Snippet, as defined by google, is a small piece or brief extract. The term first arose when Larry Schwimmer, a software engineer at Google, used to send emails to employees asking for their work-life snippet, like what did they do last week, what will they be doing the following week? This showed everyone the potential of the snippet as it was highly successful and Google then integrated this concept in their search engine and offer many different kinds of snippets.
Various Snippets Offered by Google:
1. Featured Snippet
You remember the last time you searched something on google and the answer was displayed in a box, followed by the link of the website it was taken from, on the top and you didn’t have to open any links? That is what the featured snippet is. This means the content of the website is so rich that google pulls out the information from it and show it on the top, before any of the links.
2. Video Snippet
If your search can be answered by a how-to video, then google suggests a video for that and even offers a clip from it which answers your query properly, cutting out all the extra information available in the video.
3. Rich Snippet
With some results, google shows more than just links. It also shows some relevant information, like pictures and ratings.
4. Map Snippet
When you search for something that is related to a physical location, google shows you a map with a list of destinations below it and also red pins on the map, pointing at those locations.
5. Rich Advertising Snippet
This is a rich snippet with an advertisement, which means like the rich snippet, google shows additional information but about some business. It shows contact details, pictures, reviews of the business. You can also pay for them with AdWords.
How can Google Snippet help your business?
You can get your business website featured on Google snippet and anybody would want to do that. This not only makes your website stand out but stops the searchers from opening any other links. If your website’s content is shown before all the links, the probability of any searcher scrolling down to open any other link falls down really low.
Getting your business featured in Google Snippet!
You can get your website featured in Google snippet by using Schema Markup and Link Building and it can even help you with Bing Rich snippets. Now, you might be confused about what these two words mean, so let’s have a look at them.
1. Schema Markup
You can plan your website in such a way to tell search engines that your website contains information that lies under their pre-defined data categories which should be featured in rich snippets. You can even integrate schemas into the HTML design of your website for rich snippets in multiple ways for different results.
If this all seems complicated to you, you can take the help of SEO management services and if you feel like trying it by yourself then you can look for Google’s markup generator. You can also get in contact with local bloggers who can review your business and you can secure local backlinks.
2. Link Building
Link Building is a crucial part of SEO strategies, as it means getting your website featured somewhere. Basically, some other websites should have a link to your website. This is called backlinking and Google gives more attention to those websites more which are more backlinked and that webpage gets higher PageRank.
Google has made its PageRank system more complex, due to which backlinks coming from more reputed sources would be given priority. These reputed sources can be blogs that do not mention anyone easily and have a good and reputed domain name. Link Building is a really long and complex process, you can hire an SEO manager that can deal with all this and will make things easy for you.
All this planning is of no use if your content is not relevant to the audience. Before you do any of this, you should first make sure that the content you are using relevant and useful for the audience. After making sure you have your content on point, you should regularly optimize your schema markup and get your links mentioned every now and then. The process seems time-consuming, but this will make your business stand out in the competition.