Rich Snippets: What Are They and How Can I Get Them? 2024

If you’re interested in search engine results, you’ve probably heard of rich snippets. SEO experts seem to think that everyone knows exactly what rich snippets are, but for SEO beginners, the term rich snippets is really vague. So what exactly are they? It’s time to explain what they are, why they’re important for SEO, and how you can get them for your site on the search page.

What are rich snippets?

Rich snippets are more visually appealing search results, with additional valuable information displayed alongside the title, description, and URL. The additional information comes from structured data on the page, see the following image:

Although our article talks about how to get curated snippets, this does not mean that you cannot get them automatically. Rather, you can get a snippet like the one in the previous image without any procedures. You only need rich content that is of great benefit to the visitor, in addition to the speed of your site and being free of technical SEO problems.

Another example of rich snippets:  I was looking for a good recipe for homemade ice cream and I searched for it on Google. Google showed me a list of results with regular snippets and “rich snippets,” or rich results as they are now called. A regular snippet usually looks like this:

Google displays the title in blue, the URL in black and also displays a description of what the page is about, this is what we call a snippet.

A rich result or rich snippet shows additional information between the URL and the description, it looks like this:

In this snippet, a picture of the ice cream is added, you can see the recipe rating, the time it takes to prepare this type of ice cream and how many calories it contains, as you can see it contains much more information than a regular snippet, that’s why we call it rich snippets.

There are many types of rich snippets, let’s get to know them first.

If you want to learn more, you can read our next article:  What is SEO?

Rich Snippet Types

There are many rich snippets that you can benefit from greatly depending on your site’s specialization or online activity, and they are as follows:

1- Google Adwords ads (top and bottom)

Adwords ads have been an integral part of Google’s SERP (Search Results Page) since they first appeared in 2000, appearing above and below the organic results (the natural or free search results). In the past, they also appeared on the right side of the desktop SERP.

Nowadays, you can play with a lot of attractive and useful advertising features like phone number, directions, site section links, reviews and many more to get a more powerful ad that results in higher CTRs.

Google Ads is a type of paid structured data, not free. Some do not classify it as structured data, but based on many English sources and companies, it is classified as one of the oldest data and the first structured data to be adopted.

These clips are suitable for all types of businesses.

2- Brand Identity Panel (Local Business) Google My Business

Similar to any other profile boards, these typically appear on the right side of the search page (desktop), appearing for brand queries, unlike public profile boards, the local business board contains information from your Google My business page.

These trailers are suitable for all kinds of businesses, especially local businesses such as restaurants, hotels, companies, etc.

To add such snippets to your search page you will need to register your activity with  Google my business.

For more official Google documents, you can check out this page .

3- Map package excerpt

In other words, local businesses are displayed on the map, the map package usually appears at the top of the results, it may also include special actions – booking a hotel, finding the best restaurant by rating, etc. and options for filtering and sorting.

These picks are suitable for all kinds of businesses, especially restaurants, hotels, companies, etc.

Same as the previous snippet, you can create such a snippet via Google my Business and through the same previous pages.

There are many snippets that you see on the search page like a flight booking, a large YouTube video, a set of images in a slide, etc.

4- Hotel and flight reservations

There are many organized data related to booking flights and hotels as well, through which you can book directly and get more information related to the flight time, the number of bags available to take and the expected arrival time as well when choosing a specific destination.

It is also similar to that when choosing a specific hotel to book through, and it also allows adding many filters (highest rated – price – number of people – expected departure time)

5- Daily news:

It is one of the most important types of coordinated data that is indispensable. There are many sites that get about a million daily visits just by relying on appearing in the news box.

6- Daily functions:

You can find many jobs just by using Google’s structured job data and you can specify your current location or the location of the desired job as well as the expected salary and full-time or part-time work.

Do you want to know all types of structured data? You can learn more than 28 types by reading the Mangools article about  structured data

When do rich snippets appear?

Rich snippets can only appear for pages that contain certain types of information, and can be further restricted by device type, for example, “ how to ” rich snippets can only be shown on mobile devices:

What is the distinction between rich scraps and rich outcomes?

You may have come across the term “rich results,” which is often used interchangeably with “rich snippets.”

• Rich snippets:  Regular search results with additional information displayed alongside the title, meta snippet, and URL.
• Rich results:  Any type of search result that is visually enhanced with information taken from relevant structured data. Rich snippets are a type of rich result.

Search page features, anything that isn’t a traditional “blue link” search result, featured snippets, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, tweet boxes, and knowledge panels are all types of search page features.

How Rich Snippets Work for SEO

Ranking at the top of search results is great, but what ultimately gets people to click is the snippet content. Rich snippets help make your web pages look more attractive in search results and therefore increase your CTR (click-through rate).

The second snippet is arguably the most enticing because it uses schema markup with rating, voting, and dough duration capabilities. It builds trust and encourages click-throughs by getting the most reviews.

You can also use these attributes, such as prices, number of reviews or ratings, or recipe cooking times, as another competitive layer on the search page. It gives you more room to attract clicks with important information, for example I can imagine more people clicking on a product result that is ranked second but cheaper than the first.

However, let’s be clear about this:

While having visually appealing snippets may lead to more clicks, rich snippets are not a ranking factor.

How to get rich snippets

Rich snippets are created based on structured data available for specific pieces of content. The data is formatted and organized in a way that makes it easier for Google to understand and use for search and other purposes.

