What do Structured Snippets do for your Business?

Think of structured snippets as an elevator pitch that gives you the power to put your best foot forward. The only catch is that since Google has created this feature for informational purposes, you cannot add any sales-y lines to it. 

What you can do is describe a product or a range of products, enumerating their specifics and services. For example, an ad for a tech shop may look like this – 

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Structured snippets help you by making your ad more enticing and clickable. The additional details work as a CTA for someone in search of a specific solution. They essentially add to your relevance, aligning your business with their goals. 

How do structured snippets work for a B2B organization?

The Google ads extension allows you to decide what, when and how your snippets shall appear to your key audience. Headers with their supporting values can be added on the account, campaign or group level. 

Amenities, brands, courses, degree programs, destinations, featured hotels, insurance coverage, models, neighbourhoods, service catalogue, shows, styles, and types are the categories available for your perusal. The most crucial point to note here is that your value should justify the header. For example, under the Brands header, the values mentioned should be actual names and not the number of brands or promotional adjectives. 

Using structured snippets, a B2B firm could claim additional real estate on the SERP and expand on their prime products. Interestingly, the categories provided are comprehensive enough to cover most businesses and their workings. 

As a marketer, you can manually input one or more headers to highlight your uniqueness. In the case of multiple headers, Google chooses the best ones to display and hence, limiting their use is a recommended strategy. 

What are the benefits of structured snippets? 

Being an extension of Google Ads, there are tangible advantages and plausible reasons to harness this feature to the fullest. 

• Structured snippets are free of cost. Your PPC ad is charged similar to your earlier campaign.
• They make your ad more robust by providing additional information to the audience. Plus, you have total control over what is displayed.
• Bigger ad space means more chances of being noticed, giving you an edge over the organic results.
• Better click-through rates can be experienced, thanks to the excess relevance and added messaging power.
• An opportunity to highlight your key elements and expanding on your service catalogue is provided.

What are the limitations and workarounds? 

First and foremost, unlike other ad extensions, structured snippets are not clickable. The brands, services or products mentioned cannot be placed as separate links. Hence, your landing page should be a culmination of the complete ad and optimized to address what your prospect is looking for.  

While desktops provide the option for two lines, only one header is visible on mobile and tablets. Working in a B2B space, your task here would be to pack in maximum value in a limited set. Anyways, you only have a 25-character limit for each snippet value so, use it frugally. 

The end-goal with structured snippets should be to showcase your top-of-the-line inventory that calls for attention on its own. 

How are they different from rich and featured snippets?

In simple terms, a rich snippet is an organic search result enhanced for immediate information flow. For example, a review rating below an apple pie recipe can be called rich. They root from structured data on your website that is picked up by the crawlers. The underlying concept is setting a schema that is easily recognized by the algorithm and finds relevance within a user’s search query. It is the first step towards holding a featured snippet—the little box of details that rises above all other results. 

On the other hand, structured snippets are a part of your Google Ads. They do not require any effort in the SEO area. Just optimize your campaign, and you’re good to go. 

What does the introduction of structured snippets mean for search engine marketing?

In a world that focuses on creating authority and recognition through SEO, a structured snippet is an anomaly that gives Google’s customers an upper hand. It is advisable and highly recommended that you run all extensions available at your disposal to be at the top. 

For a B2B marketer, it is a clear indication that even with the evolution of Google’s SERP, there shall always be a place for the spenders and the ad runners.