We lift the veil on rich snippets and their usefulness for the referencing of your website

Beyond Snippets: create a virtuous circle with Rich Snippets

Well known by web designers and SEOs, the "Title" and "Description" Snippets are essential to the good reading of a website and are the basis of SEO. They need to be optimized with measure and precision, both with regard to the algorithm and for visitors, because they are the first elements that will both promote the referencing of a site and encourage Internet users to visit it.
These titles & descriptions must therefore be thought and written as a subtle balance that aims to seduce the "bots" of search engines at the same time as potential visitors. But as essential as these Snippets are, it is possible to go further thanks to their enhanced version, called Rich Snippets, which has now become essential in any SEO strategy.

Increased visibility with structured data

Rich Snippets, or structured data, are additional information about your content and activities displayed in the SERPs: stars or ratings, product prices, breadcrumb trail, event dates or even internal search field.
Implemented since 2009 through the protocol Schema.org Common to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, they allow an HTML tagging of a lot of information on your site allowing to value the most relevant contents with regard to the research of the Internet user. In doing so, they are an incentive to qualitative clicks and therefore touch the key to the ...

A relevant referencing, which qualifies your audience

This is the key, because climbing in the SERPs is not an end in itself: once you are well positioned, in order to consolidate your presence and benefit from it as much as possible, Internet users must find the answers to their questions in your links, and for this reason, these links must be as close as possible to their search. Rich Snippets, if they are well designed, answer exactly this need to match queries and results.
The Google teams repeat over and over again to webmasters "create rich content and you will be well positioned". We would like to add: present your content in a relevant and optimized way and your links will not only be more, but also better clicked.

A quality audience, which improves your referencing

Your links will indeed be visited more often, but above all they will be clicked by qualified visitors who will find on your site contents corresponding to their search. Contents that they will take the time to browse in detail, thus lowering your bounce rate, thus improving your trustrank and consequently your referencing.
Here you are in the virtuous circle of Rich Snippets, better and better positioned, more and more visited, gaining in the same movement the trust of visitors and that of the engines.

A selective display

As for Sitelinks, the internal links of a site sometimes presented under the description in the SERPs, the display of Rich Snippets is not automatic and will depend on many factors, some of which are impossible to control (including the competition, Google does not want too many sites to display Rich Snippets on the same result page). This makes it all the more important to optimize Rich Snippets in order to maximize the chances of seeing them appear, on your main queries as well as on the long tail, and on desktop as well as on mobile (the mobile version requires a different optimization).

A little bit of coding

Technically, the parameterization is preferably done in the HTML code using the JSON-LD, RDFa and microdata microformats. These three microformats are compatible with each other and, when added to the HTML code, allow the implementation of data and information to be transmitted to the robots. Once the microformatting is done, it is recommended to check that it is correctly taken into account by the engine via the Google Search Console and the structured data test tool.

Snippets, more Snippets

Other Snippets have emerged in recent years, including "Featured Snippets" (gray box at the top of the page) on which webmasters have no direct influence for the moment, and "Rich Cards", image carousels that are tagged on the same principle as Rich Snippets but so far only present recipes and movie reviews and are only visible on mobile. They are therefore only interesting to work with today if you are concerned with these areas of activity.

In conclusion: enrich your Snippets

The icing on the cake a few years ago, Rich Snippets are becoming one of the keystones of website optimization, in terms of SEO as well as in terms of audience qualification, the two being more and more intertwined.
It is therefore essential today to integrate them into your visibility strategy and to set them up with the utmost care, with a view to relevance that will sustainably promote your positioning in the SERPs.

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