This post is courtesy
of Cameron Madill, CEO of Synotac.com.
Located in Portland, Oregon, Synotac is a website marketing and design firm.
In ongoing
quest for better web development, there’s a new player in town: the rich
snippet. A rich snippet is a box of content that appears when your mouse cursor
hovers over a link on a search engine results page (SERP). The snippet helps
improve the display of the search results and makes it simpler for people to
find the content they want, providing faster access to information. Any web
development company will tell you that rich snippets are a must if you want to
make your site stand out from the rest.
Anatomy of Rich Snippets
In essence,
a rich snippet is a short blurb about a site’s content. When a web development
company designs one, the structured data in the snippet helps search engines
understand the main point of a website. Rich snippets come in a few basic
markup formats, including schema.org, microdata and RDFa. Many web developers
use microdata. After choosing a markup format, you (or a web developer) will
need to mark up your content with HTML tags. This will tell search engines
about the content on your site, such as the name of your product, cost,
reviews, recipes and so on. When you finish writing the markup, you’ll need to
test it to make sure search engines can read and extract the data. As soon as a
search engine finds markups on your site, it will read the tags and display the
site’s rich snippet.
Benefits of Rich Snippets
- SEO: Rich snippets give your site an extra layer of search engine optimization.
- Increase click-through rates and web traffic: Because snippets have higher visibility in search results, web users are more likely to click on pages that have them. In turn, your site will receive higher quality visitors.
- Quick information: People can see information about your company, products, prices and more before they click on a SERP link.
- Stand out from the competition: Rich snippets give your search engine link pizzazz, especially when you take advantage of the features offered.
Using Rich Snippets on Your Site
The best
type of rich snippet to use for your site depends on the site’s purpose. Following
is a look at the types of snippets a web development company may use for
different sites.
- Restaurants: Information about price range, average customer rating and the number of stars.
- Site promoting a video: Image of the video featured.
- Personal website: A photo of the individual, contact information and links to additional information.
- Company website: Address, contact information and customer testimonials.
- Site promoting a music album: A picture of the album, links to songs and links to lyrics.
- Recipes: Pictures of food, recipe ratings and the amount of time it takes to prepare a dish.
- E-commerce: Picture of the company’s logo, price range and customer ratings.
- Site promoting an event: Information about the event’s date, time and location.
If SERPs
don’t display rich snippets for your site, you could be missing out on valuable
traffic. Talk to a web development company about adding this important SEO tool
to your site.
