Every business, who aims for SEO must know that getting clicks on their sites is most important for them to reach the top. Research states that the top 3 sites in the web world get 60% of all the clicks and the first among these 3 gets 90% of all the clicks. In other words, a click decides the fate your website. No click, no sale.
But how to win a click when you are not even noticed? To make that happen, websites need to exhaust every option available to attract customer interest. Besides, factors like keyword optimization and data, there is another way to make your site stand out from your competitors and offer a better experience for users. Rich snippets are the word that you are looking for in here.
Nowadays, rich search results are almost everywhere. When compared to those in earlier times, today’s search results seem more informative, providing clips of rich content beneath the links. This additional information or rich snippets are used to provide info to the users directly. Usually adorned with add-ons like ratings and photos and other visually encouraging elements, rich snippets can be considered the special factor that draws the user’s attention towards a site and wins the click.
What Are Rich Snippets?
When a website appears on a search engine, the site title and the description associated with the site appears. However, when rich snippets are implemented, the search engine is now able to provide additional information about the result. In simple words, rich snippets are fragments of information, paired with the search results, which increases the understanding of the user, about the value of the site.
These fragments of information occur in different forms such as extra text, reviews, charts and tables and other knowledge enhancing factors, depending on the type of results that the user is looking for.
The main objectives of SEO workshops in educating people about rich snippets include providing information on where, when and how to use them. There are different content types which support the use of rich snippets. Few of them are mentioned below:
- Products: One of the important uses of rich snippets is with products in online stores. Several attributes such as brand name, image and reviews can be provided on the site as rich snippets. Also, if two online stores use the same product, then high price and low price range can be used.
- Review: Includes both individual and aggregate reviews, with different properties such as items, rating and count of reviews submitted.
- Businesses: Valuable properties include geo location, address, phone number, URL, business name, and logo.
- People: There are several sites which provide information on well-known people. It is possible to obtain a similar result in other websites with the properties, which include name, title, professional achievements and contact number.
- Music and Video Content: Properties include duration, record company details, and ratings in views.
- Events: The use of rich snippets in this category is only done for the future occurring event and not the previous ones. The properties include start and end date, venue, duration and ticket details.
How to Use Rich Snippets
To produce rich snippets or structured data markup requires a basic knowledge of HTML coding. There are 3 different formats through which rich snippets are formed:
- Microdata – It is using simple HTML tag attributes, which contain concise and descriptive names to the themes page. Microdata is the easiest format among all three and includes simple HTML attributes containing descriptive names of the theme pages.
- Microformats – Uses a “class” attributes of HTML tags.
- RDFa – Uses a simple XHTML tag attributes
Structured data markup, nowadays, includes elements such as itemscope, itemtype and itemprop attributes for making rich snippets. Another tool known as Data highlighter has been introduced for those who face problems in HTML coding. It allows the administrator to click and highlight structured data.
Role of SEO Workshops in Implementing Structured Data Mark-Up
After gaining sufficient knowledge regarding the various components of rich results, it becomes easier for an administrator to create a site which:
- Has a more attractive appearance: The presence of stats and images immediately attracts user attention, especially with the rest of the description being in text format.
- Contains more information: Informative search results enable the users to look up to sites which cater to their exact needs and decrease the risk of user ‘bouncing’.
- Is More reliable: Images and other important information provide a certain trust factor to a site which ensures the user that are not much familiar with structured data, that the information is relevant.
- Increases CTR Potential: Having ‘structured data’ benefits a site in standing out of other search results, and increase visitor numbers, thereby increasing potential click through rates.
Rich snippets are of tremendous importance in increasing the value of search engine optimization, and SEO workshops have made it their ultimate goal to help people create sites, which stand out among other competitors by providing better search results.
