Rich Snippets – The Complete Guide

So what are Rich Snippets?

Rich snippets are quotes or additional lines of information that appear below a Google search result or listing.

They help to draw a user’s attention to a search engine results page that is relevant to the keywords that they have searched. Rich snippets are designed to give the user an insight of what they are expected to see on that webpage and what the contents might be.

Rich Snippets provide instant information if used correctly that is directly related to the searched query and it increases relevant click throughs leading to relevant web pages and information.
Rich Snippets help users discover sites that are completely relevant to their search enquiry.

For businesses using rich snippets combined with their Search Engine Optimisation strategy will ensure that the click throughs from users are more likely to lead to a conversion as the relevance is much higher.

What types of content can have Rich Snippets?

There are a broad range of content that can have rich snippet appear and that includes:

• People – Rich Snippets can show photos, phone numbers, mark up of social networking, name, address and job title.
• Restaurants – Rich Snippets can show menu prices, review, star ratings and articles that relate to their restaurant, links to restaurant review sites.
• Recipes – Rich Snippets can include a star rating on recipe, calorie information, cook time and an image.
• Videos – Rich Snippets can show video image and video length.
• Products – Rich Snippets can show user prices, images of the product, ratings on the product and reviews about the product.
• Events – Rich Snippets information about events can cover the event date, event location, event image and time of event.
• Authors – Rich Snippets information about an author can cover the photo or image of the author, name of author and links to the author’s articles.
• Businesses – Rich Snippets information can cover the name of the business, business URL, business address, business phone number and geographical location of business.
• Music & bands – Rich Snippets information can include links to songs, song length, album information, touring dates and locations, links to websites including Facebook and Myspace of artist.

All in all rich snippets are a great way for webmasters to gain an additional layer of optimisation to their website and highlight important content within search engine result pages.
Rich snippets will be most successful if used in conjunction with strong website copywriting, article submissions, reviews and SEO.