All About Rich Snippets To Up Your Game

When we look something up on a search engine, we don’t always find our answer by clicking on one of the results. But, thanks to rich snippets, we might find it a step before, directly in the page results. Popular search engines like Google and Bing provide us with the essential information about any business at a glance through these blocks. Does this sound like a good fit for your business? If so, then here is all you need to know about rich snippets.

What are rich snippets?

Did you know that the combination of a search result’s title, description, and URL is known as a snippet? You might get an idea about a rich snippet: an enhanced version that provides users with more information on the search results page. That can mean location, opening hours, reviews, and more.

Rich snippets are helpful to users because they might find what they are looking for without any clicks. Not just this, rich snippets are also crucial for businesses, as some of these give you chances of a higher CTR.

How to implement rich snippets?

Here we will tell you how to create rich snippets. The information that might be relevant for a rich snippet, like any critical data on a website, must be placed in the code.

By indicating the information regarding the rich snippet on the site’s HTML, you’re letting the search engine know that it is advanced data that can be used to present relevant information to the user. To do this, you will first need to define the kind of content you will be creating. For example, that can mean an article, recipe, or a person’s profile.

Once that is set, you will need microdata to define each bit of information for Google. Only marking text as paragraph <p> on HTML is not enough. Depending on the content you are interested in, this could mean using an author, rating, or address tag.

Now, this might seem like much hassle, but luckily for you, Google has simplified this entire process using a Structured Data Markup Helper. With this rich snippet creator, you can choose from a wide range of content options, paste your site’s URL, and indicate each piece of information. It will generate the HTML code that is to be added to your site’s head section. This way, you can have your very own rich snippets for Google!

Once that’s done, you’ll have to wait. Like any other new content on the internet, search engines take their own time to discover and index. If you are in any doubt, you can check the Structured Data Testing Tool by Google. This rich snippet tester will help you see whether the code for your rich snippet is detectable by web crawlers or not.

While you are waiting, you don’t manually have to check your SERP every 5 minutes to stay updated. It can be troublesome to look up if your rich snippet is live constantly. Instead, you can use Stillio to keep track of them. 

Stillio is an automated website screenshot tool that lets you capture your SERPs at regular intervals like daily, weekly, or monthly. That comes in handy when you wish to keep a record of your SERPs and lets you check when your rich snippet goes live. Check out how your SERPs are stored on Stillio:

You can also see the evolution of your snippet and see if there are any changes. Furthermore, you will also be able to check the rich snippets of your competitors. 

Types of rich snippets

So what are the different types of so-called structured data for rich snippets? Here are some of the most popular ones. You can click on each title to visit its Google Developer page for the exact structured data information and explore the entire available rich snippets list.

Article structured data

Your page can show up in the “top stories” section by defining structured data for all your articles. The information needed in rich snippets for articles includes the author, date of publication, headline, image, as well as the name of the publisher.

Business information structured data

Having a rich snippet for your very own business is crucial. The snippet will be located on the top right side of the page. The required information includes location, contact details, opening and closing hours, and customer reviews (if any).

Event structured data

Event snippets enable users to get quick snapshots of its date, location, and time. If there are multiple dates, all of them will be displayed in the results.

Recipe structured data

A mouthwatering image of your recipe can greatly attract potential customers. Add the dish's name, cooking instructions, ingredients, cooking time, and any other necessary information to get a rich snippet.

Review structured data

If you wish to get your rich snippets for products, you must define its name and a review, rating, or offer.

Product structured data

If you wish to get your rich snippets for products, you will have to define its name and a review, rating, or offer.

Conclusion

After reading this article, you now know how crucial a rich snippet is in your SEO strategy. Therefore, you must start working on this and see how to add rich snippets to your website! If you wish to know more about Stillio’s features to help your SERP tracking, feel free to book a free demo!