Every web admin or online business owner tries to provide valuable services to their audience. With the advent of rich snippets, options for enhanced online brand visibility and organic CTR have increased.
A rich snippet is not a direct Google ranking signal. But it’s influence can compel you to rank higher on SERP and enjoy its corresponding benefits. For this, you need a competent strategy and professional advice from reliable content optimization experts like Authority Magnet.
What Are Rich Snippets?
When you search for a word or phrase or enter a long-tailed keyword on Google, you get a snippet of text containing specific replies to your queries. These are rich snippets.
In simple words, rich snippets are short texts that appear at the top of Google’s search results and send a quick answer to a searcher’s query. They are generally available as a list, chart, video, or paragraph.
Most web admins aim to get hold of a snippet for different pieces of content since these featured spots dominate a significant portion of the SERP. In some instances, you’ll see rich snippets occupying all the space above the fold.
Moreover, rich snippets give you extended and privileged online exposure and improve brand visibility monumentally. You get to increase brand credibility and organically advertise company assets without paying a penny.
According to Getstat, about 70% of snippets come from sites that don’t rank in the first few pages of SERP.
What does it mean?
If your content strategy is correct and regularly optimized, you can earn the snippet position irrespective of your industry, competitors, and budget.
Why Are Rich Snippets Important?
Rich snippets influence your brand’s SEO metric in various ways and create a communicative link between the website and the search engines. Besides, rich snippets are enhanced search results that increase your website’s click-through rate even if you don’t rank higher on SERP.
How?
SEO experts refer to the rich snippets box as ‘Position #0’. That’s because these search results appear above the conventional Google results.
Moreover, Search Engine Land confirms that featured text snippets receive 8% of all clicks.
Therefore, if you need to catch up in the race to desired search engine positioning, focus on occupying a featured snippet spot. Once done, your website gets a significant SEO makeover, and the CTR shoots high.
In addition, rich snippets increase the count of no-click searches. It refers to a condition when the user doesn’t click on any Google search results.
Why?
The reason is the featured snippet text box has already provided them with the answer they were searching for; their search intent has been met. Therefore, most SEO pundits recommend content strategists should do thorough keyword research and check if the search result has a rich snippet.
How To Get Rich Snippets?
Structured data forms the foundation of rich snippets.
Content analysts format this type of data in a way that helps search engines like Google understand what the content is. The search engine bots further use them for SERP-like purposes.
But what’s structured data?
Before we delve into acquiring rich snippets, understand the basic concept of structured data.
Structured or defined data is a set of data that fits a specific model. For instance, you’re the in-charge of keeping records of every student’s details.
Every time a new student takes admission, you make them fill in the student information details form and upload them on the database under a specific class name. So, when you update the database with mid-semester marks, it’s easier to trace them by a few reference points like class and roll number.
In this scenario, the details each student enters into specific boxes of the form are called information-defined data. Each of their information thus becomes structured data.
They help you to easily analyze their score, update information regarding club activities, or report their parents when required.
And how does that help Google?
When structured data forms the base of rich snippets, search engines like Google don’t have to extract information. The search bots can easily find out what they’re looking for.
Leverage structured data using schema.org vocabulary for a better SEO score. Once you get Google’s attention, the search engine will use the markup language to enrich your search results.
Here’s a four-step process that you can implement to get rich snippets:
Step 1: Identify The Rich Snippet Suitable For Your Content
The rich snippet of standard Google search results produces additional value to your content besides the usual meta tag, title tag, and URL.
Note: Google has an organized document concerning the types of rich snippets. It further establishes which snippet kind suits what content.
Some of the standard rich snippet markups are:
- FAQ markup
- Product type markup
- Reviews markup
- ‘How To’ markup
- Software markup
Several options may qualify for your content. Choose the only one that suits your purpose and delivers precise search intent. A few more website categories you may use are:
- News based
- Books
- Education
- Culinary
- Media and Entertainment
- Job-related content
Once you select a category relevant to your content, head to the official docs.
Why?
The official docs will give you a detailed explanation of the features and enhancements of your chosen content type.
Step 2: Deploy Structured Data
For a head start, use schema markup generators like Google Tag Manager to select a suitable code for your chosen markup type. SEO analysts suggest that a web admin should follow Google’s guidelines and add schema only for the content a user can see.
What if you use a CMS to implement structured data?
You’ll have various plugins to help deploy the correct custom code for your markups.
Remember, structured data supports various SEO plugins like RankMath, Yoast, and more. While Yoast is perfect for ‘how-to’ and FAQ schema markups, you need more specialized plugins for other schema markups.
In comparison, RankMath is more versatile and relatively straightforward to use. It gives you a wide range of options to choose from.
Step 3: Check The Markup
Validate the schema by running it through Google’s Rich Results Testing Tool. You’ll know if the custom code will procure rich results.
Step 4: Monitor Marked-Up Pages
Google keeps note of everything that goes on on your website. Therefore, go to the Google Search Console and check your marked-up pages.
Click on the rich snippets enhancement options in GSC and receive a report showing the status of your URLs, whether they’re valid, invalid, or have warnings. If you’ve already validated the schema on the Rich Results Testing Tool, there won’t be any problem.
