All language subtitles for 02 - How search engines display your URLs and page descriptions

- [Instructor] The snippet, as it is called

in the search engine results page,

pulls information from the page it links to.

These elements are not only important for rankings

but also for moving searchers to click on your result.

The green text in the snippet is the URL

or the address of the page.

As you can see, the green color sets off the URL

as it shows people the domain of the website

and the page that is being displayed in the rankings.

Of course, this is an excellent method

to gain additional keywords in your snippet.

By naming your pages with a keyword,

you'll get more relevance through the URL

and it will be displayed in the SERPs.

However, approach this tactic with caution,

especially with an already existing website.

As much as I would like to change this

to hiking tours instead of just tours,

changing your URLs on your website

could have a very negative effect on your SEO

if it is not done properly.

The best time to do this

is when you are designing and developing a new website.

The last part of the snippet is the description.

Now, this content can be taken

from a different part of the page.

Primarily, the content is pulled

from the meta description tag.

If we go into the code of the page,

here we can see the meta description in green.

Now you'll see that the meta description used in the code

is not the same showing in the snippet.

What is being used in the snippet is text from the page.

So the description that is shown in the snippet

can come from either of these two sources.

But why is the page content showing in this example?

This is because search engines will make adjustments

to the search snippet based on relevance.

As you can see in the code, the meta description

is not relevant to the search term "explore California"

because this is an example site,

it's shown that way in the description.

Search engines will instead

pull more relevant content from the page.

However, don't stress about this.

While the URL can contribute

to the keyword relevance of the page

by naming a page with a keyword in the file name,

the meta description does not contribute

to the overall relevance of the page.

The meta keyword tag is used to provide keywords

but they're not used by the search engines.

Similarly, the meta description tag provides information

that will be shown in the search results,

but it's not used to determine relevancy.

So by using keywords in your page content,

you'll increase relevancy.

You'll also enable the search engines

to use relevant content to display

in that search result snippet.

The advantage to utilizing the meta description

is that you can affect the snippet

and show the content that you want in the snippet,

rather than allowing the search engine

to pull content from the page.

Either way, focus your time on your content

and craft a good descriptive description tag.

Be sure it is optimized and written in concise statements

that will clearly describe your business and products.