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There are many SEO strategies you can implement to help your website rank higher on search engines. These include everything from publishing new content regularly and including the right keywords in your website copy to creating a friendly user experience that encourages visitors to return to your site. One of the more technical SEO strategies is adding markup to your site that leads to the creation of rich snippets.   

 

What are rich snippets? 

Search engines like Google create rich snippets from structured data markup or microdata in your website’s HTML. (This is implemented most often with something called Schema.org markup.) This markup helps search engines better understand your website’s content and allows them to display more relevant results in response to specific search queries. The resulting rich snippet appears as a short summary within the search results. It’s like a snapshot of a web page that allows users to quickly scan the content before deciding to click the link. This is different than a meta description—the short descriptive text that displays beneath a website link. 

 

Recipe rich snippets are one of the most commonly recognized in search results, but this SEO tool can also help people find your small business, whether you’re a public space like a restaurant or you offer customized services like accounting or construction. Rich snippets are also helpful for displaying product descriptions, prices, and reviews and can drive more visitors to your blog posts. 

 

 

Rich snippets do require time and are tricky to implement at first, but the payoff can be well worth the investment. In general, rich snippets have been shown to improve click-through rates and can indirectly improve your search ranking if website visitors find what they’re looking for on your site and don’t leave right away to look for a better, more relevant resource. Only 0.30% of domains regularly use schema markup, so implementing this strategy could put you ahead of the competition. 

 

Before you dive into a ‘how-to create rich snippets’ tutorial, however, there are a few things you should know. 

 

Rich snippets don’t guarantee more website visitors

Adding structured data to your website pages doesn’t guarantee that a search engine like Google will feature a rich snippet for that page. It also doesn’t guarantee that you get bumped to the first page of search results. There are many factors that affect your ratings, and while rich snippets can help, they aren’t the golden ticket. 

 

Related post: How Long Does it Take for my Site to Rank on the First Page of Google? 

 

If you do add schema markup to your website, it’s important to understand how long it will take search engines to find and analyze that data. It’s recommended to create the markup and wait about two months for your rich snippet to display. If at this time you’re not seeing a rich snippet, then go ahead and try modifying your markup. You may see rich snippets before this two month period, but they are typically only temporary at this point. The search engine will display your rich snippets for about five days and then remove them. Some snippets may then reappear after a few days but will again disappear, and so on and so forth, for the next two months. Finally, you may be rewarded with semi-permanent rich snippets.

 

With that said, in general rich snippets can drive more traffic to your site and more customers through your doors, so let’s look at some of the most common types of rich snippets that may be relevant to your small business or agency: 

 

5 of the most common types of rich snippets

 

Reviews - These display as a description of the product or service with rating out of 5 stars.  

 

Products - A product rich snippet shows you price, images, and additional specs of a product. 

 

Videos: This provides information about the video content beyond the title and brief description, such as video duration, thumbnail image, and transcript. Setting up structured markup for videos is especially important because search engines can only gather information in a text format. 

 

Events: These display date, time, location and other key information about the event.

 

Organization or local business listing - This rich snippet provides key information about a business such as the address, logo, contact information, and hours. Learn how to add this type of markup to your website with this tutorial.

 

Could rich snippets benefit your business? 

To summarize, rich snippets help search engines find and categorize the content on your site. This benefits your business because when a search engine categorizes your content, it determines how relevant it is to specific queries. This, in turn, can boost your rankings if you do indeed have highly relevant, useful content. Keep in mind, however, that adding structured data or schema markup to your website doesn’t guarantee a rich snippet or a surge in website traffic. It is still a good idea, however, to invest in this SEO strategy because structured data will only help search engines better understand your offerings, and this helps ensure that your website pages show up in your target audience’s search results. 

 

Related posts: 

 

How to Monitor and Manage What People Are Saying Online About Your Business

Should Your Website Use HTTP or HTTPS?

Why a CRM System is Crucial to the Success of Your Small Business 

 

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Based in Santa Cruz, California, Pagoda Technologies provides trusted IT support to businesses and IT departments throughout Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area and across the globe. To learn how Pagoda Technologies can help your business, email us at support@pagoda-tech.com to schedule a complimentary IT consultation.