In today's world of search, there are a lot of different factors that make up a successful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. At RebelMouse, we provide a full suite of solutions to help our clients rank quickly on the search phrases they need to win. One major part of our unique approach to SEO is our platform's out-of-the-box structured data integration.
Structured data is a set of "clues" provided to Google's site crawlers about the makeup of your content. Using schema, or a vocabulary you share with Google about every page on your site, you can tell Googlebot the story of your content in human languages. Click here to learn more.
Writing schema involves defining the elements on every page of your site to give Google more context about your content. For example, adding an attribute to a video, headline, title, author, etc. One outstanding way to get the most out of structured data is through product pages that feature reviews and ratings.
Powerful Search Returns With Product Reviews
To put it simply, the more Google can learn about your content through structured data, the better. Rich results, or snippets, which are the bits of information you see underneath search results in Google Search, are populated through structured data. Sometimes, snippets will also feature ratings and reviews:
Ratings and reviews for product pages are also populated with structured data. When inputted correctly, it can be a powerful way to provide more information to Google about your product pages, which improves your search ranking in return.
For example, we successfully marked up the product review pages for RebelMouse-powered Premier Guitar. Soon after, their articles were ranking at the top of Google's organic search results:
How We Implement Structured Data on Product Pages
Premier Guitar already had a section on their site dedicated to product reviews. To begin marking up elements for structured data for these articles, we created several custom fields using our platform's Layout & Design Tool, including rating, brand, and product name.
These fields are then completed by content creators as they publish each new product page. Then, following Google's guidelines for product structured data, we exposed the new custom fields, and other attributes, to Google's site crawlers. This included:
- Name
- Image (the article's lead image)
- Description (the article's subheadline)
- Brand
Similarly, we followed Google's guidelines for the review snippet, and exposed the following article elements to Google's site crawlers:
- Author
- Item reviewed
- Item reviewed.name (newly created custom field for the product's name)
- ReviewRating
- ReviewRating.ratingValue (newly created custom field for the overall product rating)
- DatePublished
- ReviewRating.bestRating - 5
- ReviewRating.worstRating - 1
By creating this schema for Premier Guitar's review pages, we were able to help give their content the search-ranking boost it needed.
You can track how your review snippets are performing in Google's review snippet enhancement report in Search Console. Here's a look at the kind of impact creating review snippets can have on your traffic:
If you're a RebelMouse client and would like to implement structured data for your product pages, email support@rebelmouse.com or talk to your account manager today.
Google's Product Reviews Update
Google began to roll out the fourth installment of its product reviews update on July 27, 2022.
The search engine first launched the product reviews update in April of 2021. In that announcement, Google said the update aimed to favor product reviews with in-depth research instead of “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” This update is not a core update, but rather an ongoing effort to specifically optimize product reviews in search results.
Click here to learn more.
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