1. Fill your website with keywords
No, you should not do that. You don’t help yourself (and the findability of your website) by putting a lot of keywords in your website. There is a huge competition on single popular keywords. This is also called ‘short tail‘ in online marketing. These are words that are often searched for, such as ‘buy a bike’, ‘order a laptop’, and so on. It is usually difficult to distinguish yourself on these words, so more and more attention is being paid to ‘long tail’ searches. You can add words to make the results more specific.
They shouldn’t be useless words, such as ‘buy laptop online’, because that goes without saying and you’ll probably get the same results as ‘buy laptop’. But think of useful additions like ‘laptop for word processing’ or ‘Gazelle mother bike’ or ‘pink bike for girls’. Choose words or short sentences that are relevant in your industry and for your product or service for potential customers of what you offer.
2. A snippet, what’s that and how does it work?
Before we talk about snippets themselves, we should briefly consider search intent. Search intention is the intent, or intention, that a user of the Internet has when he/she searches for something. The search intention is not always clear from the search query. Think for example of ‘eating pancakes’. It could be that someone wants to eat pancakes in a restaurant. Or that someone wants to bake pancakes at home. So the search intention is often hidden a bit deeper.
Google’s goal is to show the visitor the results that best match the question from the search. So you have to try to think of what the question is that someone would ask and formulate the answer. Your content rises higher in Google if it is relevant information that can be used to answer a search query. So try to put yourself in your potential client’s shoes. What would that customer have in mind as a question or type in Google and how can you be the answer (the solution, your product or service) to that question?
One of the ways in which Google presents these kinds of relevant answers are snippets. They are small summaries of more extensive information from a website that Google finds relevant.
Above you see a snippet that was shown after a search query ‘Hoe bak ik een pannenkoek’ (How to bake a pancake). Google then displays a summary of the text on a website with the most relevant answer to that question. So write your pages in a way that informs the reader, providing him/her with relevant information. Display this information in a clear way, using headings, paragraphs and frequently asked questions.
3. Emergence of voice searches
As more and more devices become smart and have voice control, the way people look up information is slowly changing. Previously all you could do was type in a search query, now you can simply ask your smartphone or smart speaker a question. Think of Siri on Apple phones and Google Assistant on smart speakers like Google Home.
Do you suddenly have to rewrite your entire website and content? No, you don’t. But you do have to keep in mind how people are going to look for answers to their question now and in the near future. Instead of ‘opening hours Albert Heijn’ they now ask the question: ‘Until what time is the Albert Heijn open?’ and Google searches (often by location) the opening hours of the nearest branch. Try to keep this in mind when writing content. For example, create headings in which you ask a question and display the answer below. As mentioned before, we sometimes call these lists frequently asked questions or FAQs. Always keep in mind that you are trying to help your potential customer with relevant information and write from the customer’s point of view.
4. Fast display and optimization of your web page
In addition to having the content of your web pages in order, it is important to ensure that the information quickly appears on the user’s screen. You should take into account searches via both the laptop or PC (large screen) and a small device (compact screen). A number of factors play a role in this.
Responsive
Make your website responsive. This means that the web pages automatically adjust to the size of the screen of the device on which the visitor visits your website. On a smartphone, this becomes a more compact menu and the information is displayed below each other, with the visitor scrolling down to read the page. Is your website not yet responsive? Then please contact us for a new design.
Optimize
By using plug-ins, or an optimized theme (template), you can ensure that the code is as compact as possible. The more compact the code, the faster your website will load. You can also customize images. Don’t use images that are too big, but compress them so they load faster. People used to use a lot of ‘bells and whistles’ on websites, like sliders at the top, but nowadays ‘less is more’ applies. Don’t add too much unnecessary ballast, but focus on the content and information that is relevant to your potential customer/visitor of your website.