Each listing on the SERP has three core components, which include the page title, page description, and page URL. An example of this is given in the image below.

The above search result was given for a basic search for the word plumber. Let’s review the three items in more depth.

Page Title

This is the first line of a given result, in the example, it is blue underlined which indicates it is a clickable text. This text comes from your page’s title or meta title if they are being used. It is important for this text to clearly represent the content and be easy to read and digest.

Page Description

This text is a description of the page’s content. It can come from your page’s meta description (if populated) or it can be pulled from within the page’s content itself. I have found Google will normally adhere to what you have set up as a meta description if it adequately describes the page and it matches the search used.

The interesting thing about the meta description is you can control this and it is your first opportunity to reach website visitors. They see this well before they reach your website or blog, so make sure this description is an easy to read sentence and make sure you write it so it entices the visitor to click through to the content.

Page URL

This is the actual address where the page lives. This isn’t super important to the searcher, but is important to the search engines. In most cases your URL should use actual words and you should avoid page IDs.