Rich Snippets for SEO

We’ve all come across snippets. They’re the results that Google (and other search engines) display to the user when they are conducting an online search. Let’s say you’re a marketer who has come across the phrase “customer journey marketing” a lot lately and you want to know more. You enter the phrase “customer journey marketing framework” on Google and you get the following result:

That is known as a snippet. It contains these 3 basic elements:

Page title
URL
Brief description

Rich snippets go one better by providing more information about a page; the extra information can appear in the form of an image or additional lines about the page. They can also be highlights, events, recipes, and videos. Creating a rich snippet requires embedding a certain kind of structured data markup on your HTML website. These markups inform Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) what sort of information can be found in the content on a page. Here is an example of how a rich snippet might look:

Rich snippets are great. In fact, studies show that having rich snippets can boost your CTR by up to 30% (Search Engine Land). You can test this for yourself using a simple website tracker. As a marketer, you should consider taking advantage of rich snippets.

Here are 3 ways rich snippets can boost your marketing strategy:

Higher visibility in organic searches

Rich snippets enrich the information given to a user about the content of the page displayed. As you can see from the example above, pages containing rich snippets look more “complete” than pages without them. Consequently, people are more likely to click on pages containing rich snippets instead of competing pages. A rich snippet that includes an image will also serve as a stronger visual representation of information, allowing your result to stand out from traditional listings easily. All of these factors work together to achieve better SEO results.

Create trust and credibility

Your page may be jam-packed with awesome content, but you’re not exactly getting the clicks. Having a top-notch SEO strategy will definitely help increase page visibility — and greater visibility equals a greater perception of credibility and trust surrounding your brand. And anyone seeing your search result enlarged and positioned in that manner will assume (and rightly so!) that you are the authority on that particular topic.

Reduces bounce rates

Because rich snippets provide more context to the reader, a page containing rich snippets will create better relevancy. This means that a user who decides to click on your link actually knows what he or she is looking for — and more importantly, he or she knows what to expect when they begin reading your content. As a result, your website’s bounce rate will decrease while CTR increases. Neat, huh?

The final word on rich snippets

It’s important to note that rich snippets are a privilege, not a right. Plugging structured data markups on your website does not mean that you will automatically see search engines displaying rich snippets for your site. Other factors that determine whether or not rich snippets will appear include how frequently you publish content on your website and how often SERPs trawl your pages.