We already know how Google presents search results normally, with a page title, description and page URL for each results. While this works great, there is one more way to display more information about your webpage, and that is by displaying rich snippets.
You can increase search traffic by making your search engine results page (SERP) more eye catching, and you can do this by displaying rich snippets in your WordPress site.
Basically rich snippets allow webmasters to provide information using structured data markup that they can add to their pages. Once you’ve correctly added structured data markup to your website, rich snippets are displayed on search engines.
For example, in the below example, you can see how Google displays snippets of additional information that the search engine finds from the website. In the example of recipes, Google displays rating, reviews, and cooking time. Displaying this information means that users will more likely click visit your website.
Now the question that comes is, how to display rich snippets in WordPress? Well, there are plugins that makes it very easy for even the non-tech savvy user to implement rich snippets. These plugins take out the complex part and makes it very simple to get started with what looks like a complicated process.
Free and Paid Rich Snippets Plugin
These plugins help you take advantage of microformats and thus implement rich snippets on your WordPress based site. First we’ll take a look at some free plugins and then some paid ones.
WP Customer Reviews
WP Customer Reviews allows your customers and visitors to leave reviews or testimonials of your services. The reviews that are posted are microformat enabled.
This plugin allows you to setup a specific page on your blog to receive customer testimonials for your business or service or you can write reviews about multiple products (by using different pages for different reviews).
- WP Multisite and Multiuser (WPMU / WPMS / WordPress MU) compatible.
- All submissions are moderated, which means that YOU choose which reviews get shown.
- Reviews are displayed to visitors in a friendly format, but search engines see the hReview microformat (and RDFa soon!)
- Multiple anti-spam measures to prevent automated spambots from submitting reviews.
- Provides a configurable Business hCard, to help identify all pages of your site as belonging to your business.
- Completely customizable, including which fields to ask for, require, and show.
- Works with caching plugins and a majority of themes.
- Shortcodes available for inserting reviews and review form on any page or widget.
- Includes an external stylesheet so you can modify it to better fit your theme.
- Admin responses can be made and shown under each review.
- Reviews can be edited by admin for content and date.
- Support for adding your own custom fields.
- The plugin can be used on more than one page, and can be used on posts.
- Supports both Business and Product hReview types.
- Shows aggregate reviews microformat (hReview-aggregate).
- Fast and lightweight, even including the star rating image. This plugin will not slow down your blog.
hRecipe
If you have a recipe blog, or you occasionally post recipes, then this plugin is what you should definitely try out. People searching for recipes are attracted to Google Rich Snippet recipe display, which can mean better clickthrough to your blog.
The hRecipe plugin shows a popup windows with text fields and text areas that allow the author to conveniently enter the various parts of the hRecipe microformat, then inserts a formatted recipe into the page or post. The formatting has the hRecipe class specifications.
Microdata for WordPress
This plug-in adds a button on the TinyMCE Editor that helps you generate valid Microdata Code within your WordPress posts and pages.
All you need to do is to click on the Microdata button from the visual editor and start entering the information. You will need to select what Microdata type or ‘schema’ you want to add. Every single schema has its own set of properties and these properties in turn are related to other schemas. This plugin is very easy to use and worth giving a try if you are searching for something simple.
Download Microdata for WordPress
SEO Ultimate
SEO Ultimate is an all-in-one SEO plugin with many different features. Apart from the different SEO functions, this plugin can easily add rich snippet code for reviews and places. The plugin supports the new Schema.org format used by Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
Rich Contact Widget
Rich Contact Widget is a WordPress plugin that basically includes contact widgets. It comes with enhanced markup for microdatas & microformats, so that search engines can use this information in their search results.
This plugin can help display contact informations about your business or yourself in search results, and even a map with your location.
You can also display a static image map of your location, linking to the address’ Google Maps page, and display a download link for a vCard.
Author hReview
Author hReview adds hReview and AggregateRating support based on schema.org. This plugin supports only the editorial ratings submission (author rating) which means contributors and visitors won’t be able to submit reviews. The plus point of this is that the ratings reflect only the author’s personal opinion and not of site visitors.
One of the most noticeable feature of the Author hReview plugin is the ease of use. This plugin make use of meta boxes which allows you to easily insert your review and rating information to your blog posts and pages.
Rich Snippets WordPress Plugin
This plugin automatically pre-installs seven shortcodes that are ready-to-use. But it‘s also possible to create new shortcodes with your own microdata markup that you need for future purposes. This can be done very easy with the built-in Shortcode-Generator.
Download Rich Snippets WordPress Plugin