Dominate Google With Rich Snippets
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Dominate Google With Rich Snippets
Plain text Google listings don’t compare. Stand out on top with this powerful strategy.
Structuring the data on your website can increase your click-thru rate and therefore yoru traffic and conversions. This is because Google undertsands well-structured pages better and can therefore display them in a serach result better. When this occurs, the possibility of your website being diaplayed with Rich Results (aka Rich Snippets) in a Google search increases.
This can also have an impact on more targeted visitors, because when Google has a clearer understanding of the structure of your website, it can better diaplay the most relevant content in a search result.
That begs 2 questions:
- What are Rich Results/Snippets?
- How do I structure the data on my website?
Schema markup indicators help attract more targeted users as Google gets to show the most relevant pages for user queries. This can help sites increase their time on page (1.5X longer session duration in Rakuten’s case) without making any content changes as they get more targeted traffic and users who won’t potentially bounce off the page.
“People who were searching for certain recipes got better results because we were understanding the pages better and could present those pages in a certain way that helped reflect what they were looking for,”
Schema markup helps Google better understand the page’s content and drive more relevant traffic, while AMP’s goal is to quickly deliver the information to the user.
In Rakuten’s case, they were already using AMP before adding structured data to the recipe pages. With specialized sites like Rakuten Recipe, schema markups are more likely to make an impact as they help drive more targeted users to the site. For new sites, starting with AMP could be a better strategy as users can quickly get the information they are looking for, and then be subjected to popups with login, a newsletter signup box, and so on
Google Search works hard to understand the content of a page. You can help us by providing explicit clues about the meaning of a page to Google by including structured data on the page. Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content; for example, on a recipe page, what are the ingredients, the cooking time and temperature, the calories, and so on.
Google uses structured data that it finds on the web to understand the content of the page, as well as to gather information about the web and the world in general. For example, here is a JSON-LD structured data snippet that might appear on a recipe page, describing the title of the recipe, the author of the recipe, and other details:
Google Search also uses structured data to enable special search result features and enhancements. For example, a recipe page with valid structured data is eligible to appear in a graphical search result, as shown here:
Structured data format
This documentation describes which properties are required, recommended, or optional for structured data with special meaning to Google Search. Most Search structured data uses schema.org vocabulary, but you should rely on the Google Search Central documentation as definitive for Google Search behavior, rather than the schema.org documentation. There are more attributes and objects on schema.org that aren't required by Google Search; they may be useful for other services, tools, and platforms.
Rich Results in Google
Rich Snippets
What are Rich Snippets?
Rich Snippets (also known as “Rich Results”) are normal Google search results with additional data displayed. This extra data is usually pulled from Structured Data found in a page’s HTML. Common Rich Snippet types include reviews, recipes and events.
Why are Rich Snippets Important?
The vast majority of Google search results display the same 3 pieces of data:
- Title tag
- Meta description
- URL
Here’s an example:
That’s a normal “snippet”.
Rich Snippets take a normal snippet… and add to it.
Here’s an example of a Rich Snippet:
As you might expect, Rich Snippet results are more eye-catching than normal search results… which can lead to a higher organic CTR.
Google gets Rich Snippet data from Structured Markup (like Schema) in your page’s HTML.
Even though some people think that using Structured Data can improve your search engine rankings, Google has come out and said that using Structured Data is not a ranking signal:
So at least for now, the main benefit of Rich Snippets is an increased click-through-rate.
With that, here’s how to get Rich Snippets.
Best Practices
Choose a Rich Snippet Type
Your first step is to identify the type of Rich Snippet that you want to get. That way, you can use Structured Markup that’s specifically designed to get that type of Rich Snippet in the SERPs.
There are dozens of Rich Snippet types out there. But a good chunk of them (like flight info and books) only apply to a very specific type of site.
That’s why we’re going to focus on the 8 most common types of Rich Snippets.
Reviews: Displays a star rating (out of 5). Can be an individual reviewer or aggregate reviews from users.
Recipes: A special type of Structured Data that only applies to recipes. Recipe markup includes data like time to prepare the dish, reviews and recipe images.
Music: Gives Google info on music, like album release dates.
Product Markup: Gives search engines information about a specific product (including price and product images).
Organization: Helps Google understand key information on an organization (like a business), including address, logo and contact information).
Top Stories: Allows a site to appear in the “Top Stories” box in the search results. Only applies to Google News approved websites.
Video: Search engines can’t “watch” videos on your page. So video markup helps search engines understand what your video content is all about.
Events: Includes information on dates, times, location and more.
So once you’ve picked a Rich Snippet type that makes sense for your content, it’s time to make it happen.
Understand The Basics of Structured Data
Structured Data helps search engines better understand your content.
For example, let’s say you just published a blog post that featured a chili recipe:
Without Structured Data, Google and other search engines have a hard time understanding:
- How long the recipe takes
- Which images are of the recipe itself
- The list of ingredients
- Steps
Enter: Structured Data.
When you add Recipe markup to your page, you tell search engines:
“The recipe takes 45 minutes”
“This is the list of ingredients”
“Here’s a picture of the dish”
And if you play your cards right, Google will show off this data in the search results as a Rich Snippet:
Pretty cool.
Implement Structured Data With Schema
When it comes to Structured Data, most websites use Schema.org markup.
That’s because Schema is supported by all the major search engines (including Bing). And as you’ll see in a minute, it’s pretty darn easy to set up.
All you need to do is find the type of markup that you want to use on Schema.org…
… and markup your content using the guidelines on that page.
Google also has solid documentation on Structured Data.
In my opinion, Google’s stuff is a lot easier to understand for people that aren’t pro developers.
How you actually add Structured Data code to your website is completely up to you.
If you use WordPress, there are plenty of plugins to choose from:
And if you want to add your Structured Data Markup without the help of a plugin, you can use Microdata or RDFa. But I highly recommend using JSON-LD.
That’s because JSON-LD is the easiest way to add Structured Markup to your page.
Without JSON-LD, you need to manually add Structured Data to the HTML of your page:
This a huge pain. Plus, adding new code to your existing HTML increases the odds that something will go wrong.
But with JSON-LD, all of your Structured Data is packed into a little piece of JavaScript code that goes into the <head> section of your webpage:
Test With The Structured Data Test Tool
Your last step is to make sure your Structured Data is set up correctly.
Fortunately, Google launched an AWESOME tool that makes this step an absolute cinch: The Structured Data Testing Tool.
To use it, either pop in a live URL from your site:
Or copy and paste HTML:
And hit “Run Test”:
Google will then show you any Structured Data that it finds on your page.
And if the tool finds anything funky, they’ll let you know:
One thing I should point out:
There’s no guarantee that Structured Data will result in Rich Snippets… even if you have everything here set up PERFECTLY.
In fact, Google makes this super clear in their documentation:
In other words:
Using Structured Data correctly maximizes the odds of getting Rich Snippets. But it doesn’t always work.