I am a bit if a newbie to SEO and have just discovered that for some reason the page description that Google returns for any of my results is a bit of promotional blurb that I stuck in a box at the side of the page. http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.doyouremember.co.uk&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&filter=0 This looks really naff and it got me thinking that maybe Google was reading this table cell as being the primary content of the page instead of the real content which is in a different table cell. Anyone got any thoughts on how I can get around this?
The surest way would be to remove it from your content completely. You can't choose what Google uses as a snippet. Although, there is a way to prevent Google from using snippets at all, but then your listing in the search results looks bad.
I have a somewhat related question. If you have a Google Adsense advert box at the top of the screen, a bit like on the Digitalpoint Forums, does this affect how the SEs pickup the rest of the text on the page.
If I were taking a guess, I would say it is because nearly every title begins with Do You Remember. The snippet Google is showing contains the same content.
Why would the title of the page affect the snippet? Has anyone figured out how Google decides what to use as a snippet? And if it is to do with my page titles, do you have any suggestions how to alter them so that that the snippets will be improved?
First, I assuming that you understand that a different snippet can be shown for the same page dependent upon the actual search query made. The snippet shown for a particular search query is the content most relevant to the actual search term used. If however you are doing a generic search to show ALL of the pages indexed for a particular domain, the snippet will show the most relevant content as related to the title of the page. As an example, in the Google search bar enter: site:www.gnc-web-creations.com Notice the relationship between the snippet shown and the title of the page. (I am showing my site as the example because none of my pages titles are the same.) In the case of your site, nearly every page begins with an identical title. Choose titles that are relevant to your content, but that ALSO are search terms that people actually search for. The use of Digital Point's Free Keyword Suggestion Tool will help you with this.
The thing is I want the title to say "Do You Remember the so and so" really because I think it is quite an enticing link and also features my company and website name (DoYouRemember.co.uk). How about I rearrange my page titles to be something like "Keyword: Do You Remember Keyword?" Do you think that would work? I'm just not sure about putting the keyword in the title twice - would Google think I was spamming I wonder and would this title change actually make any difference to the snippets shown?
It seems like if you have side tables and main tables to your webpage. It seems that google uses which ever one is listed first in the snippets.. Im not sure of course, it's my guess from what i have seen thus far.