Hello this is John Locke, today, we're going to talk about rich snippets.
What they are, and specifically, the Position Zero snippet.
You've probably already seen in Google search results, you probably just didn't know what
they were called.
So about six or seven years ago, they might have been a photo that would have appeared
next to a search result -- say if you were searching for a recipe, or if there was a
particular author of an article, you might have seen a photo next to that.
Today, rich snippets take many forms.
For the sake of brevity, we're going to say that rich snippets are anything outside of
the ten blue links, the map pack, and the ads at the top of the page.
And it's anything that's a special feature.
It could be a callout of different things -- say you're searching for a movie, and there's
a big box with that movie at the top, with the cast.
Let's say you're searching for a place or a city, or something like that, you might
see a whole carousel of different cities, or if you're searching for a celebrity, [you
might see a carousel of related celebrities].
But, for today, what I want to focus on is what they call the Position Zero rich snippet.
Now this appears at the very top of the page.
And it will be a big box where it calls out a section of text from a [search] result.
And it contains a link.
Obviously, because it's a big callout, a lot of people click on that, or they go to that
page.
It's Google's way of delivering the information that they think people are looking for with
that particular search query in a way that's concise.
So, how do you get that Position Zero rich snippet?
The Position Zero rich snippet -- generally this is going to be from a [search] result
that's already on Page One of Google.
Step One of getting a Position Zero rich snippet is getting to the first page of Google [for
that search query].
Step Two is formatting the information in way to where it is easy for Google to just
take that information and just slap it up there.
Some of the things that we have noticed: sometimes you'll see it's a sentence or two that Google
pulls out of the text [of the page] that answers a specific search query.
Sometimes it's a list of things that you are searching for, and it will show an excerpt
of that list.
Let's say you're already on page one, and you're trying to knock out the callout rich
snippet that's already in Position Zero up above all the rest of the search results.
Because that one [snippet] also does appear later, below in the list of regular ten blue
links.
Look at how it is formatted on their page.
If it's a list of items, is it proper HTML markup?
Is it marked up in the proper way as a ordered or unordered list?
If it's not in a list format, like what you're trying to knock out of the way, is it formatted
in a way to where it's got headlines like h2s and then some paragraphs beneath?
Generally, what I've seen with the Position Zero rich snippets, having gotten them for
both myself and clients, what I have noticed, is you want that HTML markup to be pretty
simple, you want it to be pretty basic.
You want to clean out any clutter.
Google just wants to be able to parse that information without having to do a lot of
reconstruction on the actual HTML markup.
Those are things that I've noticed.
So get to page one.
Analyze what your competitors are doing, see what you can improve.
Basically, if you're going for an excerpt of text, if an excerpt of text is what your
competitors have in Position Zero already, I would say make sure that the page that YOU
are trying to get up there -- break up the text on your page into headlines, and then
a few paragraphs, and then break it up again with another headline, and some more paragraphs.
If you've got a list of items, make sure that markup is clean and simplistic, to where Google
can just take that information and put it in there [Position Zero].
Table information, Google will also take that sometimes and put it in that Position Zero
place.
So, there you go.
You have to get to page one first.
Clean HTML markup.
Make it something that Google can quickly scan, so they don't have to do a lot of work,
they can just take it and put it in there and it makes sense.
So look at how it appears on the page, and strip out any of the styling, and see if it
still makes sense.
These are things that you definitely do once you get to Page One.
You want to try and get that advantage and get that Position Zero rich snippet.
My name is John Locke.
My business is Lockedown Design and SEO.
We help manufacturing and industrial firms with their SEO.
Helping them get more organic traffic through Google and Bing, and as a result, they get
more Requests For Quotes.
If you have a SEO question that you'd like us to answer, go ahead an leave it in the
comments below.
We'll answer it out in a video for you.
If you're getting value from this channel, I would ask you to subscribe.
Tell your friends too.
Peace.
[Outtakes: The trick is getting to Page One.]