What Are Rich Snippets? How To Optimize Your Content For Rich Snippets?

Search engines know the value of their customers, “The People Who Search”. So it is obvious that gigantic search engine companies like Google will make sure people searching for anything get the results in the best possible format.

what are rich snippets? how to rank higher with them?

As the information added to the internet via blogs and other means is text-based most of the time. It becomes difficult to differentiate between the content pointing at the same solution.

Therefore, major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo decided to give preference to the content with schema markup. So the data delivered to the user is well-formatted according to his/her search intent.

How To Rank On 1st Position With Schema Markup?

What Are Rich Snippets?

Rich snippets are not something new, as they came into existence around a decade ago in 2011. In order to show the most relevant and structured result at the top, the concept of rich snippets was implemented.

In simple words, rich snippets are a special kind of search results that are displayed in a specific format. Not to mention the format keeps changing depending on the type of data that is being displayed.

For example, if you search the keyword “Google” you will get a result that looks something like this,

google schema example

As you can see the information is not only in the form of links or text. You can see a separate card view on the right-hand side that holds each essential information for your search query.

Similarly, when we search for a product, restaurant, shop, and other queries, the results will come in a different rich snippet due to the structuring of data with schema markup.

Is Structured Data Important For Your Website?

The times are gone when people were ready to make an effort for going through the different results until they find the information they want. In this fast-paced world of ours, everyone is abided by time which makes it important to get the information quickly and thoroughly.

So any blogger/website owner needs to make sure the information they are serving is well-structured. As it can increase your conversions and organic traffic significantly, working on schema markup is a must.

This not only makes it easier for search engine crawlers to understand the nature of your content but will also help you gain better SERP rankings in the long run.

The reason why rich snippets impact the SEO at a large scale is that, if you succeed in getting the rich snippet spot, it will help your published content rank as well. Doesn’t matter what type of site you have, if your information gets featured as a rich snippet then it will benefit you in many ways!

How To Add Schema Markup In Your Content?

Rich snippets work on the markup of the information with different schema types. If Google finds a piece of content with the related schema type and quality content, it automatically climbs up to the top of other results in SERP.

SEO professionals call this position “0” rank. Not to mention people click on the first result in 90% of the cases which makes it more important to grab that number 0 position with the help of rich snippets. But how can you add schema markup to your content and achieve such results?

The first step to reaching the top in SERPs is to start using the proper schema type with your content. As we discussed previously, there are tons of different schema markups available for a different types of content. So choosing the right one and adding it to your content is mandatory.

Using Rank Math SEO Plugin

The first method for adding schema markup to your content is using the in-build schema markup feature of the Rank math SEO plugin. In order to do this, you should be a WordPress user and install the Rank math SEO plugin instead of Yost SEO.

Once you finish the step-by-step setup, you will be able to see different kinds of features and SEO metrics on the right sidebar. This information is generated by the Rank math plugin where you will find a different tab for adding a specific schema type to the content.

rankmath schema tab

This method is easier than most of the other methods, but you need to buy the Rank Math SEO premium for using advanced schema types with your content. Not to mention Yoast SEO also provides a structured data feature if you prefer Yoast.

By default, there are 13 different kinds of schema types available to use with the free version. This is more than enough to start understanding what rich snippets are and how do they work. Below is the list of available schema types,

  • Article
  • Book
  • Course
  • Event
  • Job Posting
  • Music
  • Person
  • Product
  • Recipe
  • Restaurant
  • Service
  • Software
  • Video

Add Schema Markup Code Manually

If you prefer to learn about Schema markup and rich snippets deeply, then manually adding the code to your content is the best way. However, it is not easy as using a plugin to complete most of the work.

For adding rich snippet code to your content manually, you need to generate it separately for each piece of content. On top of that, you need to provide details such as Title, Meta description, and other related information depending on the schema type code you are going to generate.

You can use tools such as Rankranger to generate your choice of schema type online. This tool generates schema markup code in real-time alongside the data collection form. Hence, you can easily select the code and copy-paste it into your desired content.

How To Check Your Content For Rich Snippets Compatibility?

Now you know how you can send the right signals to the crawlers for indicating the structure of your content with schema markup. But how can you check if the schema markup code is present or not? As it is not displayed along with your content, how can you check if it has been applied or not? Google has the solution for your queries.

Utilizing Google Rich Results Validator

The best way to check if any type of schema markup is present in your content or not is by utilizing the Google rich results validator tool. Head over to the official rich results testing tool by Google and enter the URL that you wish to inspect. (See image below) And  Click on “TEST URL” to get the results.

rich results testing tool

This test will tell you the number of schema types you are using and what type of data they contain. Apart from that, it will also point out any issues in your schema markup codes. Because the code is faulty then your content won’t appear as rich snippets on the SERPs.

Wrapping Up

Rich snippets are no doubt one of the best ways to get free organic traffic to your blog. However, it is not a method with a 100% success rate because we can not decide or predict if our content will claim that top position or not.

Only Google and other search engines have the authority to encourage your content by displaying it as a rich snippet in the SERPS. If you are addressing the issues of people and helping them by providing in-depth content, then your chances of grabbing that position 0 increase automatically. Feel free to ask questions if you have any and share this quick guide with others.

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