Fahim Ahmed
Rich snippets are really rich!
Over the years Google search engine result pages have evolved to provide users with the much-needed information with ease. They are constantly working to provide a better search experience.
Nowadays search results consist of a lot of rich content on the page.
Google shows knowledge graphs, featured snippets, carousels, product lists ads, and most importantly Google Ads based on the search query.
You probably have seen some top-ranking pages in search results enjoying these additional features. But did you ever think about how they got them in the first place?
If you want to rank high in search results it will need more than well-written content. Unless you can improve every aspect of SEO, you won’t see much of a difference in your overall site’s ranking.
Rich snippets are a crucial component of on-page SEO. They can make your content more appealing to searchers and give it a little more flare to help it stand out from the mediocre search results.
Getting your website rich snippets ready is not a difficult task. Compared to acquiring backlinks, getting rich snippets for your blog post is a piece of cake.
If you have your webpage optimized and your schema ready, you can turn your regular old boring snippets into rich snippets.
By optimizing your content accordingly, you can have all the additional features of rich snippets. And if that makes your content a bit more appealing to your audience then why not?
In this segment, we will discuss what are rich snippets? And how you can optimize your website to get rich snippets.
What Are Rich Snippets?
Rich snippets are structured data markup which helps the search engine better understand your content type and the information that is contained on each web page.
Unlike standard snippets, rich snippets contain valuable additional pieces of information that appear alongside your title, description, and URL. It makes your search result more appealing to users.
All the extra bit of information for rich snippets comes from the structured data of the web page.
Rich snippets were first displayed by Google in 2009. The intent was to provide relevant information within the search result to improve the search experience of users.
Research shows that having rich snippets can boost the SERPs ranking and improve CTR drastically. Why?…. Because nobody likes boring.
It’s no longer enough to have your content appear on the first page of Google search results.
To ensure that your listing maximizes its position, you’ll need to put in a lot more work to bring your web page to the top.
Rich snippets just do that for you. Rich snippets optimize your listing by taking more space in SERPs and adds a bit more flair to your search result so you can attract more traffic to your website.
Types of Rich Snippets
Google supports multiple types of snippets on the search results page. Depending on your search query you will find these snippets.
Rich snippets are used in search result pages to provide searchers with much-needed information about a web page. It assists users in deciding whether or not to interact with a search result.
Some rich snippets are industry-specific and only appear on search results that are relevant to that niche. Here are some of the most common types of rich snippets:
- Product Markup: Find product details such as price, reviews, and availability.
- Recipes: Recipes that are compatible with web searches and Recipe View
- Ratings: Ratings for services, products, recipes, and more.
- Reviews: Get a review of any items, services, shops, restaurants, or company
- Course Info: Online course overview with all important information and details
Types of rich results
- Bread Crumbs: Navigation to make browsing through site pages easier
- App Info: Information about a software application, such as price, downloads, and reviews
- FAQ: Relevant questions that are often asked by users
- How-Tos: Find a brief how-to listicles
- Event Info: Find information about events happening nearby you.
- Top Stories: News article headlines, images, and publisher information
With these rich snippets and rich results, Google is trying to ensure a more engaging and optimal user experience for their users so the can easily find essential information.
Where & When Rich Snippets Appear
Not all search queries return rich snippets. Rich snippets show up when it is relevant and for pages with certain types of information.
They can also be limited further by a device type and your search query. Rich snippets can also be industry-specific which means they appear for a certain niche.
FAQ appears for most search queries independent of your device. These are relevant questions based on your search query that people often ask. FAQ makes it easier for searchers to know more about a topic and find information quickly.
Ratings are mostly for movies, books, products, and sometimes even for articles. Even though ratings have nothing to do with search ranking, they can influence your conversion rate.
Online ratings are social proof that provides credibility and trust. Having a rating makes your content more appealing to users.
If you want to stand out in the search results and outperform your competitors you can use ratings as a trust signal. Even if you don’t see any direct improvements in your search results ranking you will surely see an increase in CTR.
Unlike rating, a review has included a star rating as well as a written remark which demonstrates a complete user experience.
A rich snippet for recipes is also available, which includes recipes that are compatible with online searches and Recipe View. This snippet is only available for recipes.
Difference Between Rich Snippet, Rich Result & Featured Snippet?
If you are an SEO expert chances are you are already familiar with these terms. But if you are just a newbie these terms might be vague and confusing to you.
Many SEOs and bloggers often confuse the term “rich results” with “rich snippet”. There is a good reason for this confusion.
