Are you utilizing rich snippets in your site’s HTML? If not, you’re missing out on an opportunity to make your sites stand out on crowded search return pages. And, in light of Google’s friendlier attitude towards gambling sites, now is a very good time to learn about how to effectively use this unique tweak.
Understanding Rich Snippets
Before you can get your head around rich snippets, you need to understand how Google defines snippets in the first place. In the Google world, snippets are a one to two line description of a site that appears on the search results page. Usually, this information is drawn from text in the <title> tags.
When Google first introduced snippets, they usually only appeared with the top result from any given search. But that’s changed considerably with the introduction of rich snippets.
Rich snippets allow web masters to display additional information, like ratings or recipes with their search results. This is done by embedding the information inside the page’s HTML code.
How it Works
If you want to see an example of rich snippets, Google the phrase, “Morton’s Denver,” and take a look at the results.
The first result should be a listing for the Morton’s Steakhouse in Denver, Colorado along with an aggregated star rating based on user reviews. That’s a rich snippet. If you looked in source code, you’d see a few lines of code pointing to the restaurant’s aggregate Yelp! rating. It’s that simple.
Faking Reviews
There’s been some talk on forums about how webmasters can game rich snippets to include fake reviews and increased your page rankings. For now, this game is indeed possible, but anyone who’s considering trying to pull a fast one on Google should probably think twice.
Google isn’t the biggest name on the Internet because they’re easily fooled. It’s likely that they’ll have a workaround in place to halt this practice and punish sites utilizing it. Besides, is that really the kind of image you want to portray to potential business partners?
Rather than resorting to gaming the system, why not try filling your site with high quality optimized content that will organically boost your rankings?
Rich Snippets for Affiliates
For web masters and online gaming sites that have good reputations and are reviewed well by users, rich snippets are a great method for distinguishing themselves on crowded search pages.
Integrating rich snippets into existing code is not particularly difficult, and there are plenty of online tutorials to help you get started. It may take some time to see rich snippets on your search results, but just be patient. While you’re waiting, you can test your rich snippet pages using Google rich snippet test tool.
Finally
Rich snippets are one more tool that can be utilized to help drive traffic and improve search results. Google’s algorithms are a mysterious entity, but there’s no doubt that sites that are utilizing Google approved tools like this will be rewarded with increased traffic.
Are you using Rich Snippets? Share your tips and tricks on our SEO Forum page.