In paid search you are in complete control of your ad wording. So you can say precisely what you want to say, to attract the most qualified visitors. As your campaign progresses, Google will tell you how each of your ads are performing, so you can change the poorly performing ones and gradually improve the overall success of your campaign.
Relevancy
In organic search, the task is a little more complex. First, you need to optimize your main content pages for specific keywords or keyword phrases, so that Google can assess whether you have “relevancy” for a particular search term.
Authority
You also need to convince Google that your content has “authority” (as evidenced by the number of relevant inbound links to your site), which further increases your chance of Google granting you an organic results listing on page one.
Currency
Thirdly, you have to demonstrate “currency”, by ensuring you update and expand your content regularly.
Yet, even if you do a great job in all these areas, you risk falling at the final hurdle if you don’t put sufficient thought into what your organic ‘ad’ looks like. Why? Because the typical searcher spends less than two seconds on each ‘ad’ on the Google search results page. And if your organic ‘ad’ isn’t meaningful, it will likely get overlooked in favour of one that is.
How to Display Meaningful Organic Search Results
By carefully managing the content of your meta titles and meta descriptions, you can significantly increase the chance of Google choosing these as the page “snippet” it displays in a search results page.
As Google itself puts it:
“The quality of your snippet - the short text preview we display for each web result - can have a direct impact on the chances of your organic result being clicked (i.e. the amount of traffic Google sends your way). We use a number of strategies for selecting snippets, and you can control one of them by writing an informative meta descriptions for each URL.”
Example
Here are two search results that came up when I did a search for “Document Management Software”:
A meaningful result:
Document Management Software System | Content Central™
Your Search for Document Management Software Ends Here. Experience Content Central: The All-In-One, Browser-Based Document Management Solution.
http://www.ademero.com
A quick check of the page source at http://www.adermo.com confirmed that this snippet came from very nicely constructed meta title and meta description content.
A not so meaningful result:
Explorer Software News
31 Mar 2008 ... Vancouver, BC - US-based Ferrell Companies, a provider of EnterpriseDocument Management Software for construction companies, and Explorer ...
http://www.explorer-software.com/news-detail.asp?newsID=80
Be honest, which one would you click on first?
It’s a clear illustration of the difference you can make by spending time crafting your Meta Title and Meta Description content to create organic results that are both meaningful and compelling to your search audience.
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Sean O’Donovan is the owner of FunnelBuilders, an internet marketing consultancy that helps technology organizations develop and implement post-click marketing strategies that generate actionable in-bound sales leads - www.funnelbuilders.com