As the month's go by, we're seeing more and more changes happening to Google's search results page (SERP). Most of these chang...
As the month's go by, we're seeing more and more changes happening to Google's search results page (SERP). Most of these changes are related to "rich snippets", which are becoming increasing important when it comes to standing out in the results and receiving those much needed clicks.
Rich Snippets refer to a few lines of text that appear under every search result in Google – they are designed to give searchers a sense of what's going to be on the page they click through to and assist in determining whether it's relevant to the search they performed.
Here is an introduction to rich snippets:
Here is an example of a rich snippet in action, showing an image taken from the article on the website. Below it is an example of a similar article without the rich snippet:
It's rather obvious as to which article will get more click throughs, and which article Google would prefer to show in the results.
The process of setting this up on your website isn't complicated, so let's walk you through it.
STEP ONE
The first step is to setup a Google Plus profile. You can do this by visiting http://plus.google.com and following the instructions. You don't need to spend hours refining your profile, the most important thing is to ensure that you upload a profile photograph and verify your email address:
This is crucial as Google needs to understand that the account belongs to you before it links your account to any content you've produced.
STEP TWO
It's now time to link your Google+ account to the content you're producing. When you're inside your Google+ account, click the Profile icon on the left and scroll down to where it says, "Contributor to", this is where you're going to add a link to your content.
Hover the mouse on the right of "Contributor to" and you'll see the cursor change, click and enter in the name of the website you contribute to and fill in website link.
Save, and you're done.
STEP THREE
This is the most technical step of the process, we now need to link correctly from your website to Google+. The best way to achieve this is by including a link from the author bio on your website to the Google+ page. On most publishing content management systems, such as WordPress, each blog post has a space for an author bio under the title or at the end of every post. It's in this bio that you need a link through to the author's Google+ page.
In the example above, you would link Sarah Kessler through to her Google+ page using the following source code:
Alternative: Sometimes your publishing content management system will link the author's name through to a separate author profile page. You can link from the author's profile page through to their Google+ Page, but you will need to use rel="me" instead of rel="author" in the source code above. The link that points to the author's profile page will need the rel="author" added. So rel="me" on the actual author's profile page and rel="author" on the link pointing to the author's profile page from the content.
EXTRA TIPS
- Google has supplied some instructions on how to do this. They aren't comprehensive, but as a point of reference it may be a good idea to have a read.
- You may use the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool to test and see if you've linked your account and website correctly.
- It can take up to a week or more to start seeing your rich snippets appearing in the SERPs, so be patient.
- A.J. Kohn, a well respected marketing executive, wrote a blog post about this last year. It's a comprehensive guide that has been updated and is definitely worth reading.
- Apart from the obvious as to why you should use Rich Snippets, here is a more detailed look.
If you get stuck implementing rich snippets, please leave a comment below and we'll assist you as best as we can.
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