Have you ever thought what makes you click on a search result on the Google SERPs for your search queries? What is the first thing that you check before clicking on a website?
Is it the title, the meta-data, or the extra information that pop up? Maybe you will incline towards the website that is carrying reviews, ratings, and some extra topic-related information. Okay! Well, these information that make you chose the webpage result are called Rich Snippets.
So, think a little bit, do you also want to interest users by using these kind of information? You can do this by adding Rich Snippets to your website. This will not only convince users to choose your website but, will bring relevant traffic as well.
Here, we are going to enlighten you about the Rich Snippets and what happens when you start using them. Well, you must be having lots of questions so just go through the article, and have all your doubts cleared.
You can always take the help of any authorized digital marketing agency to add these snippets to your website. In fact, some of these agencies also provide web designing services and add Rich Snippets while developing the website.
What are rich snippets?
Technically, Rich Snippets are the type of structured data markup that is added by web developers in the form of an HTML code on your website’s HTML page. It makes your website appear on the SERPs along with additional information which makes it more appealing to the users.
So, now when they appear in Google SERPs, they add extra visual context for users which makes the search result more informative. In this way, the users will be little leaned towards sites having Google Rich Snippets which may also lead in higher the organic CTR (Click-Through-Rate) and lower bounce rate.
There are many other ways as well, to increase Google Ads CTR and to reduce bounce rate.
Let’s brief you with an example about rich snippets:
Like if you search for a food delivery app, you can get two types of results. One with regular snippets and the other with Rich Snippets.
In regular snippet results, you get no extra information. You just get a black URL, a clickable title in blue, and meta description of what the page is all about. For more details, you can see the result in the below image:
In rich snippet results, you are provided with extra information that is dragged from Google structured data markup, about the web page like ratings, votes, etc. So, a viewer will click that page instead as it makes it seem more credible.
Now, when more viewers click on your website on the result page, Google will think that people are preferring your website on SERPs than others, which makes it noticeable that the results of your web pages are better suited to get the information about the same search query. This will also help you to improve website ranking as Google will consider showing your web page above others because users find it more relevant to their query.
Importance of rich snippets
As already discussed, adding Rich Snippets to your website can help to rank it in the longer-term, but it will never be the factor that directly affects the ranking of your website.
After adding them, they make your website look more attractive and informative, that may bring more clicks on your website. But, then what? Well, there is something else that you need to do. Your webpage should also have descriptive and informative content. It’s necessary that it should be well written and engaging. There are many ways to create a great content. Some digital marketing agencies also provide content marketing services, you can always hire them to help you.
Adding structured data markup to your website makes it more appealing than others, which again makes viewers select your website rather than other search results. Rich snippets will increase your website’s CTR that would help in ranking your website.
Okay! Now it must be clear to you how Google rich snippets help in ranking your website. But is that it? The answer is no, there is much more. Let’s give you another concept to explain its importance.
Google rich snippets also help the users to make a uniform decision while selecting a website. They provide Google structured data markup appear as some extra information like ratings, votes, reviews, etc., that make it easier for the user to compare and pick the website from where they want to receive the information.
Hence, it must be clear to you how rich snippets help both website owner and the users.
Why rich snippets are crucial for SEO?
Rich Snippets is a vital aspect for SEO.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as the name suggests, is the practice to optimize your website using different techniques. SEO, when done right, can increase your website’s visibility on the search engines and send qualified traffic to your website.
When you add rich snippets to your website it will automatically create a difference between your search result and other search results on the SERPs. Many SEO reseller services providing companies have noticed a wide increment of 20-30% in CTR after employing these structured data markups to their client’s website. This also helped them in running their SEO campaigns undisturbed. In fact, Google Bing and Yahoo have also implemented these structured data markups in their HTML pages.
They mostly appear in the form of star reviews and votes. This ensures the users that their needs and expectations are going to be met before they land on the webpage.
Data Highlighter is a webmaster tool for teaching Google about the pattern of structured data on your website. You simply use Data Highlighter to tag the data fields on your site with a mouse. After that Google can present your data in much attractive way on the SERPs and in other products such as the Google Knowledge Graph.
With Google data highlighter, it is possible to add more kind of Google structured data instead of just adding stars, reviews and number of votes. You can add more information about the web pages.
E.g., if you are posting an article related to a chocolate ice-cream recipe, then instead of adding just reviews you can add information regarding cooking time, calories, no. of ingredients, and much more. Not only will this provide extra information but also, build up more trust in users that will bring more clicks on your website.
Besides that, by using Rich Snippets you are also helping Google to understand what the website is about, it can make your search result appear above the other webpages in Google SERPs. This helps to optimize your webpage which boosts your SEO campaigns.
It will also help the digital marketing agencies that provides SEO reseller services and local SEO reseller services (to local clients) as they can also add these snippets on their client’s account and maintain the optimization.
Types of rich snippets
You need to identify the type of Rich Snippets suitable for your page. Actually, there are dozens of snippets present so, let’s brief you on some snippets that are used more generally.
• Reviews schema markup: By choosing this, it will display a star rating (out of 5)
• Product schema markup: A type of Google structured data markup that gives search engine information about a particular product
• Recipes schema markup: This is a special type of snippet that applies only to recipes that include time to prepare a dish, calories contain, recipe images and, reviews
• Article schema markup: It helps users to know more about the article headline, time of publishing, its featured image, and the content
• Personal schema markup: A type of Google structured data markup that gives information about personal details like name, age, birthday, address, born place, etc.
