Search Engine Optimization

Do you need an SEO?

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SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Review of your site content or structure</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Content development</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Management of online business development campaigns</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Keyword research</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">SEO training</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Expertise in specific markets and geographies.</li>
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Keep in mind that the Google search results page includes organic search results and often paid advertisement (denoted as "Ads" or "Sponsored") as well. Advertising with Google won't have any effect on your site's presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. Free resources such as <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Search Console</a>, the official <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Webmaster Central blog</a>, and our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/webmasters?" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">discussion forum</a> can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for organic search.</div>
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Before beginning your search for an SEO, it's a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend starting here:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/answer.py?answer=35769" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Google Webmaster Guidelines</a></li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/answer.py?answer=70897" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web.</a></li>
</ul>
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If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.</div>
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Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What's your experience in my industry?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What's your experience in my country/city?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What's your experience developing international sites?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">What are your most important SEO techniques?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">How long have you been in business?</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?</li>
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While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index. Here are some things to consider:</div>
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One common scam is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.</div>
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Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.</div>
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If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.</div>
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In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: <a href="http://www.ftc.gov/" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.ftc.gov/</a> and click on "File a Complaint Online," call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:</div>
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Federal Trade Commission<br />CRC-240<br />Washington, D.C. 20580</blockquote>
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If your complaint is against a company in a country other than the United States, please file it at <a href="http://www.econsumer.gov/" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">http://www.econsumer.gov/</a>.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:</div>
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<em>"Dear google.com,<br />I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."</em></blockquote>
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Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our <a href="http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Add URL</a> page or by submitting a <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">Sitemap</a> and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>You should never have to link to an SEO.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Choose wisely.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html" style="color: #7759ae; text-decoration-line: none;">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html</a>. While Google doesn't comment on specific companies, we've encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.</div>
</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>Be sure to understand where the money goes.</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?</strong></li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;"><strong>What are some other things to look out for?</strong><div style="margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 4px;">
There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:</div>
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<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">owns shadow domains</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">puts links to their other clients on doorway pages</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">offers to sell keywords in the address bar</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware</li>
<li style="list-style-type: none; margin: 4px 0px; padding-left: 16px;">has had domains removed from Google's index or is not itself listed in Google</li>
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</li>
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Do you need an SEO?

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big ...

what is SEO?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization, and there is nothing 
really mystical about it. You might have heard a lot about SEO and how 
it works, but basically what it is is a measurable, repeatable process 
that is used to send signals to search engines that your pages are worth
 showing in Google’s index.<br />

Basically Google uses a complex mathematical formula called an 
algorithm to give a score to every website and every search people to do
 in Google to figure out which website should rank best for what people 
are looking for. Think of the algorithm like a collection of empty 
buckets. One bucket gives you a score for the quality of your site, one 
bucket gives you a score for how many sites link to you, one bucket 
gives you a score for how people trust you. Your job is to fill up more 
buckets in the algorithm than any other website. You can affect your 
search engine ranking by having the highest score in terms of quality of
 your site, of having the highest score in terms of authority of your 
website, of having the highest score in terms of the most trusted store 
for that search that people are looking for. The good thing is that 
there are hundreds of buckets, and for every single one of these buckets
 these scores put together in the algorithm to figure out where you rank
 is an opportunity for you to fill it up and rank better. So optimizing 
your site for search results really means getting the highest score in 
as many of these points as you can.<br />

Now, some buckets are worth more than others, and the three main 
buckets that you need to be aware of for search rankings are quality, 
trust and authority. So quality: what Google is trying to measure when 
they’re trying to figure out what sites should rank is offering 
something valuable or unique or interesting to googles searchers. For 
example: good content - if you are selling t-shirts
 and you are using the same description that every other t-shirt seller 
is using on their website then you are not offering anything unique to 
Google’s searchers. Even though your t-shirts might look pretty cool, 
the content is the same as everybody else’s, so Google has no way of 
telling that your t-shirts or your t-shirt site is better than anybody 
else’s. Instead, offer people interesting content. For example: offer 
them the ability to personalize their t-shirt. Give them information on 
how to wash it. What’s the thread count? Is it stain resistant? Is this 
something you should wear in the summer or is it more heavy for winter? 
Give people information, or even be more creative. Get people to share 
pictures of themselves wearing the t-shirt. Create a community of people
 who are interested in your product. Get a famous person to wear it and 
share that picture online. Do something different, do something unique. 
Show Google that you are different and better than the other search 
results.<br />

Trust is another important bucket that you need to be aware of when 
you are trying to get your site to rank in Google. Google doesn’t want 
to show just any website to it’s searchers, it wants to show the best 
website to its searchers, and so it wants to show sites that are 
trustworthy. One thing Google has indicated it likes to do is penalize 
sites or stores or companies that consistently have poor reviews, so if 
you have many poor reviews, in time Google is going to figure out not to
 show your site in their rankings because Google doesn’t want to show 
those sites to their searchers. So prove to Google’s algorithm that you 
are trustworthy. Get other highly authoritative websites to link to you.
 Get newspaper articles, get industry links, get other trusted sites to 
link to you: partners, vendors, happy customers - get them to link to 
your website to show that you are highly credible and trustworthy.<br />

