Rich Content and Rich Snippets: A Must for Your WordPress Blog

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1. What is rich content?
2. Types of rich content
3. Why does your blog need rich content?
4. What are rich snippets?
5. Why do you need rich snippets?
6. Rich snippets plugins
7. Conclusion

It’s not really a secret that not every post will drive lots of attention from the blog audience. You might say that it can’t be foreseen – who knows what the people want to read at any given time? However, that’s not really true. If you do some research, you will see the patterns without any trouble. Even if the SEO is perfect and an article is shown first in the search results list, most likely it will still get less engagement than a post full of useful and interesting information. These kinds of posts are called “rich content” and they are always more likely to attract attention and encourage engagement.

What is rich content?

Rich content, or rich media, is a type of content that gives the user a wider experience and offers them something to interact with. A text with static pictures is just an article but if you add a video, quotes, survey, or interview – it will become rich content. People hate long plain texts – they get tired and bored reading them. That’s why a post that has different entertaining features a reader could agree (or disagree) with, interactive elements, and marked texts will have many more views, likes, and comments than an ordinary boring article.

Types of rich content

Blog post

You can ask: “Hey, didn’t you just say that an article is not rich text?” Yep, that’s correct but a blog post is not only mere text with pictures. It typically has links to other pages, and it can be rated and commented on. If it is written really well it makes the reader want to write a comment or share it on his social media. A blog post is definitely rich content because the visitors of the blog can interact with it in some way (if you didn’t add any interactive elements to your blog… well, I have some bad news for you).

Video

If you still don’t shoot videos on your topic – it is time to start. People love watching videos more than reading texts and if they have an opportunity – they will choose to watch, not to read. According to Cisco research, by 2022 the part that video plays in internal traffic will reach 80%. Everyday users of Facebook have watched videos 8 billion times, so, as you can see, videos are quite popular. They interact with the user, speak to him, and make him feel involved.

Audio file or podcast

Although most of the videos on Facebook are watched while muted, there are still lots of cases when audios and podcasts are more convenient than text. While reading you have to concentrate on the text and when you are listening to something – your hands and eyes are free to do something else. When you put on your headphones and start listening to something you immediately feel an intimate atmosphere.

Animated infographics

Infographics are themselves a great way of displaying data. It is understandable, clear, and interesting to go through. Animated infographics that move while you scroll down is even better because it makes the user feel some kind of interaction with it. This kind of rich content makes the viewer focus on every detail, leaving him absolutely no chances to miss something.

Conversation-type surveys

This kind of survey gives the visitor one question at a time, showing the next one after the user answers the previous. This happens just like in a real conversation with a live person and that’s why they are called “conversation-type.” Nobody likes long and boring questionnaires – if the user sees more than 10 questions he will probably refuse to spend his time on it. However, conversation-type surveys make it a little easier and more interactive, so chances are that the user will finish it.

Why does your blog need rich content?

To attract a larger audience, of course! In fact, the whole blog itself is a platform created for gathering as many interested readers as possible. Sooner or later you will want to monetize your blog. The bigger the audience and traffic – the more popular the blog and the bigger the profit from it. So, actually, the better the content – the bigger your outcome. Rich content attracts much more attention from users.

That’s why you should start to draw infographics and animate them, shoot videos, and record podcasts, and, of course, use all that stuff in your blog. WordPress has all the possible tools for creating and adding rich content, so it would really be a crime if you don’t use it.

What are rich snippets?

First of all, let’s define a “snippet.” A snippet is a short text that you can see in the search results list under the link to the website. It gives a brief description of the page you are going to land on if you click the link. If the snippet has the words you were using in search – Google will mark them bold for your convenience. Lots of users decide if they really want to go to that page by reading the snippet.

The rich snippet has something in common with rich content. It is also a short description of the page but it gives the user some additional, richer than usual, information. Ratings of the page, cost of the product and its stock level, additional contact details – rich snippets allow you to add this kind of information to the ordinary snippet. Such tricks make it look bigger, cooler, and more interesting.

Why do you need rich snippets?

First of all – the attraction. Yep, once again, you need rich snippets to attract more people. In the modern world everything that could catch the eye wins. Rich snippets are more visible than ordinary ones, so they have more chances to make the user go to the website.

The second advantage – better interaction with the search engine. Rich snippets help you to mark the type of content presented on the page. That gives the search engine an opportunity to understand what your blog contains and improves the results of the search. That also allows it to show the page more specifically for some requests. The better your interaction with the search engine – the better your blog’s position in the ranking and the higher position in the search engine results list.

Rich snippets plugins

There is an option in WordPress to add rich snippets to your pages manually. However, it demands strong coding knowledge, so I won’t be showing it to you here. Lots of professional web developers created convenient plugins that could help you with much more ease.

Schema

This is the most popular free rich snippets plugin that anyone can download on WordPress.org. It has a quite nice rating there (4 stars) and has been downloaded more than 100,000 times. It allows you to add a photo of the author, rating, image, etc. to the short description of the page. The content can be marked as reviews, events, products, recipes, apps, videos, or articles. The authors of the plugin, the Brainstorm Force team is constantly working on updates, so in some time new options will be available for users.

Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP

Also, there is a rather new plugin that doesn’t have many reviews yet but is very promising. It already has 33 marking options like “blog post”, “course”, “tech article” or “service”. The Magazine3 team and its creators say that they will continue to add those options and even encourage users to write to them about what would they like to see. The plugin is completely compatible with AMP and several other plugins like bbPress and kk Star Ratings. It displays Google reviews and supports the breadcrumbs listing. Besides all that, the plugin has a convenient installation wizard.

Rank Math

This plugin is not only for adding rich snippets. It was created to help the user improve his blog’s SEO, so it is more a combination of tools than a separate plugin. However, it allows the user to add rich snippets to the pages because they can make the search engine ranking higher. Besides the rich snippets, this plugin also gives users the option of optimizing keywords, analyzing the SEO of your website, adding a 404 page, and much more. The plugin is completely free, so you don’t have to worry about pricing.

Conclusion

Today, rich content and rich snippets are a must for a modern blog. I hope that this article allowed you to come to the same conclusion. Start creating videos, podcasts, and other rich content; download some rich snippets plugins and gather a big audience of devoted fans. Go on, don’t waste your time!