If your web pages do not get noticed, you can forget about making sales. Every eCommerce owner is familiar with the mantra. You can’t win a click if your product pages are not getting the attention that they need. And attention is important in the world of online business. However, that is often easier said than done. Keep in mind; the consumers of today are bombarded by a slew of paid advertisements, results and of course, more information than they can process at a time.
With so many visually stimulating search results, eCommerce owners are often hard pressed to find solutions that will get them the right attention. Rich snippets offer just that.
How Rich Snippets Work
In general, snippets are lines of text that come with each search result. Their purpose is to highlight the content of their accompanying pages. The page’s relevance is defined according to the search query used. In addition, the additional pieces of information that a particular search engine locates on the page is used to enhance the value that it may have for a visitor who searches for it. Pricing and availability are a case in point. Now searchers have the facility to locate search results which have most relevant upfront data instead of clicking on the first search results and modifying their keywords when they don’t find what they are looking for.
In this way, a rich snippet is like the candidate who beat out other candidates for a job because he laid out his credentials and experiences clearly during the initial interview. Search results are no different. The page that is guaranteed the most clicks is one that distinguishes itself from the plethora of blue links and search results. This why rich snippets are one of the most recommended tools by all experienced ecommerce designers and developers.
Read below and you will agree that at times you also clicked on the 3rd or 4th result instead of 1st or 2nd when a search result down the page had something distinguishing or relevant data on the search page itself.
Types of Rich Snippets for eCommerce
Leading search engines such as Google and Bing support all types of rich snippets that have the greatest relevance for ecommerce sites.
Products
Availability and price are among the attributes that you can mark up, after you have identified the name of a product. Use the ‘identifier’ property to mark up the attribute your products are commonly searched for by. Take advantage of a sense of urgency if your product is on sale for a limited period, through the ‘priceValidUntil’ property. The ‘quantity’ property can be beneficial if only a limited number of units of a product are available and the product is distinctive.
Only Bing provides product photos in conventional search results at present. So you can mark up photos of your products for Bing and also be prepared for Google using the photos in future.
Google provides detailed instructions for enabling rich snippets for products.
Reviews and Ratings
Reviews Aggregate is among the commonly seen rich snippets included in the Reviews markup type. Reviews aggregate is the aggregate of all reviews and ratings, even as you would use Reviews tagging to mark up individual reviews. Count, Rating and Item are among the properties used commonly, where Count stands for the number of submitted reviews. A product photo can also be marked up as part of the Reviews markup type.
Follow Google’s instructions for enabling rich snippets for reviews and ratings.
People
It is possible to display your company and the positions of your executive staff in search results. You simply have to mark up the executive staff’s biographies on your website for this purpose.
Organizations and Businesses
Mark up the pages for your stores if you also have brick-and-mortar stores. URL, phone, geolocation and address are among the valuable properties. Make these readable and easily accessible for the crawlers employed by search engines, as these can be utilized for information verification for local search, among other purposes.
Breadcrumbs
Google automatically recognizes breadcrumbs. On the other hand Bing identifies Title and Child properties through a formal type of markup for breadcrumbs.
Recipes
Bing and Google both use rich snippets for recipes, along with photos. You can expand visibility greatly by using rich snippets in the pages for recipes if you offer food products along with distinctive recipes on your website.
Markups may be included for calories, cooking time and photos. Other relevant properties are yield, description, ingredients and reviews.
Music, events and recipes are other types of snippets that certain industries may find useful for their ecommerce sites. Music and events are more relevant for sites which offer those entertainment forms. However, the event markup may also prove useful for ecommerce sites hosting prominent public events.
Why Google favours Rich Snippets in Search Results?
It is important to remember that Google’s ultimate aim is to create an ideal search experience for users. Therefore it isn’t surprising why it favors websites that make it easier for the search engine to do so. The faster Google is able to help users find relevant information without clicking through, the better the experience. This gives ecommerce website owners the chance to cash in. If you own an online business rich snippets can help you see and take advantage of –
- Better conversion rates and qualified traffic
- Higher rankings in search results
- A better clickthrough rate than before
In this way, online marketers can utilize the tools to boost their exposure in organic search results. Remember, rich snippets do more than just increase your rankings; they also make it possible for you to establish a competitive advantage and communicate the value of your product offerings or services in a clear and concise manner. In other words, they make it possible for you to show why your products are more valuable than what your competitors offer at the moment.
Implementation of Rich Snippets
Do concepts such as markups and templates seem alien to you? Don’t worry. You are not alone. Your developer is familiar with such concepts. You can learn about them too in five minutes by following Schema.org; a standard that was put forward by Google itself. Both Google and Bing offer detailed information on how implement markups for rich snippets.
Ask your ecommerce developer today. It doesn’t cost you a fortune, but can achieve big results.
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