One of the easiest ways for search engines to recognize your website is through rich snippets.
These are bits of text that depict your website’s content in a more attractive manner.
Attracting eyeballs to your website through such snippets is important and doing it right is even more important.
What are Rich Snippets?
Rich Snippets are the new way search engines show information about your website.
Rich snippets are snippets of code added to a website’s HTML code.
They tell search engines like Google to “show me” certain pieces of information from your website, such as ratings and numbers of reviews that are written for a particular product/service, author names, prices, reviews, etc.
They do this by displaying the information on your website in a larger font or in bolded type, as well as with pictures or ratings attached.
This makes them much more attractive to users because all the information a user wants is presented in one spot.
They are also good for SEO because they make your site look more appealing to users, who are more likely to click a link and visit your site if you present the information they want upfront.
There are several types of rich snippets that can be added to your website.
There is structured data markup that is mainly used for products/services pages or blog posts.
There is also microdata markup that is used on article pages.
Both of these formats are machine-readable, which means the search engine will scan through your code and automatically display the information to users.
Types of Rich Snippets / Schema Markup
- FAQ – Answers to common questions in the form of paragraphs or bullet lists in smaller font size than the rest of the page text, or as plain text below the page title;
- Authorship – The names of authors next to their articles;
- Reviews – Ratings given from user-generated reviews;
- Recipes – Ingredients list;
- Event – Schedules and events;
- Products – Descriptions of products and their images;
- Movies – Descriptions of movies with images;
- People – Names of famous people with a photo next to their name;
- Articles – Titles of articles with accompanying text;
- Places – Location of the place;
- Video – Descriptions and thumbnails of videos;
- Jobs – Description of jobs, including their descriptions, location, and requirements;
We believe Google will be focusing more on providing more information to users in future versions of its search.
Therefore, it is very important for you to include structured data and rich snippets on your site in order to help increase your rankings.
We called them structured Data for SEO.
Structured Data is a way of tagging your content to help the search engines better understand it.
It helps the search engine identify what your content is about and what the content is about.
The better the understanding of your content by the search engine, the better it will rank.
Favorite: One of our favorite sites to generate various forms of schema markup. Check out this schema markup generator – https://technicalseo.com/tools/schema-markup-generator/
How to Implement Rich Snippets?
It is easier than you thought.
Simply add an HTML tag to the webpage where you want your rich snippet to appear.
Understand how to use these HTML meta tags for your SEO benefits.
For a full list of the types that you can use, visit the Schema.org website.
When you’ve finished adding the appropriate tags to your webpage, save your work and check how your page looks in the source code.
If the rich snippet displays correctly, congratulations!
You’ve successfully implemented a Rich Snippet on your site!
Now repeat this process for each of your web pages that you want to implement a rich snippet on.
Keep in mind that you may need to make changes to your theme in order to implement rich snippets properly.
For instance, many themes use heading tags rather than div tags for formatting purposes.
You may need to change your theme’s headings to div tags in order for the code to display correctly.
If you are using WordPress, there is an abundance of plugin that helps you generate and embed those rich snippet codes into your website.
How Google Uses Rich Snippets
As mentioned earlier, Google uses these to display your information in search results in a way that attracts more users to click on your listings.
This is a great way for your site to gain exposure and make itself more visible to potential visitors.
For Google to rank you higher, it must be able to crawl and understand your web pages.
Using these structured data codes helps it do just that.
By implementing these schema elements on your pages, you are helping to make the content on your web pages more understandable to the search engine.
This makes it easier for the search engine to understand the purpose of your web pages and to rank them accordingly.
It also tells the search engine what your page is about and how useful it is for users.
With this information, the search engine can then decide where to place you in its search results.
If you have placed yourself near the top of the results, you’re more likely to attract the attention of those searching for your topic/product/ service.
If you are ranking around in the position of #4 – #7, implementing schema markup might actually gives you the edge over your competitor.
– JustRank
So, by using schema markup elements on your web pages, you are not only making it easier for your visitors to understand your website content, but you are also helping to boost your site’s rankings on Google and other search engines.
Benefits of Rich Snippets
One of the obvious benefits is that it will improve your CTR!
A click-through rate is an important metric for any site owner because it indicates how likely people are to click on a given link in search results.
If users don’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll simply move on to another search result instead.
If you’ve implemented rich snippets on your web pages, however, you’ll make it much easier for them to find what they’re looking for because they’ll be presented with relevant product information directly in their search results.
A user would know what to anticipate before they click on the link to your site.
It increases user satisfaction. Users are more likely to visit your site if they know what to expect when they arrive at your site.
Another benefit is that you’ll help increase the ranking of your web pages.
This is achieved by making the content on your web pages more understandable to search engines.
While we do understand that this is in no way a ranking factor, we know that when users are satisfied with what they see when they visit a site, they’re more likely to return to that site in the future.
And if you’re ranking high in the search results, you’re more likely to be visited again by users who found you through a search engine query which is a good thing!
You’re also increasing your brand awareness by doing this.
You will increase your brand exposure as more people will see the rich snippets that you have implemented on your web page.
Conclusion
So as you can see, implementing structured data and rich snippets on your website is very important in today’s complex and competitive landscape.
The implementation of these elements will not only help you gain more visibility on Google and other search engines but will also help you increase your website’s rankings, improve your CTR, increase your brand exposure, and make your visitors happier because they will be able to easily find what they are looking for on your site!
Try using schema markup and Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to get a better understanding of how to implement structured data and rich snippets on your own website!
Get into our 8 tips on how to get a featured snippet.
Resources:
- https://schema.org/
- https://yoast.com/what-is-structured-data/
- https://search.google.com/test/rich-results
