Today, we will discuss “Snippets” an important topic that is trending nowadays and has the utmost importance for search engine ranking.
We have various types of snippets available like Regular Snippet, Rich Snippet, and Featured Snippet.
Everyone wants to rank their website at the top of the search engine result page and adapt various On-Page and Off-Page SEO techniques to achieve the same. Out of various On-Page and Off-Page techniques, some others are useful and the rest of them have become obsolete.
Snippets are the most important SEO technique through which we convey search engine what our website and its associated posts are all about.
Connection of Meta Information and Snippet:
You might have read out topic Meta Tags Optimization in which we have a detailed description of Title Tags, Slug and Meta Description which collectively makes Meta tags.
- Title Tags: The title of your website which tells the user what the article is about. It has a character limit of 60.
- Slug: Path of the post, its length depends on URL
- Meta Description: This summarizes the article within its character limit of 156 containing focus keyword which gets highlighted in the search result.
Search Engine usually takes help of Meta Tags to form Regular Snippet of your post in the search engine result page. Hence it becomes mandatory to set meta tags of your post to give healthy competition to your competitors.
Types of Snippets:
Mainly we have three types of Snippet:
- Regular Snippet
- Rich Snippet
- Featured Snippet
Let’s discuss them all one by one:
Regular Snippet:
This snippet shows information likes Title tag, Slug and meta description in the search result. We can achieve the regular snippet with strong Meta tags optimization
Rich Snippet:
In Rich snippet we have regular snippet + reviews, rating, pricing, etc. all the details regarding the product, hence named rich snippet i.e. full of information. We need to use plugins on our WordPress website to create the rich snippet
Featured Snippet:
It is made up of best answer of a query automatically derived by the search engine through its algorithms. There is no plugin that can generate a featured snippet, it’s your content which can help you in achieving the same.
Let’s dive into the Snippets to read detailed information about Rich Snippet and Regular Snippet
What is Rich Snippet:
In the term Rich Snippet, Rich symbolize quality information.
Let’s clear this with the help of an example. I hit a search query over Google for the term “How to make a cake”.
Google provided me two types of results i.e. Result with a regular snippet
Results with Rich Snippet:
The image shows the difference in terms of information provided.
The regular snippet provides the following information:
- SEO Title
- URL
- Meta Description
The Rich Snippet provides the following information:
- SEO Title
- URL
- Description with healthy information
- Image
- Rating and Reviews, etc.
Hence, Rich Snippet is rich to provide information and hence named Rich Snippet.
Importance of Rich Snippet:
After reviewing the above example one can easily understand the importance of rich snippet. Regular Snippet only providing the basics information whereas Rich Snippet is providing exhaustive information.
It is very much clear that Rich Snippet will get more clicks than other results and hence it will improve visitors on your website which ultimately adds in revenue.
When Google notices your website getting more hits, it will improve your search engine ranking which will ultimately increase your website visitors
Rich Snippet comes in handy when we try to promote our product, for example, an E-Commerce website would like to attract visitors to its website by showing lower prices in the search result itself. Hence rich snippet can help them in implementing this scheme and hence boost the visitor activity.
Rich Snippet Preview Options:
Item Review:
This option pop up the option to fill review of the product. For example, I am searching for Training in SEO and search result showed me some institutes and filtered the result based on the review which the institutes have received and hence making it easier for me to make a well-informed decision.
Event:
This can pop up any upcoming event information in the search result. Hence without even visiting your site person can get brief information about the event and if interested can click on the link to get the detailed description.
People:
If your website has information regarding your staff and then it will get pop up in the search result itself using this option.
Recipe:
This is a common example of rich snippet where we are presented with detailed information regarding a recipe in the search result itself. It includes important information like nutrition value, ingredients, photo, etc.
Service:
This is important in terms of business perspective when you really want to boost your sales. As these options present the user with various detail about your service offering in the search result itself. Few of the options include service type, served area, provider name, etc.
Benefits of Rich Snippet:
Boost in Search Engine Result Page:
Within a few weeks of setting up Rich Snippet for your website, you will observe a great increase in visitors to your website. Irrespective of what type of content your website has like the article, hosting events, rating products, etc. which ultimately helps in boosting the ranking of your website organically.
Attracting User Attention:
We all know how Rich Snippet present the information i.e. Image, review, rating, brief description, etc. which ultimately force the user to click on your link and hence add in revenue
Decrease bounce rate:
If your user is reviewing your product without even visiting your website, then there are chances that there will decrease in bounce rate as the user well knows of what he will read or explore once clicked on the link
Revenue Increase:
Information presented by rich snippet helps you In gaining users attraction which ultimately forces them to click on your link which increases the leads and hence the revenue.
Setting up Rich Snippet: How to Create Rich Snippet
Let’s understand how to set up Rich Snippet for your website. We have two ways to set up Rich Snippet:
- Use of Plugin
- Insertion of Codes
Use of Plugin:
There are various plugins which provide you the ease of creating a snippet for your website like All in one Schema.org, WP Review, Schema Pro.
These plugins are available in both free and paid version, you can check the official website for more information. Setting up the plugin is easy i.e. install the plugin and follow the instructions.
Insertion of Codes:
It will require structured data to set up a rich snippet for your website. This is basically a piece of code in a format easily understood by search engines.
You can collect more information here: Google Guidelines for Rich Snippet
I will highly recommend going with a plugin which can create structured data for you with no error and in quick time you can boost your search ranking with snippet data.
How to Generate Rich Snippet using Plugin:
We can generate rich snippet via codes or using plugins. I am a WordPress user hence I will show how to add rich snippet using Plugins available at WordPress plugin area.
I am a big fan of Schema- All in one Schema Rich Snippet and today, I will show the steps how to integrate this plugin in your WordPress website.
Steps to follow:
- Login to WordPress Dashboard
- Locate the Plugin Section and Hit Add New Plugins
- Type Schema and hit Install then activate the plugin
- Open the post admin area and navigate down to locate the Snippet
- Open the drop-down menu and pick the category
- Fill in the relevant details and Hit save
- We have created the Rich Snippet
- It will get displayed in the search result post crawling
Test in Google Structured Data Testing Tool:
Make sure after generating the Rich Snippet test its effectiveness in the structured data testing tool by Google.
- Insert the link to the article and hit run test
- We can verify the perfect insertion of a snippet using green bullet.
- If any error pop up then fix it and again run the test
Concluding Remarks: Rich Snippet Outcome:
We have used All in One Schema Rich Snippets plugin available for free in WordPress plugin area to set up rich snippet for our website.
Observations after setting up rich snippet:
- Google analyzes your rich snippet within 15–20 days after it is successfully setup for your website
- Some rich snippet may show up in the search result page within a shorter period
- After several days they might get disappear and may get replaced by rich snippet of other webpages
- Careful examination of snippet takes a healthy time before presenting it to its users.
Note: Do not use keyword stuffing or put in-appropriate information while setting up Rich Snippet as these black hat SEO techniques may ban your site to appear in the search engine result page.
How will you define Featured Snippet: Bring your website at position 0