Learn more about rich results and what role they play in your search strategy.

Rich results are more robust search results that appear at the top of the page when you conduct a search on Google. As an affiliate marketer, driving targeted traffic to your site is vital to driving revenue for your business. One of the best ways to drive traffic is by securing the top spot on Google search results pages (SERP). Google has evolved over the years, and in some cases the top spot actually goes to something called a rich result.

What is a rich result?

According to Google, a rich result is an enhanced result in Google search with extra visual or interactive features. These extra features can include things like images, reviews or ratings, event info, FAQs, and more.

What makes securing a rich result important to your search strategy is that not only does it secure the top organic spot, the rich features make it more likely to be clicked. This increases your click through rate and traffic to your site compared to your competitor’s. Milestone Research analyzed over 4.5 million queries to conclude that users click on rich results 58% of the time compared to a CTR of 41% for non-rich search results.

Types of rich results

There are different kinds of rich results you can take advantage of depending on the type of site you are running. The review snippet can be useful if you have positive reviews on your service, solution, or products. Reviews are a type of social proof, which is known to drive more conversions. When people see others approve of something, they’re more likely to trust it. Other types of rich results include recipes, music, product markup, movie, and events.

How can I secure a rich result?

The first step to getting a rich result is to add structured data to the source code of your website. Structured data is code that communicates information about your page’s content to the search engine. If you don’t have a web developer who can add structured data to your site, you could use a structured data plugin if you have a WordPress site.

Once you have the right code in place, you need to actually write your content in a way that Google will reward it by giving it a rich result. If your blog post or article asks a question in the topic or you are trying to rank for a question, answer that question within the first two sentences of your article. For example, if you were trying to secure the rich result for “What is affiliate marketing?” you should answer the question within the first two sentences.

In addition to that, you must still optimize an article or page for SEO. That includes analyzing the search engine results to see what is currently ranking and then writing a better article that answers the query more completely. Answer the “People also ask” questions that show up in the search results for that term. Include your target keyword and subsequent keywords in your article and meta data. Always make sure to optimize your images for SEO as well, including adding relevant alt text, titles, and descriptions.

Summary

Rich results are beefed up search results that drive more clicks to your site because they include an image and more information. You can increase your chances of securing a rich result by adding the proper structured data to your website. In addition, you must optimize your content for SEO by following best practices like writing quality content that answers relevant questions. Be sure to optimize your images as well to increase the likelihood you’ll be featured in the rich result spot.

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