Google Search has long been about those 10 organic search results links only. It was quite easy to optimize websites accordingly, and marketers used to focus only on reaching that top position on the search engine result page (SERP).
Slowly the user interface changed and developed into many faces.
Google evolved its search results page, based on new perspectives and user behavior. It improved its UX to address the searcher’s needs in a better way.
Google result page is no longer limited to the few blue links – and there came the concept of rich snippets.
This blog will answer your all questions related to the rich snippets, like:
- What are rich snippets?
- How rich are snippets important for SEO?
- How can you optimize rich snippets?
- What are the different types of rich snippets there?
Structured data helps Google understand whether your page is the best option for a rich snippet.
Introduction to the Rich Snippets
The majority of Google search results display the 3 pieces of data:
- Title tag
- Meta description
- URL
The data that appears apart from these three things are rich snippets that enhance the quality of search results.
Rich snippets are a section on the Google search result page with high-quality data and functionality. Enhanced results deliver more information with visual interests to the researchers. These search results introduce greater helpfulness to the users.
Rich snippets are capable of multiplying your organic click-through rate (CTR). The one targeting the higher outcomes must use rich snippets in its SEO strategy.
How do Rich snippets benefit SEO outcomes?
Although Google says that the rich snippets feature is not a direct ranking factor. Still getting listed in the rich snippet section by using correct structured data markup can improve your visibility and other aspects of SEO. When your data is easy to understand for search engines it is supposed to list it in a better place in search results.
Understand Rich Results vs Rich Snippets vs Featured Snippets
Rich results are all the results appearing at the top of the first search result page.
Rich snippets are a type of rich result; they are composed of advanced information in a well-arranged manner.
“We can say all rich snippets are rich results but all rich results are not rich snippets. “
Featured snippets are the top-notch results appearing just below the search bar. Thai premium information comes from the perfect and right presentation of the information. Rich snippet becomes the featured snippet with the best informational content. A featured snippet is the best information listed on the top with all the Google algorithmic scores up to mark in terms of the helpfulness most. Google search results range from one to ten on each page but featured snippets attain the top position #0.
Benefits of Rich snippets
Rich snippets simplify the search process for internet surfers. Concise answers to the search query, without needing to dig deep throughout the web.
Rich snippets spot you as a relevant resource and the user sees you as a very useful solution to their concern. Here are the benefits of rich snippets to your SEO outcomes:
- Improves click-through rate (CTR): However, rich snippets resolve the user search query as soon as they appear but the researcher still clicks the link to know more and easily grab all that accurate information.
- Increases your credibility: Rich snippets are capable of enhancing business visibility and giving you the authenticity to present information ahead. Users with a satisfying search experience, tend to accept you as a leader in that industry.
- Helps you rank on voice search: AI assistants like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana read out featured snippets to answer vocal search queries. And the stats over voice search is mindblowing.
- Indicates your content is effective, useful, and arranged well: Rich snippets tend to make Google choose you for your quality information. Clean representation of the data proves that your content will be valuable to the readers.
- Helps you filter out users not looking to buy: Rich snippets help to filter the traffic into convertible customers and visitors. No-click searches represent a person who came on the SERP but took an exit without clicking any link, which means it came for some information only and got it. But when a person is coming on the page that means one is seriously looking for the product or service and there comes higher chances of conversion.
Rich snippets are different based on content types:
Rich snippets appear by markup on search engines. Carefully read out the range of data mentioned with the snippet type, your data must include this information. There are different types of rich snippets that majorly give information about the following:
- Product Markup: Such snippets appear for the product details and give almost relevant information about the product on search results itself.
- Music: This markup appears with the music results, here all information like release date, album name, singer, genre, length, etc. appear in one place.
- Reviews: Whenever you will search for any product or services the rating appears with a name just below the meta description.
- Events: This markup represents the time, date, and place of the event along with some other information.
- Recipes: It appears with the steps, date of publishing, ratings, name of the author, and votes.
- Video: The videos contain several significant steps if it is a how-to video. The date of publishing, duration, and channel appears along with it.
- Top stories: Latest news that appears on the snippet mostly targets current affairs.
- Organization: Such markup comes up with the company name, founder, date of establishment, place, subsidiaries, and company logo.
How to implement content for rich snippets?
Rich snippets represent data in a well-mannered orientation, and it is possible when the search engine knows about it. You provide a large amount of data on your website, so structured data markup is a technique that makes your content readable for the search engine.
We will study each step for structured data markup in detail:
Optimize your content according to structured data guidelines
First of all, visit schema.org and read out the terms and aims of the structured data markup. It is a community website made for all marketers, content creators, publishers, and search engines like Bing, Yahoo, Google, Moz, etc.
You need to optimize your content in terms of language, grammar, orientation, layout, images, headings, duplicacy, and keywords. You can check out the organizational website schema.org vocabulary for structured data markup. Just enter things into the search bar and you can find out the guidelines from the content type on the website, you can easily find out from sub-defined and super-classified categories over there, as shown in the image:
Source: schema.orgGoogle also has solid documentation for structured data makeup guidelines. You can check out the article in detail on each content type on Google Search Central. Stuff on Google’s website is very easy to understand for experts and beginners as well.
Structure your data into schema markup
Generally, the data is structured into many types of coding styles like Microdata or RDFa. But JSON-LD is a highly-recommended method because it is lightweight and easy to read and write for humans also. Talking about the WordPress website, there are many plugins available for WordPress that can help you out automatically with data structuralization.
On the other hand, you can do it custom by visiting the Google Structured Data Markup Helper.
Just visit the page opens Google Structured Data Markup Helper, choose your content, and enter its URL (wherever it is published).
For example, as shown below, we will learn it step by step by doing the same for a web blog: Guide to Marketing Your Content Using the Hub and Spoke Strategy
See the images carefully, here now click start tagging.
In the second step, you will see the page on one side and the elements on the other side. Select the content and start tagging your content into different categories shown on the right side.
After tagging all the relevant data you have on your page, you will click “create HTML”. And you will see a code on the right side. You can select the format of the code. Click download and keep it to copy and paste into your website source code. The sample code made for the web blog is here:
Or you can click finish where you will find the link for structured data markup documentation to optimize your content accordingly and Google’s rich result testing tool. Paste your URL in the tool and check whether your web page supports rich snippets or not. Fix if any issue is detected because if Google sees your website violating any of the guidelines, it will take manual actions directly on your site.
You can check whether the code is correct for your webpage appearance or not in the code testing section. You can validate the URL at https://validator.schema.org/ also.
Source: schema.orgHere the structure data markup is completed after pasting the final HTML code into the source code of your website. This way wherever your website will rank, it will have the correct data and a great reputation on Google in terms of being a search engine-friendly website.
Marketers practicing several SEO practices must opt for this smart SEO tactic. However, it has not been defined as the ranking factor, but it will be in the future according to several researchers and analysts in advance of the SEO niche.
Also Read: ADD FAQ SCHEMA TO YOUR WORDPRESS WEBSITE
Conclusion
Many businesses in several industries do not employ the latest SEO practices as they need some time. Companies are focusing and investing only in the direct ranking factors, but websites with immediate reach on the top are likely to drop down with new algorithms. The first rule of digital marketing says to build trust with the search engine. A website following the guidelines only needs a little additional practice if it has a great content structure and optimal user experience.
SEO companies practicing the advanced SEO approaches have the best ideas to evolve more into the digital world of marketing and growth.
