In this post you will learn:
Rich snippets are important in Local SEO as they can be set up to show a lot of different types of information to people searching for a product or service like yours.
In fact, they can be a deciding factor between one service/product provider and another in a customer’s mind.
What is a rich snippet?
So to understand what a rich snippet is, you first have to understand what a snippet is. A snippet is a result that Google, Bing or Yahoo show to their users in their search results area.
Most search engine results display the same 3 pieces of data. The title tag of the blog or article, the meta description – a brief version of what is in a post and the URL of your website.
Without getting any more technical, a rich snippet (or rich result) is a snippet with a lot more information for the person searching.
So a rich snippet or result can add in a picture or rating for a product or service depending on the type of structured data used on your site. Some topics such as bicycles come with a carousel of pictures or ratings or the ‘you might also need to buy one of these (for something like a bicycle pump).
What is structured data?
Data has to be structured on websites in certain code so the search engine bots or spiders can crawl it and understand what service or product your website is trying to get people to buy. Of course, it can also be a free information site that people can just search and learn from.
That content has to use a vocabulary such as Schema.org which changes the content you have used on your website into a specific code that can be easily processed by the search engines.
The search engines then turn that code back into snippets in a specific format that you as a searcher can read easily and make a buying choice.
If you haven’t structured data on your site then it can be easily added.
Why are rich snippets important for Local SEO?
Hopefully, you understand at this stage what a rich snippet is but its importance is far greater in local SEO because you can add a location structured data type to your snippet.
They also give a far more professional look to your business for somebody who isn’t familiar with your business and give them the maximum amount of information about your product/service that is unique to your business.
This can have a really positive effect on your click-through rate which in turn improves your rankings because you get better rankings for specific queries. Best of all once it is installed on your site you’re done!
How do you get rich snippets?
You can do it through a simple plugin from schema.org that if you have the technical ability, you can install yourself. Or you can contact us and we will be happy to help.
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