Additional Tips To Get Rich Snippets
Featured snippet opportunities are everywhere on the net. The trick is to look for these opportunities.
Here are some ways you can get rich snippets:
1. Use Google To Identify Opportunities
Think like your audience if you want to use Google to find rich snippet opportunities. Use their perspective to understand how to optimize rich snippets to increase your visibility.
Note: Featured snippets are available in the form of long-form queries.
From paragraphs to listicles, study how Google presents its featured content in various styles that match a content format. As you dive deeper, notice how the ‘People also ask’ section has rich content ideas.
These questions relate to a user’s search queries, and a web content writer might like to expand these points in their respective articles. Create clear and coherent content that steadily answers search queries.
The faster your content addresses the query, the higher the chances of winning a rich snippet position.
2. Gather Ideas From Answer The Public
Rich snippets focus on answering questions like how, when, who, what, where, and why. Exploit these to your advantage by adding them to your content.
The best place to get relevant ideas is Answer the Public. Before drawing a content brief, know what audiences are talking about.
For example, you’re writing a piece on digital learning habits. Enter your query on Answer the Public, and you’ll receive hundreds of suggestions concerning digital learning habits. Adapt a few of them as a part of your content; create an FAQ section to enhance your chance for rich snippets.
While writing the content, target a particular question pattern you want to address. That way, you can answer multiple basic questions and increase your chance of getting your content snippet featured.
For example, what is digital learning, what are learning habits examples, what are the best learning habits, and more.
3. Research SEO Keywords
Keyword research is a crucial step that ensures you rank higher on the SERP and get a featured snippet spot. Use keyword research tools like DataForSEO, Long Tail Pro, and Seed Keywords to determine if a particular search query will bring about featured results.
In Serpstat, enter the domain and keyword to check if rich snippets appear for each key phrase. That way, you’ll know which keywords your competitors will cover, and you can upgrade your rich snippets strategy accordingly.
Further on, if you’re already ranking higher for a particular target keyword, check whether that triggered Google to feature your rich snippets. In that case, you can move ahead and answer the common queries people ask on that relevant topic.
4. Maintain The Word Limit
Note: Rich snippets are longer than the standard results of search queries.
These featured snippets are compact content instances that answer a user’s query in a crisp style.
That’s why content writers should keep the relevant sections tight and precise when they aim to get their blog featured in the snippet. It will allow Google to feature in-demand and appropriate blocks of content without much difficulty.
Above all, break down the article into specific listicles, tables, steps, and paragraphs. Such a strategic division of content not only boosts the scannability of the content but enables search engine bots to feature your content for relevant queries easily.
What’s the optimum length of the rich snippet?
According to Semrush, a rich snippet length should be between 40-50 words. Remember, when you limit your featured content within this word limit, you stand a chance to obtain the rich snippet spot for that query.
5. Target Multiple Questions
According to seasoned SEO analysts, once you land a featured snippet spot for one article, you automatically get featured in another related search query. It’s a snowball effect that brings you more exposure.
How do you take advantage of this situation?
Answer as many relevant questions that people ask as possible. While curating the content, define terms, add steps to procedures wherever required, display a listicle, and more.
In simple words, plan your content around what your potential audience generally looks for. Instead of optimizing existing articles, update a handful of recent articles and tailor them to satisfy user search intent with optimized rich snippets.
Tip: Always use natural language processing (NLP) for rich snippets.
6. Apply Headers
Headers break your content into specific and chronological divisions. Their HTML codes tell Google what each of them delivers and their importance.
Add headers to your document where H1 is the title and H2 is for major sections in the content. Under each section, add H3s to deliver supporting points.
7. Include Quality Images And Visual Assets
Visual assets in content increase your ranking potential. In addition, high-quality images and videos drive organic traffic and convert them into prospective customers owing to better presentability.
Besides, Google allows a lot of its SERP space for snippet images. Video Explainers state that about 53% of search results appearing on the first page of Google are visual assets.
It further establishes that video marketing considerably influences the audience more than written content. Ensure the video is of an easy-to-understand and flowable build, and consider adding voice transcripts that trigger user experience.
The search engine bots will recognize the text and your efforts to offer multiple content formats to meet user search queries. Subsequently, it will be another reason for Google to feature your videos as rich snippets.
Verdict
A rich snippet is an easy-access path to prioritized online exposure, something every digital business should aim for. It doesn’t require a consistent SEO metric score or high-ranking credentials to feature on the first page of Google search results.
You can land the position for rich snippets with the right content strategy and keyword density.
Sustaining in the SEO industry requires you to keep pace with the changing trends, and rich snippets are here to rule. Seasoned SEO analysts recommend that you should be exploiting these featured spots to the fullest to attain an opportunity to boost the digital visibility of each content piece you create, be it short or long-form,
Curating an impactful strategy for rich snippets that boost conversion, drive traffic, and lend a competitive edge alone can be stressful. Instead, contact Authority Magnet and seek their expert help for drafting valuable and conversion-worthy content writing services.
