What Is SEO Rich Text?

You might think your website only has one audience: target customers. In reality, you should always create content with two groups in mind, both visitors and search engines. The way you structure information for people isn’t necessarily what Google sees. Even the most engaging content can benefit from SEO rich text.

What Is SEO Rich Text for Search Results?

As far as online search is concerned, rich text refers to structured data that helps Google understand the content of a webpage. It’s a type of web “vocabulary” that outlines key information about blog articles, product pages, and other online content. Many websites use the JavaScript format called JSON-LD for rich text markup.

Behind the Scenes on Your Website

Visitors see the visual side of your site: attractive images, formatted text, videos, links, and buttons. This is the front end.

On the other hand, search engines and technical SEO focus on the back end. Like the building materials for a house, every page uses HTML code to “build” content. SEO rich text is a section of foundational code that works like construction blueprints.

Normal SEO Content

Before diving into what SEO rich content is, we need to emphasize how normal search results work. For “types of home insurance,” Google normally shows:

• Page title
• Short meta description resuming the article 
• Business name

These elements may be enough to convince some users to click, but rich text results are even more persuasive.

Types of SEO Rich Content

If you don’t spend much time with the HTML side of your website, don’t worry. Understanding rich content is easier with a few examples:

• Reviews: Rich results often display the average star ratings for products, courses, and businesses.
• Recipe data: Rich text for recipes can include the main ingredients or the time it takes to cook.
• Products: Search results for products can show images, item prices, ratings, descriptions, and availability.
• Business information: Business searches often include phone numbers, directions, map links, written reviews, star ratings, and hours of operation.

Other Google features for search engine results pages tend to pull from rich text information, too, such as featured snippets, image carousels, and video results. If you’re creating content hoping to snag a featured snippet, using schema markup can only help.

Why Is SEO Rich Text Important for Your Content?

Adding structured data doesn’t directly affect search rankings. Google doesn’t automatically rank websites with schema higher than ones without. That said, SEO rich text does support your SERP efforts indirectly.

1. Smarter Web Crawling

When Google’s crawlers index a web page, they look at HTML elements such as headings, paragraphs, and lists. Schema simplifies the process and draws attention to specific elements you want to highlight. For example, you can point out when text is part of a customer testimonial instead of the page’s normal content.

2. Relevant Search Terms

The better search engines understand your web page, the more likely they are to show the content to the right audience.

Imagine that your law firm creates an article about personal injury lawyers. The target audience is people who need legal assistance, not law students or doctors. SEO rich text helps Google grasp the purpose behind the article, connecting it with related keywords and search queries.

3. Rich Results

Google only displays rich snippets for websites that follow schema markup. If you want your product pages to show reviews, star ratings, pricing, images, or other details, you have to create matching rich content.

Ideally, you should have a type of featured results in mind while planning the blog article or web page.

4. E-Commerce Pages

Organizing SEO content with rich text can help you get better results with product pages. Schemas let you mark variations of the same product. That way, Google displays a variety of summer dresses from your site instead of 20 colors of the same dress.

5. Great SEO Results

The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Many websites have seen a noticeable impact in SEO-related metrics after using rich text:

• The Food Network noticed a 35% bump in traffic with schema markup.
• Nestle’s pages with rich results get 80% more clicks than their other pages.
• ZipRecruiter experienced a 350% boost in conversions after applying rich text.

At the end of the day, SEO rich text creates the right conditions to attract your target customers. The result is often more clicks, traffic, leads, and sales.

How Do You Add Rich Text?

You don’t need coding experience to use schema markup. There are user-friendly options for creating rich text and inserting it into your web content, such as the free Structured Data Markup Helper from Google. To use this tool:

• 1. In the URL box, paste the link for the web page you want to tag. (e.g., “https://www.misc12.com/blog/129009”)
• 2. Select the type of schema content your page contains, such as products, restaurants, local businesses, or events.
• 3. Click on “Start Tagging.”
• 4. Fill out the related tags on the right side of the screen, such as product name, brand, review rating, price, or images.
• 5. To add information, highlight the data on your web page and click the related tag. For example, highlight the average review score and then click “Rating value.”
• 6. Once you finish tagging the page, click “Create HTML.”
• 7. Paste the generated code at the top of your page’s HTML, right below the <head> tag.

If you’re using WordPress, you can access your page’s HTML from the Options (three dots) panel. Under Editor, click on “Code editor” instead of “Visual editor.” Once you’ve finished adding the structured data, you can switch it back.

Benefit From SEO Rich Text for Your Website

Technical SEO takes time, but it delivers valuable traffic and leads. The right SEO rich text makes your products stand out in search results with attractive images, ratings, and more, so users are more likely to click on your page. Discover other practical tips for your SEO content right away.