Add Rich Snippets to Your Blog to Increase CTR

Many a times, traditional, text-only search results are too boring.

Can we make the search results more attractive by adding STARs, PICs, $s, and provide extended and more accurate information for quality traffic and better conversion?

Yes, you can add a bit of ZING to your search results by integrating structured data markup in to your blog. Simply by adding a piece of code to your blog you can show rich snippets in your search results.

What is Rich Snippets?

While searching for restaurants, movies or music in search engines, you must have come across with search results displaying reviews, ratings or prices. These extra piece of information in SERPs is called rich snippets.

In 2011, Google, Bing and Yahoo! have formed Schema.org endorsing ‘Microdata’ as the standard for all 3 sites. Microdata is one of the 3 supporting formats to mark-up a website to show rich snippets in search results. The other 2 supporting formats are ‘Microformats’ and ‘RDFAs.’

Rich snippets is meant for contents like – Products, recipes, music albums, videos, restaurants, events, business organizations, people and authors.

Implementing rich snippets is just like:

Hey Google! I’m giving you an extra piece of information about my content. Please show it and add a bit of flavor to my search results.

How Rich Snippets Benefits your Blog?

1. Draws searcher’s attention by visual appeal.

2. Increase Click Through Rate (CTR) by 20 -30%.

3. Attracts targeted readers by displaying accurate description of the page’s content.

4. Decrease bounce rate by more qualified visitors who stay on the site longer.

How to Add Rich Snippets to WordPress Blog?

If you are using WordPress, a plugin called Google Rich Snippets: Reviews will do all the job for you by adding structured data mark-up (Code) to your blog.

You can try other plugins like Author hReview, Post rate and The SEO Rich Snippets.

Matt Cutts’s View on Rich Snippets

Recently, Matt Cutts has published a Webmaster Help Video about Rich Snippets responding to an user’s question.

I know that rich snippets can increase CTR for my mention on a SERP. But is the use of Schema.org code beneficial for my actual positions on the SERPs as well?

Quincy, Rotterdam.

Matt: Simply by implementing Schema.org mark-up a site can’t gets any sort of ranking boost. There are specific content like ‘recipes’ where showing rich snippets is helpful for users.

But, it’s a good idea to mark-up things in a rich structure because people will find your site more easily while digging deeper.

Checkout the video:

What is your view on RICH SNIPPETS? Add your tip or experience in the comments below.