We frequently use the term “rich results,” interchangeably with “rich snippets.” And to make it more confusing we also have terms like “SERP features” and “featured snippets”.
There isn’t much difference between rich results and rich snippets. Rich snippets can be considered a type of rich result.
Here we have differentiated these terminologies to help you understand
- SERP Features Any search result that isn’t a regular “blue link.” SERP features include featured snippets, Product listing ads, tweet boxes, image carousels, Google local pack, and Knowledge Panels.
- Rich Results are visually-enhanced bits of information that appear on SERPs generated from structured data of a webpage. FAQs and rich snippets are a type of rich result but also a SERP feature.
- Rich snippets Regular search results with additional information displayed alongside the title, descriptive snippet, and URL.
Why Should You Use Rich Snippets
Rich snippets help your content cut through the clutter of mediocre search results by giving it a more enticing look in the SERPs.
Furthermore, it provides credibility for your content which is essential to attract new users.
Ranking high in search results has its own benefit. But if you don’t have an appealing snippet, people will just avoid your webpage and click on search results with more interesting information.
Rich snippets contain attributes like product markup and prices, the number of reviews, ratings, or cooking times & calorie count for recipes, and much more.
These competing tiers will give your search result more visibility and attract more organic website visitors. Review, rating stars, and thumbnail images add extra real estate on the page to draw attention to themselves.
Consider this: if you’re looking for a product online, you’re more likely to click on a search result that includes pricing, stock availability, and reviews rather than one that is bland and without any of these details. These minor details are what will attract organic traffic to your website.
How Does Rich Snippets Help SEO
Rich snippets are not a ranking factor and do not directly help SEO or SERP ranking. However, it has a significant influence on your click-through rate and conversion.
The presence of structured data markup on a website does not guarantee that it will rank higher in search results. If you want to rank high in the SERPs, you should concentrate on improving your overall SEO. However, rich snippets can indirectly help your SEO.
Rich snippets are an important part of your on-page SEO strategy. Search engine optimization is not just about ranking on top of Google search results. It’s also about bringing organic traffic to your website.
Rich snippets do exactly that for you.
The content of the snippet is what makes people click on your web page. So it is not surprising that results with rich snippets get more clicks than regular search results.
Rich snippets are visually more appealing and contain some additional information that intrigues most users.
When you use rich snippets on your website, your content stands out from the rest of the search results. Rich snippets add an extra bit of flair and draw attention to your page.
People prefer snippets that provide them with all the important details. This is why rich snippets normally have more organic CTR than standard snippets as they pre-qualify visitors to ensure they will find value while on your page.
That’s not all, though. Rich snippets will have an impact on your ranking in the long term. An increase in organic CTR and a decrease in bounce rate will send Google signals that people like your page over others.
This shows Google that your page is an excellent match for that particular search, which will eventually boost your ranks in the long term!
How To Get Rich Snippets
Getting rich snippets for your website is a lot easier than you might think. If you want rich snippets to appear for your content on a SERP, you’ll need to add structured data markup in your page’s code.
The structured data is formatted and arranged in a way that makes it easier for Google to understand.
For example, let’s say you have an e-commerce site where you are selling iPhone 13 pro.
Without structured data, Google and other search engines will have a hard time determining what sort of content is this and the key takeaway.
In this case, it is a product page. So Google would need relevant information like:
- Product Price
- Discounted price (if any)
- Stock availability
- Product rating
- Seller rating
When you add product markup to your page it extracts key information (microdata) of your product page in a structured format that resembles somewhat like this:
- Price: $999
- Discount price: $825
- Availability: In stock
- Product rating: 4.5 star
- Seller rating: 4 star
As Google crawls your web page, Google bots translate this code to appear as the different types of rich snippets that we have mentioned above.
If you can properly optimize your content and add schema markup with your web pages Google will display this information as a Rich Snippet in the search results.
What is structured data?
Schema markup, also known as structured data, is the language of search engines, using a unique semantic vocabulary.
Usually in general terms “structured data” refers to data that is organized in a generic format that is easy to comprehend.
Schema markup provides Google with detailed information about our web pages, which they subsequently share in beautiful and engaging search results snippets.
Structured data enables search engines to extract microdata from web pages, allowing them to quickly assess the content of your website and convert it into rich snippets on search results pages.
How To Add Rich Snippets For a Website
Rich snippets are generated by decrypting structured data that are encoded on a web page. They are only available for certain pieces of content to provide a more efficient search result.
Search engines find it easier to read structured data as they are organized in a certain way.
