Google is hoping to help brands improve the performance of their web pages and content with a new Webmaster Video Series called “SEO Snippets”. The new playlist of educational clips was published on Thursday and can now be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.
Google says that it has received “lots of questions” from webmasters in recent years as the concept of SEO and optimisation continues to change and evolve. While the Webmaster Central Blog Forum has provided up to date relevant tips and advice, Google has finally decided to use its video sharing platform to educate and inform brands.
SEO Snippets features “short” and “to the point answers” to queries and questions that have been raised on the Webmaster Hub recently. It covers everything from duplicate content and 404 errors, to the specifics of crawling and the makeup of a site’s URL structure.
Snippets appear to be the hot new topic for Google, as it officially increased the length of page descriptions below URLs in organic search earlier this month. These snippets, which provide a small sample of the content on a website, were previously limited to 165 characters but can now be extended to 320.
A Google spokesperson said at the time: “We recently made a change to provide more descriptive and useful snippets, to help people better understand how pages are relevant to their searches. This resulted in snippets becoming slightly longer, on average.”
The update not only changes how marketers should optimise meta description, but can impact click through rates. Google’s new series should shine a light on Snippets and other pertinent SEO topics.
