Tips and Tutorials
January 18, 2021

How to Boost Your SEO by Adding Review Rich Snippets

One of the best ways to improve your visibility on Google's search results is using rich snippets. Being a tool to attract the attention of potential visitors, rich snippets can be a valuable addition to the toolbox of any webmaster. Rich snippets come in different forms, one of the most popular ones is the review rich snippets. How can review rich snippets help you boost your SEO and increase sales? In this article, we’ll show you:

  1. What are review rich snippets?
  2. The benefits of review rich snippets
  3. How to add Judge.me reviews to rich snippets

What are review rich snippets?

Before you can understand the benefits of review snippets, let’s have a grasp of what the snippets are. Snippets are what you see on the Google search engine results page. All websites have them; they consist of the page title, page URL, and a brief description of the content, which may be created by the author or auto-generated by Google. But you may wonder, if all websites have a snippet, how will yours stand out? This is where rich snippets come in.

Rich snippets provide additional information about the page. Don't confuse them with featured snippets - those extra special results that appear at the top of the results page (typically from highly reputable websites with a lot of authority). Depending on the type of content you're presenting, rich snippets may come in various forms:

  • recipes,
  • instructions,
  • product specifications and prices,
  • FAQ,
  • event information,
  • business location, and more.

One of the most popular forms is the review snippets, a form of rich snippet including a numerical rating (usually an average of all reviews on a specific product page) and a brief excerpt from a relevant review. This information lets consumers know the opinions of other consumers on the products and services they are searching for.

The benefits of review rich snippets

Rich snippets have become very popular since their introduction in 2009. Nowadays, it is uncommon to see a Google search results page with no rich snippets at all. There are good reasons for this, of course. Rich snippets provide more information, are more attention-grabbing, and make your product pages stand out. And reviews are particularly beneficial because they establish trust among customers. So it’s no wonder that many businesses use review rich snippets for their websites.

Give users more information

In an increasingly digitized industry, we are used to getting a lot of information easily and quickly. We want a quick Google search to tell us pretty much all we need to know, so basics just won't cut it anymore. You need to provide your users with more information than your competition, and rich snippets offer an excellent opportunity for this.

Reviews are especially important because most people rely on them when purchasing products online. Showcasing reviews is the most popular way to build social proof for your online store, so rich snippets that take the form of reviews (through ratings or otherwise) have the advantage of providing more than just additional information; rather, they provide some of the most important details your potential customers need to make up their mind when going through your product listing in the search results.

Stand out from your competitors in the search results

No matter how niche your industry is, you're not the sole provider of your products and services. Everybody has competition - that's just a fact of business. And monitoring the competition is important because it helps you keep up with the trends and know what you're up against, so look at what other online stores are doing. How many of them are using rich snippets? If they're using rich snippets, you don't want to get overlooked on the results page because other results are more appealing. If they're not using rich snippets, even better - you'll be the first. Either way, you'll stand out on the results page. Images, ratings, and additional information will make you more visible than a few lines of text.

Increase traffic to boost your SEO

You want to attract as many users to your website as possible because the higher the traffic to your website, the higher your SEO ranking. With a rich snippet, you’ll certainly grab more attention and thus attract more visitors to your online stores than others’ stores. So although simply adding a rich snippet will not propel you to the top of Google's results page, rich snippets undoubtedly have a positive impact on your rankings. By increasing your click-through rate, attracting more visitors to your website, and overall increasing your popularity, rich snippets will indirectly signal to Google that you're running a quality website. This will, in turn, help you climb the rankings.

Analytics of traffic to a website
Rich snippets can help attract more users to your page

How to add Judge.me reviews to rich snippets

If you want to add rich snippets to your website, you have several options:

  1. Do it manually
  2. Use Google's structured data markup helper
  3. Use a review app like Judge.me.

Google generates rich snippets out of structured data it reads on your website. Using JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa syntax, you can embed relevant information in your webpage manually. Google will then read it and create the appropriate rich snippet. However, this can be difficult if you have no experience in coding. So what you can do instead is go to the Google structured data markup helper website, enter the page you want to create structured data for, and highlight what you want to add to the rich snippet. Google will create the data for this, so you can copy it and paste it onto your page.

However, the easiest alternative would be to use an app that does all the work for you. With Judge.me, all you have to do is install the app and turn on the review snippets option in settings. The rich snippets will then be added to your pages without you having to work for it!

Judge.me will add SEO rich snippets automatically for you when you enable the feature

Do you need help with setting up rich snippets?

Sometimes, adding rich snippets goes wrong, and you run into issues like the missing "itemReviewed" field. This can happen when you accidentally combine different schema markups, duplicate some information, or use a syntax your theme doesn't support. Not to worry, though - these are easy fixes. You can check our Forums to see how other shops have resolved this issue, or simply ask for solutions from our support team, and we'll be happy to resolve the problem for you.

Final words

With as many benefits as they offer, review rich snippets are vital for your SEO rankings. By providing your users with additional information and making you stand out from other search results, they will attract more traffic to your website, which will, in turn, boost your SEO and bring your more sales.

Sally Norton

Sally Norton is a writer from miamimovingguide.com.