Have you ever noticed how Facebook and Google pull in the first few lines of text from your blog posts and use that text as the “snippets” they display in the search results?

That’s not always a problem, but it can be a big one if the snippet contains text that doesn’t accurately describe the content of the post.

For example, if you always begin your blog posts with generic content such as an author bio, the first few lines of that bio will be displayed as the snippet in the Google search results and on Facebook for every post you write.

That means every post you publish will have the same snippet, and that snippet won’t do anything to accurately describe the content of the post and entice the reader to click the link and read the post on your blog.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to get both Facebook and Google to display your own custom snippet for every post you write on your WordPress blog.  [Read more…]