Time To Figure Out Why Your SEO Rich Snippets Aren't Showing - Semalt Advice
Having your rich SEO snippets display on SERP is essential if you hope to improve your traffic. However, like many things with SEO, it's easier said than done. In this article, we will explain your SEO rich snippets seem to vanish on SERP. This could happen as a result of many reasons why this could happen, but thanks to our experts, Semalt can not only diagnose the problem but also rectify your invisible snippet.
Snippets are the primary advertising tool of any website. They are like the pamphlet of services you get when you walk into a company building. They provide you with enough information to know what's going on but not sufficient so that you have questions to ask.
Search engine users then click on the link below the snippet to find out more about the information they have just read. This tool is excellent, and this way, you increase the time users spend on your website because every click is likely to be your target audience.
Snippets are so effective because when a reader sees the snippet, they've taken a sneak peek into your website. With this, they are either interested to see more, or they are discouraged because they've figured that your content isn't what they need. Either way, snippets come in handy.
What are the possible reasons that cause my snippets not to show?
Typically, Google's organic SERP contains 10 plain blue links, and each of these links has its snippet. Today, being on the first page isn't enough to convert viewers to "clickers". To convert viewers, Google has filled SERP with several amazing features such as snippets, featured snippets, images, and several others. All these tools help draw the attention of Google users to these websites and the information they claim to possess.
Many websites may consider having a featured snippet or placement on Google SERP, but this doesn't guarantee that their website will benefit. Other websites that can't afford these special privileges can still dominate the SERP for several reasons. One of these reasons is having a Rich Snippet.
How to get rich snippets for your website?
One way to get rich SEO snippets is through structured data or Schema. This is a markup that can be added to a website to aid search engines to provide more relevant results for search queries. With this, your website appears for only the right reasons and display rich snippets. That way, your snippets aren't just rich but very relevant to your audience, which means more clicks and conversions.
Semalt, for example, has many professional developers as well as SEO experts. This makes creating well-structured data on web pages a lot easier. As experts, we can tell you that Google loves rich snippets. This is especially for a website that offers recipes, advantages, products, features, etc.
Having a rich snippet on your website helps your rating, recipe markup, and several other advantages. In simple terms, a rich snippet means more CTRs for your website.
Remember, to achieve a featured snippet, you need to implement structured data markup, and there are several ways you could do this:
- For starters, using JSON-LD, RDFa, and Microdata are great ways to arrange your structured data. JSON-LD can be very useful in keeping your structured data consistent.
- Schema.org, on the other hand, is a collaborative vocabulary source website and pages that can use with RDFa, Microdata, and JSON-LD to find new ways to markup data. Google has its standards that are based on the Schema's specifications.
Making your content with structured data can be a great way to improve how well search engine algorithms read your page contents. That is something you should consider a priority.
Sometimes, you can go through all the effort of finding relevant structured data, and you've convinced your stakeholders that it is a good idea to mark up your pages, create proper Markup and publish it. However, there is no noticeable improvement in your website's performance.
This is likely to happen because your snippets aren't rich. This leads us to the reason you've read this article thus far; why? Why is it that your carefully drafted and SEO-rich snippet isn't appearing on a Google search results?
Possible reasons why your snippets aren't appearing on SERPRich snippets are not guaranteed to appear.
You may not want to hear this - however, it is the reality of Google. Many assume that by adding that extra code, Google will automatically start featuring its rich snippet. Well, that isn't always the case.
What may do not know is that Google reserves the right to deny service to your structured data. To further strain your efforts, Google also supports only specific kinds of structured data. The type of structured data inevitably affects whether or not you're rich, snippets show.
Some of the types of structured data Google support include:
- Articles
- Books
- Breadcrumbs
- Carousel
- Course
- Critical review
- Dataset
- Employer Aggregate Rating
- Estimated salary
- Event
- Fact check
- FAQ
- And a couple more…
Structured data doesn't always mean quality standards
Google has its standards, and if your structured data doesn't meet these standards, Goo
gle reserves the right to not displaying in SERP. Some of Google's standards for a Markup include:
- Providing updated contents
- Providing original content that you generate
- Irrelevant content should not be marked up
- Markup should not promote illegal activities or things that can harm others
All through the journey of SEO, if there is one clear thing, it would be that Google always puts their users first. This is why these standards have been set, and by following them, you do not gain favor in the sights of Google alone, but your users would also enjoy your standardized Markup.
If your structured data is irrelevant or misleading
If your marked-up content has no potential of providing users with a better experience, best believe that google won't prioritize showing your snippet. Like we said, if your content doesn't help your target audience, then it is of no use to Google. Because of that, your snippet wouldn't feature.
To give your snippet the best chance of been seen, you need to make sure the structured data is relevant to the information carried on that page and the target audience. Remember, the job of Schema is to describe your content to a machine.
If your Markup Data has Profane contents
Having vulgar or profane language in your marked-up data is one way to destroy it. Once Google realizes that the language used is vulgar to your audience, they reserve the right not to display it as a rich snippet. This means to avoid cursing.
If your structured data markup is done incorrectly
Surprisingly, incorrectly structured data markup is one of the most common causes of disappearing snippets. There are many details that are tiny and are easily overlooked, which causes Google's algorithm to overlook snippets. Schema.org can provide insights into every type of structured data you can implement on your website. One of the most common causes of disappearing snippet is how the code for structured Markup was added. A common error we find is when schema.org elements are not properly nested.
Nesting is an HTML concept that uses codes to identify when a starts and stops addressing particular issues properly. To illustrate, imagine when a page has a main entity like a product or recipe, the main entity item scope should be implemented alongside the entity's item scope.
All attributes that are related to a certain entity are required to be nested within the HTML node. It is common to find developers close HTML nodes prematurely. When implementing the Markup also, it is common to find unclosed HTML tags.
For things to move smoothly, each HTML tag must be opened and closed properly. If you fail to do this properly, Google's structured data will have a difficult time reading the correct nesting and may end up confused.
Using multiple Markup languages
You can use Schema.org vocabulary with other varieties of encoding such as RDFa, Microdata, and JSON-LD. However, you should make sure that each page is made out of only one of these structured data encodings. This is because by mixing different encodings, you will cause your rich snippets not to display correctly.
Using different encodings also makes the structured data harder to maintain, and it opens more loopholes for mistakes and inconsistencies.
These are a few of the reasons why your rich snippets haven't been featured. It is always important to conduct these checks and ensure that every team is in its appropriate manner. By doing so for each one, you do not only narrow the scope for the cause, but you also improve your website in a beneficial manner. With a dedicated team at Semalt, you wouldn't leave with only your snippets featured but with other benefits that improve your overall SEO performance.