• Music schema markup: Gives info on music like music ratings and release date
• Local business schema markup: Local business schema markup helps users in finding local company’s location and other information like mobile no, address, working hours, etc
• Video schema markup: It gives the users information of what your video content is all about
• Events schema markup: Gives information about dates, times, location, and more
• Organization schema markup: Gives information about the business organizations like address, logo, and contact information
I hope you got a little idea of different kinds of Google Rich Snippets and I know now you must be excited to learn the steps to add it to your (SERPs). So, let’s get started.
How to add & test rich snippets?
Adding rich snippets
There are many options to do this but the easiest is by Google Structured Data Markup Helper
1. Open ‘Google Structured Data Markup Helper’
2. There, choose the data type then paste the URL or HTML source of the page you wish to mark up
3. When you are done with the above process click on ‘Start Tagging’
4. You will be directed to a page with two planes on it. On left is your content page and on right is your schema markup tool.
5. Highlight in the left plane to select the elements you want to mark up. A pop-up box will appear with mark up tags options on it.
6. Choose the mark up tag and continue the process to add other elements to your structured data mark up list
7. Once you are done creating your mark up list click on ‘Create HTML’ in the upper hand right corner
8. Now, in the second box of the left upper side corner select ‘JSON-LD’ instead of microdata
9. Now, insert the generated schema mark up code into your webpage. For that go to the source code of this specific page, delete the current code and paste the new code in that place.
There is another easy method to do so and that is by using WordPress plugins.
By following the above steps, you can also add Rich Snippets to your website and reap the juicy benefits that they have to offer. If the process seems too daunting, you can always outsource the services to digital marketing agencies and have experts take care of your website, just be assured of their credibility while choosing an SEO company.
Testing rich snippets
Testing Rich Snippets is an easy process. Google won’t pick your snippets the day you create them, so to be sure it is a good idea to validate them right away. Here’s how you can do it:
1. Open Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool
2. It will come with two options, ‘FETCH URL’ and ‘CODE SNIPPET’
3. You can enter the URL in ‘FETCH URL’ box or you can enter the schema code in ‘CODE SNIPPET’ toolbox
4. Click on ‘RUN TEST’, you will be directed to the page where your markup will be reviewed.
Updated Results regarding Google Search Console Rich Results
Google made two changes in Google Search Console to the report of Rich Snippets. The changes were reported to the job posting report, FAQ, and Q&A rich results report. You can check the Google documented report as well but let’s update you a little bit.
1. Job posting report
On 11th March 2021, “Google explained that starting on March 11, 2021 and going forward, Google has changed its requirements for the Education, Experience, and ExperienceInPlaceOfEducation properties of job posting structured markup. Because of these changes you may notice an “increase in warnings for Job Posting instances,”. – Search Engine Land
So, if you want to add job posting structured data to your HTML page then make sure that you follow the new requirements that Google has proposed. You can check those requirements in the documentation.
2. FAQ and Q&A report
Before March 2nd 2021, Google used to check FAQ and Q&A structured data markup at the root level, but now, it will authenticate and check the validity of these structured data that is below the root entity level.
Now that more validity purposed pages are being selected by Google, more valid, warnings, and FAQ and Q&A kind of articles are seen in rich result reports.
Now as Google is showing efforts regarding these data markups, every other site is convinced to use them in their websites. It’s suggested that you should also take advantage of these regulations. If you are an SEO reseller services provider then it is better recommended for you to use it for your client’s website.
You can always check your Google Search Console rich results report to see the data markup inserted is working correctly or not.
What can you expect after adding rich snippets?
Okay, let’s suppose you have added Rich Snippets to your web page, now what? Have you ever thought, what happen after adding these snippets?
Do they start showing right away or do they need some time? Well, let’s satisfy your curiosity a little bit and give you a short description of what happen after adding these snippets that you created.
Based on observations, some SEO reseller service providers have concluded following statements that can satisfy your curiosity.
• First of all, Google doesn’t starts showing the added snippets just after you introduced them to your webpage. It may take 10 days or more to start analyzing the new structured data markup inserted into your HTML page.
• If everything seems to be fine then approximately after 5 - 6 days Google will start showing up these structured data markups for some pages, but after around 5 days it will disappear. Here, again let me remind you that Google won’t be considering all your pages.
• After few days, some Rich Snippets will reappear. It is possible that they will be for the same set of pages or for any new set. This may happen many times.
• Almost after 1.5 months, you will be awarded by some semi-permanent Rich Snippets throughout your site.
• It is quite possible that these snippets keep on changing so my suggestion is to wait for at least 2 months before you go for any kind of modifications in your data mark up. It will roughly take that much time to show full results on your website.
Closing thoughts
So, by reading the above blog, you must have got an idea of Rich Snippets.
Rich Snippets are kind of important information for SEO. Many SEO reseller services providing agencies use them to optimize their client’s website. Rich Snippets in short are some additional information which are inserted into your website to make it more eye-catching and informative.
There are different kinds of Rich Snippets available on a website but just adding them is not enough, your landing page should also be informative.
You are also enlightened about adding and testing Rich Snippets and what happens when you do so. So, now it’s your time to add them to your website and see how they show up on your web page.
Hopefully, this blog was helpful to you and after reading this blog you get all the answers to your queries.
References:
• The importance of adding structured snippets