Higher click rates with Rich Snippets

Your SEO stars in Google search

Stars ratings are not only displayed in Google AdWords but also in organic (unpaid) search results. SEO stars are a form of Rich Snippet displayed as additional information underneath the basic search results.

Rich snippets

Rich Snippets enhance a search result with additional information. Rich Snippets are for example breadcrumbs, photos, event information or rating stars which are displayed underneath a search result.

In order to display the rating stars as Rich Snippets, search engines must be able to obtain and interpret relevant information: structured data. To make your pages eligible for Rich Snippets in search results, add structured data to the source code of your website by using a specific vocabulary (schema.org), that all the major search engines comply with.




SEO stars in Google

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and includes the organic (unpaid) results from search engines. SEO consists in following certain rules and techniques in order for a website to obtain a good ranking in search results after having been analysed by a search engine.

Why bother with SEO stars?

Rich snippets effectively contribute to search engine optimization. The displayed stars are a real eye-catcher: they attract the user’s attention to a particular search result which will thereby be clicked on more often. Results with high click rates are in turn classified by search engines as particularly relevant for the searcher. This serves to positively influence the ranking of the website in question. A better ranking means more visitors on the website. More visitors means more clients and more clients means more customer reviews. 

How SEO stars work

With "ReviewRating", ratings are identified as a specific type of Rich Snippets and subsequently assigned a scale (here from 1 to 5). This enables the overall established rating (5) to be classified within the scale (display of 5 stars).

<div class="notewrapper" itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating">
<meta itemprop="worstRating" content="1" />
<meta itemprop="bestRating" content="5" />
<meta itemprop="ratingValue" content="5.00" />

With the “vertical” full-page version of the Review Sticker, the displayed reviews directly comply with the schema.org format. This means that if the page containing the integrated Review Sticker is ranked within surch results, the rating stars will be displayed as Rich Snippet underneath the search result. However, this only applies to this particular page.

Appart from correct implementation in the source code, the following requirements apply: 

  • the rating score must be visible to the website's visitors
  • the rating must be specific and not general
SEO stars are generally available worldwide.

 

Local ratings

Stars in local search results are also part of organic search results, but they have different requirements. When you collect reviews for a local business, you can mark them with structured data, as for other types of reviews. However, the stars will only be displayed in normal Google search results, not within the specialised local Google search results. Google currently only collects local reviews with its own solutions, for example via Google My Business.

Lokale Bewertungssterne SEO

What about stars in Google AdWords?

Stars behave quite differently in paid Google AdWords search results. With Google Adwords, stars are integrated as a “seller rating” extension.