So, instead of Google having to extract basic information from something like this…

The pancakes will take 20 minutes to make, and best of all, they are low in calories – about 80 per serving.

They have an organized format that looks like this:

Cooking time: 20 minutes
Calories: 80

You can see how the second example would be easier to read by a robot like Google’s.

Presently when we allude to organized information in Web optimization, we typically mean the schema.org jargon used to increase your substance, Google may then choose to utilize this markup to enrich search results.

So, how can you apply this markup, and what types of content can you apply it to?

This is the way to benefit from rich scraps in four straightforward advances.

1. Check which rich bits are appropriate for you

Standard search result snippets can actually provide a good overview of the content.

The process of getting rich snippets is well documented by Google, including which types of content are eligible for search engine optimization. Here is a list of the most common use cases for rich snippet markup:

• How to encode.
• Product type coding.
• Comment encoding.
• Software coding.
• Frequently asked questions coding.

There are many more options than that, but they apply to specific site categories just like the recipes you saw at the beginning, the rest of the notations are:

• News, media and entertainment.
• books.
• education.
• Events.
• Data sets.
• Job related content.

If any of the categories seem right for you, go to  the official docs , check out the possible improvements and features for your content type, and decide if this is something worth implementing.

Let’s take the FAQ coding as an example and follow the implementation process that could result in something like this:

Implementing rich snippets for FAQs is a modern SEO technique to get more out of your search page, although it is listed under the product schema type, it can be used on any page that has a FAQ section.

2. Implementation of structured data

It’s easy to create and publish code no matter how you build your website .

Let’s start by introducing the most straightforward way to publish code to a section  <head> of your website.

You will need to use one of several schema markup generators for this purpose, I chose this one and chose to create the FAQ page markup:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [{
    "@type": "Question",
    "name": "Is it difficult to implement such coding?",
    "acceptedAnswer": {
      "@type": "Answer",
      "text": "No, not at all, there are a lot of plugins and code generators."
    }
  },{
    "@type": "Question",
    "name": "Do SEOs benefit from FAQ markup?",
    "acceptedAnswer": {
      "@type": "Answer",
      "text": "Yes, it is a very common tactic. While it can provide a lot of value in the SERP, SEOs tend to overuse it to the point where it is against Google guidelines."
    }
  }]
}
</script>

You can also use URL input if the markup is already deployed on your site, this is good for scans but not useful for site-wide monitoring.

4. Monitor pages with code for performance and errors.

Google doesn’t hold back even in this regard, everything you need is here in  the webmaster tool .

You can filter  performance reports  by the type of rich results:

See all eligible markup types Google has detected on your site:

Clicking Improve Rich Snippets will take you to a report that displays valid, invalid, and warning URLs.

If you’ve already verified your markup, you shouldn’t have any issues. The great thing about this is that you don’t need to set anything up. It will show up in Webmasters after you publish your rich result markup and Google chooses to crawl those pages.

How to add rich snippets to a web page

Simply add rich data that results in rich snippets on your web page.

Let’s say you want a snippet that displays questions from within the article on the search page, so the result is like this:

Head over to  Schema Markup Generator  and follow along:

1- To choose the type of schema, here we chose the schema that gives us the question snippet on the search page.

2- Here you write the question you want in the Question #1.5 box, then you write the answer to the question in the Answer box. To add another question, click on Add Question in the blue button.

3- Here is the code resulting from the process, which we will add to the web page whose results we want to display questions on the search page.

Here is the code that resulted from writing two questions, you can write the questions you want, and rewrite the same questions in your article.

Now copy the code from the button indicated by the red arrow.

On your web page that contains the article displayed on the search page, look for the <head> tag and copy this code below it.

After refreshing the page, manually archive the article again via Google Webmaster Tools, then re-enter Webmaster Tools to see if the improvement has been added to the FAQ snippet as in the following image:

Adding question snippets to WordPress

You can also add a schema to show snippets generated by plugins like Rank Math for WordPress:

Using the WordPress plugin editor and Rank Math plugin, follow this tutorial:

First: Write your article through the component editor, and in the questions and answers section, add the following:

1. Add an ingredient.
2. In the search, I write Rank, based on the fact that we are using the Rank Math tool.
3. These are the question schemas that give a distinctive look to the search page.
4. There are other types of schemas such as programs, recipes, etc.

Now select number 3 to add questions.

This is the schema for adding questions:

1- Write the question

2- Write the answer.

3- You can add a picture.

4- To add another question.

Also, one of the best plugins in WordPress is the paid Schema Pro plugin. If you use it, disable the structured data feature from any other plugin so that there is no conflict in tasks.

Final thoughts

Standing out and clicks with rich bits is perfect, yet remember that the organized information behind them is important for something a lot greater.

Google uses structured data to help build the Knowledge Graph, which helps Google deliver more relevant search results and also powers other types of search page features like knowledge panels.

You should also know that paying attention to the content and its quality gives you really coordinated results, like our example at the beginning of the article, which you can view here to see how to format the article, and try to do similar formats in your articles.

This was the image of the excerpt that you can get by paying attention to the quality of the article.

This is the article to read:  12 secrets to writing an SEO-friendly article to rank high in search engines

Understanding how a knowledge graph works and how to use it to your advantage is one of the most important SEO skills you have now and in the years to come.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below in the comments section. You can likewise follow us via web-based entertainment..