Rich Snippets and Structured Data for better CTR
With recent changes to Google Rich Snippets and Structured Data it’s even easier to accurately describe your website content to Google, potentially creating impressive influxes to traffic and click through rates.
The changes are also relatively easy and only require a small amount of markup around your pre-existing HTML, or you can use Google’s helper that allows you to click and drag points of your website you want to markup. With Google themselves saying that “structured [data] is becoming an increasingly important part of the web ecosystem”, we can expect to see further improvements to the semantic web, with users becoming accustomed to finding their information with speed and accuracy.
Schema.org provides a collection of schema that you can use to markup HTML on webpages and is recognised by popular search engines, sites like Google, Bing and Yandex relying on this markup to improve search results. There are a number of different types of markup with Microdata being the most popular and used. You may also use RDFa and JSON-LD.
What Types of Things Can I Markup?
Recipes
When searching for a recipe the average user will click the one with the best reviews. With structured markup you can provide more information such as total time, to prepare and cook, to how many calories are in the dish. Google automatically adds review stars for any reviews you receive on their review system, however you can also mark this up with microdata.
Music
When we search for bands and recording artists Google uses its Knowledge Graph, to highlight information the user might want to know such as who the lead singer is, where they are from, or what songs they’ve released. It also displays relevant images and searches other users performed within the same category. Bing also does a similar thing but displays exactly where the information came from. Google uses a mixture of information from Wikipedia and Freebase.
Products
With Microdata, you can markup products to make them more appealing and accurate to potential customers. You can show everything from pricing and recent offers, to the current stock levels at that store or supplier. This allows customers who are looking for a particular product to accurately see the price straight from the search engine pages, if you’ve got a good offer on, have good reviews, or are particularly trusted then you could get more traffic that in turn leads to a higher ROI. Also, you can show reviews within Google using structured markup similar to below:
You can see the review markup in recipes, products and other appropriate items that would require a review. Additionally, they show up in Google Ads.
Events
For the World Cup, Google introduced rich snippet information that allows you to see real-time live scores, rosters, group standings and if you’re on mobile, watch short clips of the match whilst you’re on the go. Simply search the term “world cup” on Google.
Videos
Using markup you can define Videos so when Google for example crawls your page they will use this information to help understand and enchance the appearence within search results. You can markup everything from duration, to upload date and descriptions. Above is an example of our CMS Expose as it appears on Google.
Authorship
What used to be the first markup most people noticed is the fabled Authorship markup, where an article or blog post would add a thumbnail of the author, their name and Google+ information. However, as of July 2nd, this has since been removed.
In-Depth Articles
In-depth articles are marked up within search engines to help people looking for further information about key topics or people. In the example above searching Ernest Hemingway featured three articles within the in-depth article section from influential websites such as Vanity Fair, PBS and the Poetry Foundation. These articles are marked up using content meta tags.
Where can I check problems?
You can check how you’re performing by using the Structured Data tab within Search Appearance in Google Webmaster Tools. It’ll display everything from errors, to how many items have been picked up by crawlers. Also, if you’ve authored articles onsite or offsite you can check how they are performing from the Labs section by clicking the Author stats from the drop-down where you will see everything from impressions to clicks and CTR.
Will Rich Snippets Boost My Search Rankings?
Back in 2012 Matt Cutts said that ‘the use of schema.org markup doesn’t necessarily boost search rankings’ but it doesn’t mean that a website that uses markup wouldn’t provide a benefit to search results. Recipes search for example would provide a boost when the schema for recipes is defined. Google Authorship has also changed dramatically over time with authored posts having to be reduced back in Dec 2013 and dropping their images more recently. It’s unclear if SERPs are altered due to markup but we do know that CTR is defiantly increased because of it.
TL;DR
- Increased visibility of site in search engine results pages
- Better ROI from increased search engine traffic
- Allows search engines to accuratly view what your content is about
- Gives you potentially more traffic
- Google’s position of authorship can and has changed
If you need help with structured data or implementation then drop us a line. We’re always happy to hear from you.