Warnings About Rich Snippet Mark Up No One Is Talking About

I recently learnt about a neat little SEO feature called Rich Snippet, which lets you display a short snippet of data alongside your regular search engine search results. Such snippets instantly attract any user's attention and give you significantly higher CTR. When this feature was introduced, it was intended to enhance the design of search listings and pass more information onto the users in a subtle way.

Given the promise of higher CTRs and search traffic, webmasters raced to adopt this new feature, which is extremely easy to implement and can be applied to different types of web content like reviews, recipes, product listings, business listings, people profiles etc. All you need to do is add a few line of very basic codes that help search engines better parse the most valuable information on your page. Anyone with some entry level programming skills should be able to do it.

At first glance, it seems like a no-brainer. Why would anyone not want to do it? However, before you rush off to add this to your site, I'd like to share with you a couple of warnings you will not find on Google's official rich snippet page or the official schema website which provides instructions and examples on how to set up the rich snippets.

What you need to be aware of is that you could potentially LOSE traffic instead if those rich snippets are not implemented correctly.

Why does this happen?

Well, precisely because it is so easy to implement and its results so significant, unsurprisingly a lot of people couldn't resist the temptation and tried to manipulate it to gain traffic, like marking up data that do not exist. This directly pollutes Google's search results with fraudulent data. Given Google's obsession with user experience and search quality, this is a big no no and penalties should be expected.

If Google detects any problems in the implementation of your rich snippets mark up, there is a good chance you will be slammed by algorithmic penalty immediately. Your search traffic will drop anywhere between 10 - 40%. In Google's latest Penguin update, they have outlined a number of practices that would incur a penalty. Misuse of Rich Snippets is one of them.

Therefore, you should only consider adding rich snippets to your site if they are really relevant to your content and if your content is of high enough quality and depth that can fulfill all of the required properties. And then proceed carefully and make sure you mark up the data correctly.

It is very important for any SEO practitioner to remember it always comes down to data quality and user experience. In order to increase your search ranking, you must demonstrate to the search engines that your data is superior and your site is trustworthy. Do not attempt anything that could damage your site's perceived trustworthiness. Think in the shoes of Google, what would make you want to display your site ahead of these other high quality, highly competitive websites?

Dawson Gao is a member of lacartes.com - an online community that helps people find local businesses, meet new friends and search for jobs.

He has written numerous articles about SEO and internet marketing and regularly advices small businesses on e-commerce and free online marketing techniques.