Rich And Regular Snippets

What are Rich Snippets?

Rich Snippets (also known as “Rich Results”) are normal Google search results with additional data displayed. This extra data is usually pulled from Structured Data found in a page’s HTML. Common Rich Snippet types include reviews, recipes and events. 

Including structured data boosts your chances for richer search results and a better position in SERPs. The following are the main benefits of employing rich snippets:

• Better Visibility: Your brand will be more visible in search results.
• Better CTR: Users would rather click on a rich snippet than on a regular search result.
• More Conversions: Users will click on an attractive search result, which will bring you more reads, downloads, sales, etc.

Elements:

The vast majority of Google search results display the same 3 pieces of data: 

• Title tag
• Meta description
• URL 

Examples:

Why are Rich Snippets Important?

Rich Snippet results are more eye-catching than normal search results… which can lead to a higher organic CTR.

Rich Snippet Types

Identify the type of Rich Snippet that you want to get. That way, you can use Structured Markup[1] that’s specifically designed to get that type of Rich Snippet in the SERPs.

Reviews: Displays a star rating (out of 5). Can be an individual reviewer or aggregate reviews from users.

Recipes: A special type of Structured Data that only applies to recipes. Recipe markup includes data like time to prepare the dish, reviews and recipe images.

Music: Gives Google info on music, like album release dates.

Product Markup: Gives search engines information about a specific product (including price and product images).

Organization: Helps Google understand key information on an organization (like a business), including address, logo and contact information).

Top Stories: Allows a site to appear in the “Top Stories” box in the search results. Only applies to Google News approved websites.

Video: Search engines can’t “watch” videos on your page. So video markup helps search engines understand what your video content is all about.

Events: Includes information on dates, times, location and more.

How To Get Rich Snippets

To get a rich snippet to show on a SERP requires structured data markup to be included in the code on your page of content. Google crawls your page and translates this code to appear as the different types of rich snippets highlighted above.

How to Add Rich Snippets to Your Website

There are several different options for adding rich snippets to your web pages. Among the easiest ones are either using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or a WordPress plugin.

Structured Data Markup Helper

Here are the steps you can take to use Google’s tool for creating schema markup snippets.

1. Go to Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.

2. Choose the type of data that you want to markup.

3. Paste the URL of the page you plan to markup.

4. Highlight and select the elements that you want to mark up.

5. Continue highlighting the other items on your page to add them to the markup list.

6. Create the HTML.

7. Insert the generated schema markup into your web page.

There are also some additional tools out there that can help you create and validate schema markup:

• Google Data Highlighter
• JSON-LD Schema Generator by Merkle
• Yandex Structured data validator API
• Google Rich Results Tester
• Bing Webmaster Tools Markup Validator

Testing Rich Snippets

Google and the rest of the search engines can’t pick up your rich snippets right away. So, how can you ensure that you’ve implemented rich snippets properly? Open Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

There, you can paste your schema markup in the toolbox or click on the Fetch URL link to enter a URL. After that, click on the ‘Validate’ button, and your markup will be reviewed.