When we talk about structured data in SEO, we’re typically referring to the schema.org vocabulary that’s used to mark up your content.
Schema.org is a collaborative project developed by top-tier search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex.
By establishing, maintaining, and promoting schemas for structured data on the Internet, the goal of this project is to make searches and site development more consistent and efficient throughout the internet.
When you add schema markup to your web pages, Google may use essential sections of your content as rich snippets to give its users a more engaging search experience.
Find Right Schema Markup For Your Content
Now that you know how schema markup can help your content appear in rich snippets, it is time to add this markup to your web pages.
There are different types of schema markup and depending on your content type you can add it to your web page.
After you have finished drafting your content, it is time to analyze which rich snippets are right for you.
Having said that, it is not always that your content needs to have rich snippets. Even though rich snippets can improve user engagement, some content looks better when displayed as simple standard search results.
Most of our SEO-related content doesn’t have rich snippets for our primary keyword. They show up as standard search results like any other blog post with title, description, and URL.
Mostly because there isn’t much in those articles that can provide additional value as rich snippets and people would find it best when they read the whole article instead of seeing it as a rich snippet.
But there are some pages for which we would like to have rich snippets. For instance, it would be great if there is a rich snippet for our “5 Best Keyword Research Tool For SEO” page.
Why? Because it is a listicle and people would prefer to see all the listed tools before reading further in detail. It helps them decide if they want to engage with the post.
Google has documented different types of rich snippets and how you can get them for your website.
If you want to see all the nitty-gritty things you can do with structured data you can browse Google’s Search Gallery. Here you can find various types of content that are eligible for search results enhancements.
Common Schema Markup
- FAQ markup
- “How to” markup
- Software markup
- Reviews markup
- Product type markup
- Q&A
Niche Based Schema Markup
- News Article
- Books
- Recipe
- Restaurant
- Movie
- Course
- Events
- Datasets
- Job-posting
- EmployerAggregateRating
- Fact Check
- Image License
- Local Business
- Podcast
If you find any of these rich snippet categories relevant to your niche, you can head over to the official docs, and see if you can make any possible enhancements to your content type. Make sure to use rich snippets if it somehow improves your user experience or drive traffic to your site.
The easiest way to determine if your content needs rich snippets is by making a Google search using your keywords and see if there is any rich snippet listed in the search result.
If there is any featured snippet or rich snippet available for that specific keyword you will know which ones to implement in your webpage.
You can also use SEO tools like Ahrefs to see if rich snippets are available for any of your pages.
Implement The Schema Markup In Your Site
Creating a schema markup and implementing it on your website is quite easy.
There are some technical aspects of structured data but you don’t have to be a pro web developer to implement the codes in your website.
You can add schema markup on your website regardless of how it is made. But if you are using CMS like WordPress, you can use plugins that will make your job a lot easier.
Google has created a really useful online Rich Snippets reference doc to make things as simple as possible for SEOs and content creators. You can look into it and get an idea about how to properly implement structured data on your website.
The easiest way of deploying the code on your website is to generate a schema markup and add it to the <head> section of your website.
There are various schema markup generators available. You can use any of these tools to create a schema markup based on the content of your website.
You can also use Google tag manager to add schema markup to individual pages of your website.
Here are some of the best and easiest ways to add a markup to any of your web pages.
These tools make it very easier for users to add a markup to their website without having any coding knowledge. You can simply use Google data highlighter to highlight sections of a web page that you want to apply to Rich Snippets.
If you are not using any CMS or plugins this is probably the easiest way to make sure your web pages are rich snippets ready!
How To Add Rich Snippets To A WordPress Site
If you use WordPress, you won’t have to bother about deploying custom code for schema markup on your website.
There are SEO plugins that will do the job for you. Many SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math support structured data and allow schema implementation.
There are also other standalone plugins for schema implementation. You can use any of these plugins on your WordPress site to create structured data for your web pages.
Rank Math and Yoast are both great SEO plugins with Even though there isn’t much of a difference in features, many people prefer one over another.
We have tried ad tested both of these plugins and when it comes to user experience and markup options Rank Math performed a bit better than Yoast. However when it comes to the overall on-page SEO of a website we prefer Yoast.
If you are using Yoast, you can easily add a schema markup when creating a post. Just go to the Yoast SEO screen element section and click on the schema tab. There you will see a dropdown for your ‘page type’. Select your preferred page type that suits your content and publish it.
If you are writing an article you will be able to further narrow it down. Once you have published your content see how it works with your chosen schema type.
You can check if your content is available for rich snippets by using Google’s Rich results test.
