Snippet showed in google search is not from metaDescription

[etattva]

This is my page https://www.collegehippo.com/graduate-school/programs/top-ranked-masters-degree-museum-museology-and-curatorial-studies

The metaDescription is

|   |
| name="description" content="Master's degree in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is offered by 49 American universities. New York University had highest number of international students receiving a Master's degree. Johns Hopkins University had the most women graduates in this program. Job outlook for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is projected to grow 13 percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than average for all occupations. Median pay for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies in 2018 was $53,360. The number of jobs were 11170. Check out best universities offering online Master's program in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies "/> |
|   |   |

But when I see the page in google search results for (museum studies graduate programs), This is how it appears in the search results. It is showing the breadcrumbs from the page.

I am not sure why is google is treating the page like this. It was not like that 5 months back. Nothing much changed in page and google is displaying the page content like this . How can I fix this?

[BartonInteractive]

Hi there,

Thanks so much for the quick response and clarification. This is very helpful, and I am tracking with you (completely) regarding your suggestions to the original poster.

Thanks also for the encouragement. Only twice in my career have I heard someone say anything even remotely negative about my SEO efforts, so paired with your comment and my experience, I'm going to take what this client is saying with a grain of salt.

Greatly appreciated,
Zack

[seoelevated]

Zack,

My comments were specifically regarding meta descriptions, and the original poster's efforts to make sure their meta description would be used in the SERP snippets shown for various searches. Since a page might rank for many different keywords, not all of those can be in the meta description, and so for some searches, Google is going to instead show page content rather than the meta description. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. For example, if you have a 10% CTR with your own meta description, and a 12% CTR with the one Google is showing, why would you want to try to influence Google to show something else?

So, that's why from a prioritization standpoint, I advised to focus meta description work (and only meta description work) on SERP listings with underperforming CTR. And then, within those, to focus first on listings with more impressions, just because those will have the most amplification of the efforts.

But for other SEO efforts, especially those where ranking factors are concerned (as opposed to meta descriptions which are not ranking factors, at least not directly), then a CTR and impression-based prioritization wouldn't necessarily make sense.

The approach you described seems very thorough and legit for keyword research. But then, as far as what to do with those keywords (i.e. whether to update meta descriptions), that's what I was focusing on with the OP's questions.

[BartonInteractive]

This comment has stuck out to me for a  while, and I thought I would ask about it if you don't mind.

We recently performed what I would consider extensive keyword research for a medium sized business, and they did not seem impressed with the keyword seed lists we assembled for them. To gather the seed lists for each page, we did two things:

1. Head into their GA and GSC  to see every single keyword people used to get to their website last year, and took each of those, then split them up into ideas for each page. We then did as many variations on them as we could think of by adding their city (San Jose), state, country, pluralization, etc., and wound up with thousands of keywords in their "our ideas" seed list.

2. Second, we used Moz Pro Keyword Explorer for additional ideas, entering in their pages one by one, to see what Moz came up with, then exported those for each page as  additional ideas.

Afterwards, we took  ALL of our ideas and ALL of the Moz ideas, had them split up page by page (of course), and checked for the best combinations of volume, difficulty, ctr, priority, etc..

All that said, I believed this to be a rock solid approach until I saw your comment, which made me wonder. Do you feel this was a solid effort? Have you seen better results from a different approach? (In my mind, this was far better than what I believed what most other agencies would have provided them with, and I am almost wondering if their complaining is an attempt to renegotiate on their invoice -- something their owner is unfortunately keen  on doing.)

Greatly appreciated,
Zack

[BartonInteractive]

You bet. Hope that was helpful.

Thanks,
Zack

[seoelevated]

You can't 100% control the snippet. Google owns the SERP experience, and in some cases their algorithm determines that content from your page will be a better snippet to show than your meta description. But in general, if your meta description contains the keyword being searched, and an appropriate length of content surrounding that, the chance that the meta description is used for the snippet is higher. Whether that will translate to a higher CTR though is not always the case, and since you can't include every possible search term in your meta descriptions, most of us prefer to focus on ones where we are getting a good number of impressions but not a great CTR. It's a prioritization thing.

[etattva]

I saw that but I thought it will remove url. Did not knew about cache. Thanks. will look

[etattva]

Thank you. My problem is how do I control what is being shown in snippet? I mean it is a long page with good content but I am not sure why google is picking breadcrumbs.  I have changed meta description and will wait for results.

[seoelevated]

I wouldn't necessarily target the keywords for which you are already getting traffic. The purpose of your snippet is to help your listing stand out from the others around it, so it gets clicks. I would look in GSC for queries where you are getting impressions, and then check how your snippet looks for those, especially as compared with the other listings around yours. As well, I would also look for queries where you have a significant number of impressions, but not a good click through rate. That's another indication that your meta descriptions (or page content being pulled into the snippet) aren't compelling enough. You don't necessarily need for your meta description to be used as the snippet, but you do want your snippet to be compelling so it gets as high of a CTR as possible.

[BartonInteractive]

Hi there,

To chime in, have you also considered trying heading into Google Search Console > Removals to submit a request for Google to clear a cached URL? This may be all that's needed, without further looking into it.

Hope this helps.

-Zack

[etattva]

Thanks for the reply. Does this mean that I should rework on the meta description of the page and include the keyword for which I am getting traffic.

[seoelevated]

The meta description is not always used for snippets, depending on what keywords/phrases are searched. When the search term is not in the snippet, but is on the page (and "page" does include elements such as breadcrumbs, top navigation menus, etc.). The search engines will often show the verbiage on the "page" surrounding the search terms. But also, your meta description is pretty lengthy. So you might have better luck with a description in the 100-150 character range.