What is a Rich Snippet?
A rich snippet is a Google SERP feature that provides additional information about a web page beyond the standard title, URL and description.
It includes information like ratings, reviews, images and pricing. They give users an idea of what they can expect from a page before clicking it.
Rich snippets improve the click-through rate of a website and are created using structured data markup.
See this example, a typical search result will look like this:
While a rich snippet will look like this:
Why are they Important for SEO?
Rich snippets can significantly impact a website's visibility. Here are some reasons why they are important:
Stand Out in Search Results
Rich snippets make a website stand out from others by providing more detailed information. This can improve your CTR and bring more traffic to your website.
Improved User Experience
Rich snippets provide more information. This can improve the user experience and increase the likelihood that visitors will return to your site again.
Increased Credibility
The addition of star ratings and reviews increases the credibility of your website. This establishes your site as a trusted source in your niche.
Higher Search Rankings
You can improve your search rankings if your site appears as a rich snippet. This may attract more organic traffic over time.
Keep Up with Changing User Behaviors
As more and more people rely on search engines to find information, websites need to keep up with this changing behaviour.
Rich snippets help you do that and provide visitors with the requested information quickly.
How do Rich Snippets Work?
Rich snippets work by using structured data markup. It is added to the HTML code of a web page.
This structured data gives extra information about a page. Like, it can be product details, ratings, reviews, and pricing.
Google uses this data to display rich snippets. When a query is searched, bots crawl the web and look for pages that match the query.
If bots find a page that includes structured data markup for rich snippets, they may use it to display the results.
You can also use our structured data markup tools which will help you with over 33 different types of schema markups.
Types of Rich Snippets
The most common rich snippets are:
Product
This snippet has information about a specific product. It may include an image, description, pricing, availability, and reviews.
Recipe
It can show an image, ingredients, cooking time, votes, ratings, and nutritional value along with a standard title and description.
Event
This covers the information about an event like its date, time, location, and ticket availability.
Review
This can have a summary of user reviews and ratings for a product, service, or business.
Video
Here you will see information about a video along with its title, description, and duration.
Article
The news articles or blog posts with their titles, authors, dates, and featured images are displayed here.
Local business
It presents information about a local business like its name, address, phone number, and reviews.
FAQ
This type of rich snippet shows frequently asked questions and their answers.
The Difference Between Rich Results, Featured Snippets & Rich Snippets
Rich snippets and rich results are terms that are often used to mean the same thing, as confirmed by Google.
They refer to a specific result on SERP with extra interactive information.
Rich snippets come under the category of SERP feature - any result that appears aside from the usual organic listings.
The featured snippet is a search result that appears at the top of the Google SERP, above the organic search results. It is also called position zero or ranking #0.
Their purpose is to present the most relevant information in a concise manner.
How to Get Rich Snippets?
Decide what type of rich snippets you want to create
First, you need to identify which type of content your website has and which type of snippets would be relevant to it.
For example, if you have a website with “how-to” guides, you may need to implement “how-to” structured data.
Implement structured data
Structured data is a way of organizing and labelling content on a web page. This is done by using a specific vocabulary or schema.
In the second step, you will choose a markup language to add structured data.
This will provide search engines with more information and increase your chances of being featured in a rich snippet.
Structured data is typically implemented using markup languages like JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa.
JSON-LD is a popular choice for implementing structured data. It provides a way to include structured data directly in the HTML code of a web page.
Microdata is another popular choice and it uses HTML tags to define specific types of data. It defines a specific vocabulary for describing things like articles, events, products, and reviews.
RDFa works in a similar way to Microdata. However, it uses the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as a vocabulary for describing data on a web page.
When implementing structured data, it's important to choose the most appropriate one for your website.
Validate the markup
Now you need to use a structured data testing tool to check that your markup is valid or not. This will ensure that search engines can properly read and understand it.
Check for performance and errors
Keep an eye on your site's performance and look for any errors with your marked-up pages.
This may include monitoring your traffic, CTR, and rankings. You can also use Google Search Console for this purpose.
To monitor marked-up pages in GSC, follow these steps:
Log in to your Google Search Console account and go to the "Performance" tab.
Click on "Search Appearance". This will show you clicks and impressions of your website pages along with marked-up pages.
Click on "Rich Results". The warnings or errors are displayed next to it. You can click them to check the details and fix them.
Once you've fixed any errors, you can use the "Validate Fix" to request Google to re-crawl the page.
After doing all that, it does not guarantee that your page will appear in rich results.
It is because Google clarifies that it depends on various factors like quality and relevance among others.
Conclusion
In short, rich snippets provide more detailed information about a web page directly on the SERP.
They can include ratings, reviews, and images, and are designed to help users find the information more quickly.