Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool
This tool replicates the appearance of a snippet in Google's search engine results pages (SERPs). It allows content publishers and web developers to optimize a page's title and description tags for maximum click-through rate from the search results.
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70 characters used (70 char maximum in Google search results) |
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156 characters used (156 char maximum in Google search results) |
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Here is an example of what a snippet looks like in Google's SERPs. The content that appears here is usually taken from the Meta Description tag if relevant.
www.seomofo.com/ -
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About the Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool
In case anyone is curious, here is a little bit of background information on where this tool came from and how you can use it.
Originally, I came up with the idea of programming an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document that would imitate Google's behavior when displaying snippets in the search results. I wanted such a tool for my own personal use, since I often found myself copying and pasting the contents of my HTML Title tags into Word, just so I could use the word-count feature to determine how many characters I had used. But when I analyzed Google's SERP code, I realized that they use the CSS relative measurement unit "em" to define the width of the search results' printable area. Since I don't know how to program "em" units into Microsoft documents, I decided to write the program in JavaScript, post it on my website, and let other people use it too. Without any real JavaScript programming experience, creating this tool was indeed an interesting challenge.
Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool v1.0
The first version of this tool had only very basic functionality. The Title and Description input fields were both limited to the maximum number of characters that Google shows in their search results (70 characters for the Title and 156 characters for the Description). After you reached the max, the tool would simply stop you from adding more characters, which might get annoying after awhile.
Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool v1.1
The second version of this tool removed the character input restrictions and switched the counter from a count-down style (e.g. "20 characters left") to a count-up style (e.g. "50 characters used"). This change went hand-in-hand with the removal of the input restrictions, and it also made the tool more useful for SEOs that target a character limit other than e.g. 70 characters in the Title. After the character limits were reached, the tool simply cut off the remaining content (even if it was mid-word).
Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool v1.2
This version of the tool made some aesthetic changes to this page's layout, in order to keep the SERP snippet output above the fold. I shrank the header and removed some unnecessary spacing. I also added all this extra content at the bottom, in order to address some of the questions/comments I had heard. I also added one feature to the tool itself. Now when you type more than Google's character limit, the tool will include as many complete words as possible and then cut off the rest (replacing it with the ellipses symbol, "..."). This mimics Google's behavior in the real search engine results pages.
Snippet Experiment
I want to try something, but I need to get a new page indexed first. I'll post the details on the snippet experiment page.
Google Snippet Optimizer v1.3
I changed the Title output so that its width isn't restricted and it won't wrap (details about this are on the experiment page, linked to in the above section). I also changed the Title and Meta description input fields to <textarea> elements. This makes it easier to see all the text you're working with, and it also allows you to use the spell check feature of Firefox (misspelled words are underlined in red).
Google Snippet Optimizer v1.4
I removed the "page size" feature, since Google doesn't show that any more. I also changed the content in the left and right columns. These content changes will increase the overall usability of this tool by AT LEAST 0.5%, and they also introduced some much-needed orange flavoring.