In a world where users’ search queries might result in over 9 million results, it’s important for your website to stand out from competitors on Google results pages. Rich snippets can help you with this – by displaying additional data in search results, encouraging users to click through.
What Are Rich Snippets?
A rich snippet (also called a Rich Result) refers to a result that Google shows to the user in the search results, that includes more information compared to normal results. It is called a rich snippet because it is ‘richer’ and offers the user more details.
For example, if you search for a recipe in Google, you will be met with normal snippets and rich snippets.
A normal snippet appears with the title in blue, URL in black, and a meta description beneath.
A rich result/rich snippet shows extra information between the URL and meta description. In this example, an image of the recipe, rating, and time taken.
There are various types of rich results, such as:
- Recipes – Includes data such as time to prepare the dish, reviews and recipe images.
- Product type – Includes information about a specific product (including price and product images).
- Music – Gives Google info on music, like album release dates.
- Reviews – Displays a star rating (out of 5).
- Top stories – Allows a site to appear in the “Top Stories” box in the search results. Only applies to Google News approved websites.
- FAQ – Presents questions and answers.
- Events – Includes information on dates, times, location and more.
By adding schema markup (code) to your site, you can identify data on your website that is valuable to search engines, which ultimately helps you to get more attention and clicks, driving website traffic.
Why Are Rich Results Important & How Will Your Website Benefit From Adding Them?
Rich results stand out from other results on the search results – allowing users to instantly get more information. This is great visibility of your site and can help to increase click through rate. It makes your page more enticing in the search results which could mean more traffic from that search result. In the long run, rich snippets can affect how you rank – due to Google noticing people prefer your page to others – therefore ranking you higher. It also establishes trust as it displays prices and reviews.
How Do You Get Rich Snippets?
To enable rich snippets to appear for your website, you will need to add structured data. This is a piece of code on your website that communicates key information to search, that helps them to create rich results.
For example, instead of Google having to extract key information from this…
It will take 30 minutes to make the cake. This cake is great if you are on a diet, as they are around 100 calories per serving.
… they have it in a structured format that appears like this:
cooking time: 30 minutes
calories: 100
How to Implement Structured Data?
Firstly, you will need to create the markup of structured data. You can do this by adding code into the <head> section of your website, or use Google Tag Manager. Example code looks like this:
<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Why is my website slow?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “This may be due to large files and slow servers.”
}
},{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How do I speed up my website?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Remove large files or replace with smaller files, and ensure that your servers and hosting are fast.”
}
}]
}
</script>
It’s important to note that there are guidelines that you must follow for your structured data to show in Google, you can find the guidelines here.
Once you have implemented the structured data code on your website, you will need to validate the markup. You can do this through Google’s Rich Results Testing Tools – telling you instantly if your page is eligible for rich results.
Once you have added the code to your website, Google will discover it next time it crawls your website. However, it may take some time for rich snippets to appear in the SERPs.
You will then need to monitor performance through Google Search Console, and check for any errors. All eligible makeup types will appear beneath ‘Mobile Usability’ in the left hand sidebar.
Conclusion
Overall, Rich Snippets are a great feature to have for your website. If you need help with SEO and getting your website seen by your target audience, contact our team now to see how we can help you.
