It’s been weeks since Google rolled out Instant Previews—a feature that allows users to preview the results right on the search engine results page by displaying a screenshot with the click of a magnifying glass.
Though experts have yet to see how much this can affect SEO in general, there are a few important points on how your resort’s website can stay ahead of the game and take advantage of the ever-evolving search landscape.
Check Your Meta Description
The meta description tag is intended to be a brief and concise summary of your page's content. Think of the Google directory. You see your site title followed by a brief description of your site or business. The meta description tag is designed to provide a brief description of your site which can be used by search engines or directories.
Even with Google Instant Preview the user still needs to click on the the result in order to see a preview of your site. Clicking on the preview button is less of a commitment than clicking on a link, but you are still going to need to convince the searcher that it is worth their time to preview your website. Having an interesting well defined value proposition that fits within the allotted 150 characters is going to give you the best shot at having someone preview your site and that is half the battle.
Fix Your Header Tags
It’s very unlikely that you are going to be able to read all of the text displayed in the Google Instant Preview. You will, however, most likely be able to make out the larger text items displayed in the banner and the header tags. Much like what search engines have already been doing, users will now be using information found in the title and header tags to determine the structure of a page, it’s relevance, and whether or not it’s worthy of an actual click so be sure to portray this to the searcher through your use of header tags and page title.
Don’t Forget That Alt Text
One idea that most people seem to agree on is that now looks matter. Because of this it is likely that we are going to see a lot more webpages with sharp graphics, charts and other visual aids used to grab a searcher's attention. This makes it even more important than ever that your images are showing up for keywords they are relevant for and that means making sure that their file-names and alt text are descriptive and accurate.
Instant Preview definitely mixes up the search game yet again, but in the end, good SEO fundamentals are what is going to get you found on the search engine results pages.
