By Charlie Cummins – bbmm.ie

Another of the Google Breakfast Briefings took place again today at Google’s EMEA HQ in Barrow Street. The presentation topic was on “Using Structured Data to Enhance Organic Search Presence”. The presentation began by making the point that mobile search does provide not the same user experience as that used on laptop. Mobile search is a different experience and it’s done more frequently and from a wide variety of environments.

Google BB

The Numbers

Some interesting statistics were presented at the start of presentation to highlight how extensive searches have become:

  • There are 4 Million internet uses in Ireland
  • There are 5 Million mobiles subscribers. This is more than the population – an indication of multi device users
  • The average user checks their phone 150+ times per day
  • People can spend up to 177 minutes daily using their devices
  • Mobile conversation rates have increased more that 29% over the past year.

Maximising That Potential in Search

To make the best possible inroads into this potential – and very active – audience, owners of websites (especially those who use their site to directly sell product/ services) should implement and use the following:
1. Knowledge Graph Cards
2. Event Mark-up
3. Rich Cards
4. Measure the Results.

Knowledge Graph Cards

These are additional search result, populated by Google, and returned in organic brand searches. Google populates the “cards” with data from authoritative sources (such as your website, google my business, review and other linked sources. The help Google create the best possible Knowledge Graph Card for your business, your website shroud also be registered on Google’s Search Console. Then a relatively simply piece of code can be added into your website’s page, which will instruct Google on what are your important highlights. And you can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to check that the coding is functioning properly.

Event Mark Up

This offers the same type of code input as noted above, but specifically tailored to populate a Knowledge Graphs Card with details of upcoming events (great for theatres, festivals, movies and so on).

Rich Cards

This is a now offering from Google, introduced last week. Rich cards are a new Search result format building on the success of rich snippets. Just like rich snippets, rich cards use schema.org structured mark-up to display content in an even more engaging and visual format, with a focus on providing a better mobile user experience. With rich cards, results are presented in carousels that are easy to browse by scrolling left and right. Carousels can contain cards all from the same site or from multiple sites.

Rich Cards

Measure the Results.

Once your site is registered on the Google Search Console, you can use the inherent tools with this to measure the effectiveness of how well your Knowledge Graph Cards are working. The Search Console offers a wealth of searchable information such as numbers of clicks, impressions, errors spotted and so on.

More information on the above can be found at https://developers.google.com/knowledge-graph/
or email us at BBMM to see how we can enhance your search results.