Rich Cards: Changing face of SEO

Google has recently added the upgraded version of “rich snippets” to “rich cards” in Webmaster. It is actually enhanced visual design of rich snippets to attract more attention from searchers.  Rich cards uses the same type of schema markup as rich snippets but the difference being is that they will show up in organic searches in mobile view.

Google has added four options recipes, events, products, reviews but only two of them “recipes and movies” are currently available and others are for testing. It’s unknown whether or not they will be available for other products and services in the future. Google has already announced that it’s looking into the possibility of making rich cards accessible to other types of publishers. It’s just a matter of time before that happens.

What are rich cards?

The results on Google have changed significantly from standard results to rich snippets and now to rich cards.  Standard results were the text that showed up in the result pages, where as the rich snippets consists of some additional information like review, featured image, price etc, whereas the rich cards have evolved for an enhanced visual design for organic mobile search results.

Standard results

 

Rich Snippets Results

 

Rich Cards Result

 

How to implement Rich Cards?

Google has made implementation of Rich cards very simple. Although is only available for movies and recipes but soon Google will make possible for you to use for products and events also.  You can find rich cards option under Search Appearance.

Rich cards use JSON-LD  method of encoding Linked Data using JSON. Basically, it enables you to offer Google additional data that can be used for rich snippets and card on Google’s result pages. You can modify the coding according to your requirements.

After you have completed the editing you can see the preview and publish it.

How they will affect ranking?

The evolution of rich cards in SEO has transformed the search experience by primarily focusing on the images and little text to give richer mobile user experience. As we know that schema markup has high impact on CTR.  Google also show rich answers for most of the queries. Users also give importance to images rather than plain text and will definitely click them.  If you are using rich card or snippets your searches will dramatically change in SERP’s because implementing rich cards have high potential of making your keyword visible.  It does not mean that if you don’t use them Google will penalize you, but sooner you start using them the better results you will have.

Heading Tags – An Important Aspect Of On-Page SEO

As we know heading tags are imperative for every web document to structure the content. By using Heading Tags we differentiate our web page content. Use heading tags for headings only not for making Text Large or Bold. 

Definition of Heading Tags

Heading Tags are well-defined by W3Schools that <h1> to <h6> tags are used to define Heading on a web document. “According to W3Schools – <h1></h1> is the foremost heading which is very important for any web document and <h6></h6> is the least important heading that holds very less importance in a web document as compared to other heading tags. ”

Defined Heading Tags are:

• <h1>some text here</h1>
• <h2> some text here </h2>
• <h3> some text here </h3>
• <h4> some text here </h4>
• <h5> some text here </h5>
• <h6> some text here </h6>

h1 tag should be main headings which if followed by further h2, h3 and so on. The h1 is usually the boldest one whereas h6 font size is small so don’t get confuse yourself and stop thinking that Heading Tags as merely formatting for the web pages and for Search Engines Heading Tags are for just categorization of content on web page.

Heading Tags come with various attributes to make user-friendly websites but Search Engines use these defined headings to solely index the structure and content of web documents. In other words, you can say that Heading Tags are used to show the web document structure.

How to use the Heading Tags within your webpage according to the SEO point of view?

Apart from the web designing point of view, there are a few more things that you should know about Heading Tags.

– Purpose of using Heading Tags

The main purpose of incorporating heading tags in your web page to just categorizing your content with different headings so that your design become more user friendly and people will get a notion about you website more easily by just reading the headings.

Now we know h1 tag is most important tag so  whenever you going to use it for your web page heading just try to make it like that people get an idea about your website just reading your heading. So that h1 tag should be in that way which describes everything about your web page just in one shot.

– Hierarchy

Hierarchy on your web page should be like <h1> comes first which is followed <h2>, <h2> followed by <h3>, <h3> followed by <h4>, <h4> followed by <h5> and <h5> followed by <h6>.  For better SEO of your web page one should have to follow the hierarchy in this way.

– Headings Tags with Keywords

Keywords are first and foremost priority of any SEO Expert. In the matter, we first do the research of best keywords according to the web page and then categorize these keywords into focus keyword, primary keyword, secondary keyword and tertiary keyword. Focus Keyword is always one for the web page. It’s better to include your focus keyword into title, Meta tags and h1 of web page.

– Frequency of Using the Heading Tags especially h1 tag

It is recommended that one should have to use h1 tag per web page because h1 tag should be like a newspaper heading and other content should be structured with subheadings by following the hierarchy of heading tags. Using of subheadings would be depends on the way your content is structured.

H1 Tag In Latest HTML5

Html5 gives a full-flexibility to designers to use H1 tags where they want to use it but they ought to consider the hierarchy of heading tags. In the previous versions of Html, only one h1 tag is allowed to designers to use per web document and what people do that time – they just used h1 tag to wrap the business logo on the web page which is important for any business web page and start the main heading of the web page with the h2 tag. But with the help of updated version of Html i.e. HTML5 which allows designer to have multiple h1 tags on a web page according to the requirements of design.

As I said you can use multiple h1 tags in your web page to categorizing the different section on web page but one question is always raised in your mind that If we use multiple h1 tags on the same web document then which h1 tag would be consider first by Search Engines —- Right???

The answer is it all depends on your web document design- such as you used h1 tag in your header to wrap your web page logo in it and another h1 tag you used it for your web page main heading which describing your web page. Let consider that you also have one more h1 tag for your sidebar – Now what Search Engines do with h1 Tags – As we know Search Engines consider heading tags by hierarchy so the h1 tag which used in a webpage will consider first and then that h1 tag which is used in a sidebar.