Structured Data and Rich Snippets

What is structured data?

Structured data is a standardized format (or markup) that helps search engines understand the content on a webpage. For example, structured data markup can help a search engine understand that 844-487-8399 is a phone number and not just a string of digits.

How is structured data displayed in search results?

Structured data can appear as a rich snippet or in the knowledge panel summary.

What are rich snippets?

Rich snippets are adornments to typical text snippets in search results.

When your website shows up on a search engine results page (SERP) under normal circumstances, searches see a page title, URL, and text snippet (usually the meta description).

When rich snippets appear, searchers still see the page title, URL, and snippet, but they also see a rich snippet, which provides greater context surrounding the webpage.

Rich snippets can take many forms. In the example above, the rich snippet is a review, represented by stars. Stars are the kind of rich snippet that appear in search results Practice Growth healthcare practice websites.

What is the benefit of rich snippets?

Multiple studies have shown that rich snippets can increase click through rate (CTR) by 30%.

Do rich snippets improve website rankings?

Google has stated that structured data markup does not impact search rankings, but rich snippets can help grab searcher attention.

Does my Practice Growth website have rich snippets?

Practice Growth moved all customer healthcare practice websites to using improved structured data that uses a single language (JSON-LD) and a single vocabulary (schema.org) on Nov. 1, 2017. With this change, more healthcare practice websites will show rich snippets in search results for certain web pages.

Which web pages will show rich snippets in search results?

Location, Testimonials, Contact Us, About, Provider, and Service web pages have the structured data necessary to show rich snippets in search results. This should be about one-third of the total pages on your healthcare practice website. We strategically select the best pages for rich snippet schema to appear.

Why aren’t my web pages showing stars in search results?

Web pages must have first party testimonials to show stars in search results. If a particular webpage has reviews but is not showing stars in search results, it is possible Google has not yet recrawled the page and is not aware of any new structured data.

Although all Practice Growth healthcare practice websites have the necessary information for rich snippets to appear in search results, some web pages might never show stars. Search engines like Google always have the final say in what appears in their search results.

Do rich snippets only show up on Google?

Any search engine can take advantage of structured data. Bing, for example, shows stars in addition to location and phone number.

For more additional regarding structured data and rich snippets, contact your Customer Success Manager.