Rich Snippets as the Means to Attract Your Target Audience

Online competition is becoming fiercer.

16:06 01 October 2020

Especially under the conditions of the 2020 pandemic that forced many businesses to shift their offline activities online. It means that for a company to stand out, even more effort can be required. There are plenty of promotional tools that are aimed at increasing the positions of a particular site in the SERP for a particular request.

 

The struggle for the position in the search results is the struggle for a user’s click as this is what leads the target audience to the site — the platform you have been so painstakingly working on to sell your product or service. Among effective tools to help your resource stand out from the competitors are rich snippets that appear in the search results. Let’s consider for which platforms they are going to be effective and how to add them.

 

What Are Snippets & Rich Snippets?

 

Let us begin with the snippet definition. Open Google and type any request you are interested in. Standardly, in the search results, you will see:

 

• URL,
  
  
• page title,
  
  

The description is a snippet that is automatically generated by the search engine. It is created based on the meta description that has been written for a page, as well as on the content of this page. Thus, the main purpose of the snippet is to help users understand if this specific page matches their requests, thus, needs.

 

Rich snippets are extended versions of snippets, i.e., they contain additional information such as the site star-rating, location, price, calories, cooking time, etc. This option is available not only in Google but also in the other search engine. Yahoo, Yandex, and Bing have also got their counterparts.

 

BusinessesThat Can Benefit from Rich Snippets

 

As we have already understood, rich snippets not only provide users with additional information they usually want to know but also make the link in the SERP more attractive (images are usually displayed in the rich snippet).

 

The question is which businesses may benefit from the implementation of rich snippets. The response is in the statistics. 85% of users are using Google for shopping ideas and to get more information on a product or service. Therefore, e-commerce businesses should not ignore such an effective tool of making their link stand out in the SERP. To be more precise, here are the sectors for which rich snippets are especially advantageous:

 

1. Cooking sites and culinary blogs;
   
   
2. Cafes, bars, and restaurants;
   
   
3. Beauty salons and shops;
   
   
4. Repair shops, auto repair & washing services;
   
   
5. Cleaning agencies;
   
   
6. Educational resources;
   
   
7. Concert and event agencies;
   
   
8. Tourist agencies, booking & hotel sites;
   
   
9. Sites with books, music, and video content, etc.
   
   

As you can see, the list is quite long. Lots of enterprises have already successfully implemented this feature and get more traffic compared to the other sites (without rich snippets), even though these platforms may have higher positions in the SERP.

 

Benefits of Rich Snippets

 

Being attractive to the audience and providing additional information (rating, price, calorie content, location, etc.), rich snippets provide some benefits to the sites:

 

1. They influence user behavior as they are more likely to open the link of the site with the price indicated in rich snippets.
   
   
2. Thus, the CTR rate is increased.
   
   
3. In its turn, this leads to the growth in organic traffic from the search results.
   
   

Aside from being attractive to users, rich snippets help search robots better understand what the site page is about. Their presence is, however, not a ranking factor for Google, which has been proven by statements from John Mueller, the leading analyst of the company.

 

How to Get Rich Snippets?

 

Undeniably, this is the next question of any business owner who wants to make use of the benefits from rich snippets. They are automatically generated by the search engine based on the info it gets from the structured data. The latter is the part of the program code that is written in the process of the web platform development.

 

If you have got an informational resource, the standard snippet is more than enough. E-commerce businesses should carefully study the guidelines from the search engine on categories to which you can assign your webpage. Remember, the correct choice defines if rich snippets are going to be effective for your particular business.

 

To configure rich snippets for your site, it is necessary to work with the schema.org markup service, as well as carefully read the search engine guidelines. Meanwhile, the owners of WordPress sites may facilitate the process due to the use of special plugins. While those who are working with WP are well aware of the Yoast vs All in One SEO competition, the main thing is that the utilization of plugins decreases the risk of making a mistake, therefore, saves your time on the configuration of rich snippets.

 

Both of these plugins are suitable for the generation of structured data that will be used by the search engine to get information for rich snippets. Therefore, the choice of a plugin depends on the necessity to use other functions. Even though they are so convenient, a lot of owners and developers give preference to add structured data on their own.

 

Despite the mode you choose, after making all the necessary changes, one should use a special testing tool for rich snippets, which makes it possible to check if the changes have been made correctly and if rich snippets are going to be displayed in the search results.

 

Final Say

 

While Google and its algorithms are becoming more and more focused on the necessities and needs of users, it’s becoming harder and harder to win in the struggle for their attention. Not being a ranking factor, rich snippets are an advantageous feature that helps sites be clicked by users. Don’t miss out on this possibility to get additional traffic.