tag I use for page titles. Yes, it makes a newsletter sign-up box 'equal' to the page title, which is odd.

If you remember my corn example above, tagging top, side, and bottom web page items with a heading 2 tag is like saying fruits and vegetables are food. Search engines see them as being subordinate to the website title which is tagged with a heading 1 (H1).

So, if you simply want to make your imperfectly-formed web pages better structured, and you tagged your page title with heading 1 (H1), then these side, top, and bottom items would be tagged with heading 1. It does not feel like the perfect solution, but it does avoid the problem of indicating an email sign-up box is somehow part of your web page about, to take one odd example, how to make chocolate martinis.

Don't Forget Your Page Footers

Another ripe area to look at for basic search engine optimization are the bottom portions of your web pages, called footers. Usually the key site links are placed here along with a copyright notice.

I advise my clients to view these areas as second opportunities to achieve several useful goals. One, you can link deep into your website. Visitors may not use these links but search engines might find them valuable, especially if your link labels are keyword-rich. Two, the bottom of the page is a great opportunity to state your business value proposition, especially if you can fit in keywords. This statement should not be more than a sentence and not more than 20 words.

Third, and perhaps most important to your visitors, the footer is a great place to put your contact information. This includes, but is not limited to, street address, phone number(s), fax number(s), key email addresses, and a link to directions (from Google Local or MapQuest). My experience is that some large number of visitors use the front page of a company website when they need to call, email, write, or drive. And they quickly scroll to the bottom of the front page in their search. Why make them click for that information, or hunt for the right link label that leads to your contact page?

As an aside, if you do put email addresses in your footer, or anywhere on your website, I highly recommend that you use The Enkoder to encrypt them. It is an easy to use, free online service. If you do not know, spammers often harvest email addresses from web pages the same way Google and other search engines visit web pages to catalog them. I've used Enkoder for years with terrific results, so far.

One caveat about encrypting email addresses: do not bother to encrypt an email address that has been harvested. If your email address has been unencrypted on your website for more than a day or a week, chances are it has been stolen. Better to create new email addresses, encrypt them using a service like Enkoder, then put the encrypted addresses in the footer of your web pages and elsewhere on your site.

Which encryption method is better? I've studied different schemes and Enkoder works well because it encrypts in a way that is not easy to hack. Many solutions simply substitute one character for another. Or they put spaces between pieces of an address, for example, 'joe at mycompany.com.' These are very easy to crack.

How to Optimize Keywords, Content, and Link Labels

As I noted at the top of this article, my focus here is to highlight search engine optimization issues that are basic, lightly covered online, and reflect common mistakes. You can find a ton of useful information that shows how to improve your search engine rankings, for example, with good keywords.

The only point I'll make here about keywords is that they are really a bridge between your offline, real world marketing and your online marketing. That should be no surprise, but it often is. Keywords really map to the words prospects and customers have in their head at their moment of need. Without the internet, you learn these words and use them in your marketing. All search engines do is provide a way to translate those words into links to websites, hopefully yours.

So when my clients develop keywords, I usually urge caution. It is better to have 3-5 core keywords that are sprinkled through your page titles, page content, headings, and link labels than it is to have 15 or 20 or 30 magic keywords. A large set of keywords is an irresistable temptation to get caught up in tweaking and perfecting keywords. Too many keywords diffuse their power on your site as you drive yourself nuts going in circles.

My advice is to create two sets of keywords, a core set that maps to words your prospects and customers use to describe their needs and what you offer and a second larger set that elaborates and refines your core set of keywords.

As for how to develop keywords, I've linked to a few good resources below and will add more over time.

Changes to this Article

February 6, 2006: First version posted.

Resources