I've often found my self saying the words, "technology is not a panacea", whenever I hear organizations looking to focus what I think are excessive energy on search engine optimization. My thoughts have been that spending that time and money on writing great content, rather than trying to manipulate search engine rankings.
But what if a simple technology switch could more effectively highlight your organization's website content in search engine results, and thereby make it more likely that visitors would click on your links rather than others? And what if the solution was easy and affordable?
I figure you'd probably try it.
So, what's this differentiator you can implement immediately for your website? It's called Rich Snippets.
Today, Google allows you to use their rich snippets for a variety of useful content types:
One interesting snippet that can really make your listings stand out in Google search results is the authorship snippet. Following their instructions, when your blog posts are related to your Google+ account visitors that find your blog posts in search engine results will see your photo and byline. Having your photo next to your blog post in search results increases the trustworthiness of your content, and thereby increasing the likelihood that your link will be clicked over a competitors.
Some folks have seen +150% growth in click rates to their sites from Google search results just by adding this simple microformat to their content.
As Google continues to crack down on search engine optimization manipulation, it's more critical than ever to find ways to make your content stand out from the rest of the crowd. Implementing these rich snippets could help lead you in the right direction of increased click throughs and higher conversion rates on your website.
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