Snippets are a summary of your content that can be used for the preview of your article on a SERP.
These are important as it gives the search engine and the customer a quick insightful summary of your content which will help the search engine decide where to place you on the SERP. It will also determine whether the user will click through onto your webpage.
Therefore you need to ensure that your snippet is snappy so that the entire snippet can be read. It must be informative in order to give the user what they need to know about your webpage. And it must be enticing in order to ensure they click through onto your website which may lead to their investment in your business.
You can also invest in the use of Rich Snippets. A Rich Snippet is a Google search results with additional data displayed. This extra data is usually pulled from Structured Data found in a page’s HTML. Put simply, Rich Snippets take a normal snippet and add to it.
The vast majority of Google search results display the same 3 pieces of data:
Title tag
Meta description
URL
However, Rich Snippet presents reviews, jobs, recipes and events alongside this information. Consequently Rich Snippet results are more eye-catching than normal search results. This can lead to a higher organic Click Through Rate (CTR).
Therefore the investment of time and money into Snippets and Rich Snippets is valuable as you will reap both short and long term improvement in SERP position, consequent CTR which leads to more potential customers investing in your business.