HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SEO AND SOCIAL PRESENCE WITH RICH SNIPPETS

Ever wondered how some websites manage to get really customized, unique data into the snippets on the Google search engine? Rich snippets – such as star ratings, recipes, event details and more – are great for maximum rankings, and brand awareness.

HOW RICH SNIPPETS WORK

Rich snippets comply with microdata which is uniform across the popular search engines and social networks. This is made possible by a collaborative called Schema.org, which is sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex and Open Graph which is more social-focused.

Without getting into the technical side of how this works, the idea behind it is to make data more relevant and accessible for search engines and searchers by giving webmasters the opportunity to structure their data better.

Rich snippets need to be respected though, as with any type of SEO overdoing it could result in a penalty from Google. So make sure that you only add them when they should be used – like on posts that actually have reviews on them and exclude pages such as the Home page of your site.

THE SEARCH ENGINES PERSPECTIVE

By structuring your data more effectively, the search engines can now determine relevancy with more accuracy when matching up web pages to search queries. Being able to prove how relevant your website is to the search engines is a very important SEO aspect and microdata gives you the chance to communicate with GoogleBot and its friends properly. That being said, you should also apply the basic SEO strategies beforehand which serve a foundation, and only use micro-data to add more relevance and increase the potential rank.

HIGHER CTR

Having rich snippets is a known click-through rate booster, your web page will be more visible in the search results and stand out from the other competing pages if they have not optimized for it.

Higher CTR is also going to get noticed by Googlebot, and its indeed a ranking factor. So websites with optimal rich snippets are especially rewarded for their efforts.

SOCIAL SEO: MICRO DATA AND SOCIAL NETWORKS

Popular social networks are using microdata as well. Google+ uses authorship, Pinterest uses Schema.org and Open Graph tags, and Facebook also uses the Open Graph API.

If you start optimizing your microdata for social, it will have the same effects as the search engines meaning your posts will be easier to read by the social bots and ranked accordingly within the social networks. This data will also be seen by the search engines, and we know that every bit of spider food helps.

You can also set featured images to be displayed when your URL is shared so that you have consistent branding across your networks.

Including structured data can become a complicated process for the non-coders like myself, but luckily there are plugins for WordPress which make this much easier – which we’ll cover shortly.

WORDPRESS PLUGINS

If you are looking for the star rating markup to appear in the SERP’s for your site, then WP Social SEO can handle this. It goes beyond that by offering basic Open Graph functionality for your social networks as well.

Popular SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO and AllInOneSEO have been including basic Open Graph functionality in their feature lists but it's not something that is often talked about.

I usually use AllInOneSEO, you can find the social settings under the Features tab, then once you have activated, just click on Social Meta and you will be able to add your social media details. It's pretty straight forward to setup.

If you are looking for even more options and really want to take advantage of this optimization technique, then one of the best solutions is WP Social SEO PRO. This plugin is packed with features and allows you to easily integrate with Open Graph and supports microdata for reviews, events, videos, business...etc

That's it!

Let us know what measures are you going to display your unique rich snippets?

About the Author

Yassine is a digital marketer and co-founder of SEOAgency HQ. The author loves to help small businesses grow their online presence through education, and of course execution. “SEO may see hard to tackle, but once done, it unveils the real potential of any business,” says Yassine.