Have you noticed that sometimes when you search on Google, the answers on the top of the page are formatted differently than other search results? They’re pretty eye-catching aren’t they? They are so eye catching, that according to a recent study over 4.5 million queries found that “users click on rich results 58% of the time, compared to a CTR of 41% for non-rich results.” This is one of the many reasons why every website owner needs to use schema markup. Today, we will walk you through the following:
- What are Rich Results?
- Who creates Rich Results?
- How are Rich Results created?
- What types of Rich Results are available?
- How do I add Rich Results to my website?
- Does implementing rich results – schema markup guarantee me the #1 spot on search results?
Are you wondering how these websites answers to your search queries but wondering how to get them for yourself? Or, maybe you’re a web developer who knows that adding Schema to your website can help it rank better in Google results. Either way, structured data seems like a big, complicated and unknown thing to understand. That’s why I want to share some insights about how and why Schema markup is so useful for everyone.
What ARE RICH RESULTS?
What is a rich result?
A snippet is literally a bit of information that gives you a teaser as to the content that is on the pages that come up as results when you search. Think of the snippet as the result of a keyword search. On the image above, an example of a regular snippet is the one marked as without schema.
A rich result is a type of snippet, but they aren’t your same old boring results. Rich results have been enhanced, show up at the top of the page, are made to stand out, and their goal is to help people searching on Google to find the best answers to their questions easily.
Who Creates Rich Results?
Who Are Rich Results Created By?
These are created by you, your web developer, or your SEO. You need to put in the work to create and configure your results, but the return on investment on Rich Results is completely worth it.
How Are Rich Results Created?
What Do I Need To Know To Create Rich Results?
There are three main terms you need to know in order to create rich results:
- Schema: Schema is an agreed upon language that was created by various search engines, which contains a standard markup for structured data. This makes it so that when a website uses this language, all those search engines can understand it. Schema tells search engines what your site is about. For example, a recipe website may use recipe schema, which tells Google and other search engines “This is a recipe” along with important details about that recipe.
- Structured Data: If you think of Schema as the language “spoken” by search engines, structured data is the actual data that you are giving the search engines. In the example of the recipe, this could be the preparation time, list of ingredients, and cooking instructions.
- Rich Results: Rich results are what people who search for a particular keyword and who are served a website which has implemented schema are shown by search engines. As mentioned before, these results are shown on the top of the page, they are easy to read and prominent. The enhanced search result is the rich snippet or rich result.
What Types Of Schema Are Available?
There are a lot of types of schema markup (as of today, there are almost 800 different types of schema). We’ll go through the most commonly used kinds of rich snippets, but if you want to check out the entire list you can see it here. These are the top 10 most popular types of schema:
- Breadcrumb
- Article
- FAQ
- Local Business
- Organization
- Product
- Review & Rating
- Recipe
- Event
- Jobs
How Do I Add Schema To My Website?
You can either add schema to your website via code (using microdata, RDFA, or JASON-LD), or you can add them via a 3rd party service or plugin. If you are not so tech-savvy, contact us. This is one of the services that we offer as part of our SEO services.
Does Adding Rich Results/Schema Markup To My Website Guarantee Me The #1 Spot on Google Search
Not necessarily, but our SEO firm has been able to rank all of our clients who have asked us for help with schema on page one for keywords of intent. Whether you rank or not depends on the quality of your content, your website, your competition, and the quality of the implementation. That being said, it significantly improves your chances of coming up in the top spot of search results, so this is a worthwhile investment of your time.