And finally, the other really important bucket is authority. Google 
wants to show sites that are popular. If they can show the most popular 
t-shirt seller to people looking to buy t-shirts online, that’s the site
 they want to show. So you have to convince Google - send them signals 
that your site is the most popular site for the kind of t-shirts that 
you sell. Fill this bucket by building a fan base. Build a social 
network, get people to link to you, get people to share your t-shirt 
pages on their social network saying ‘I want this!’, get people to 
comment, leave testimonials, show pictures of themselves wearing the 
product or using the product, Create a fan-base and then rally them to 
link to you and talk about you. That’s how you prove to Google that you 
are trustworthy and authoritative.<br />

So if you think about it, SEO is really just a process of proving to 
search engines that you are the best site, the most authoritative, the 
most trusted, the most unique and interesting site that they can offer 
to their customer - the searcher. Get people to talk about you, produce 
good quality content, get people to link to you, and Google will be more
 confident that you are the best result that they can offer to their 
searchers, and that’s when you will start ranking on the first page of 
Google.

what is SEO?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization, and there is nothing really mystical about it. You might have heard a lot about SEO and how i...

Google’s Listings Of Internal Site Links For Top Search Results

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Sometimes when you see the top search result in Google, under it is a list of links to other pages on the same site. Ever wondered how and why that happens?</div>
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For example, a search for “wordpress” shows the wordpress.org page at the top of the search engine results page, with a link to the site, and a snippet of text from the wordpress home page. Then under that are links to other pages on that site, including; Download, Hosting, Extend, Blog, and “More results from wordpress.org.”</div>
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Here’s an image, from the US Patent and Trademark Office, of a result for the search “hp” which shows a link to the HP web site at the top of the results, and additional links to pages from that site:</div>
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<img alt="image from the US Patent and Trademark Office showing a search results page with additional links from the top search result displayed." height="272" src="http://www.seobythesea.com/wp-images/siteindex.gif" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="350" /></div>
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<span id="more-406" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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I’ve had a few people ask me how Google does that, and while I could provide some ideas, I couldn’t provide more than that. Google published a patent application this week which gives a little more insight into the process.</div>

Google’s Listings Of Internal Site Links For Top Search Results

Sometimes when you see the top search result in Google, under it is a list of links to other pages on the same site. Ever wondered how and ...

RICH SNIPPETS & STAR RATINGS FOR GOOGLE

<header style="border: 0px !important; color: #555555; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3999996185303px; line-height: 28.7999992370605px;"><h2 class="excerpt" itemprop="description" style="border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; clear: both; color: #777777; font-family: Gafata; font-weight: normal; padding: 20px 0px; visibility: visible;">
See Your Search Results Before they Appear on Google & add Star Ratings to your Reviews with One Click w the new real time SERPS preview in ClickBump 6.5</h2>
<div class="meter" itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating" style="font-size: 12.960000038147px; text-align: center;">
<span class="star s5" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://clickbump.com/wp-content/themes/clickbump/sprite.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px -2100px !important; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; display: inline-block; height: 13px; margin-bottom: 3px; text-align: left !important; vertical-align: middle; width: 71px;"></span> Rating: 5 (out of 5)</div>
</header><div class="entry" itemprop="reviewBody" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3999996185303px; line-height: 28.7999992370605px; position: relative; text-align: justify; z-index: 0;">
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<img alt="rich-snippets4" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3569" height="205" src="http://clickbump.com/wp-content/uploads/rich-snippets4.png" style="height: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="606" /></div>
I’ve just put the finishing touches on TWO major new features that will ship with next update of <a href="http://clickbumpengine.com/" style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #2970a6; text-decoration: none;">ClickBump Theme</a> (Version 6.5) - <strong>Google Rich Snippets </strong><em>and</em><strong> Google Search Preview.</strong><br />
I’m already running the 6.5 theme (in private beta) here on ClickBump.com and on the <a href="http://rdio.clickbump.com/" style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #2970a6; text-decoration: none;">Rdio Test Drive</a> site.<br />
<blockquote style="border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; color: rgb(127, 127, 127) !important; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 18.7199993133545px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 10px 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 10px 0px 50px; position: relative; quotes: “, “;">
If you are not familiar with the terms “<strong>Rich Snippets</strong>“, “<strong>Structured Data</strong>“, or “<strong>Schema.org</strong>” don’t worry about it. I’m going to boil it all down to something we can all understand – <strong><em>Search Results</em></strong>.</blockquote>
Far too many of the SEOs I read tend to make this way too complicated. And the examples at <a href="http://schema.org/" style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #2970a6; text-decoration: none;">schema.org</a> are not much help. Many of them don’t even validate in the Google <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets" style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #2970a6; text-decoration: none;">Structure Data Testing Tool</a> - aka <em>The Rich Snippets Testing Tool</em>.<br />
These fancy terms all refer to to the same thing: <em>a data vocabulary that can be used to mark up web pages to help better classify them for search</em>. More importantly for web publishers, your pages get special highlighted search results listings like this:<br />
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<img alt="rich-snippets2" class="size-full wp-image-158" height="107" src="http://clickbump.com/wp-content/uploads/rich-snippets2.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px !important; max-width: 100%;" width="503" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="font-size: 11.5200004577637px; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px 0px 5px;">
Rich Snippets Enabled Search Results with ClickBump 5+</div>
</div>
If you have been running the ClickBump theme for WordPress (version 5.0 or better), you’ve had the ability to add “authorship” markup to your site pages and posts in order to get highlighted search results like that for some time now.<br />
<h2 style="font-family: 'Fjalla One'; font-size: 21.6000003814697px; font-weight: normal !important; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; text-align: center; visibility: visible;">
But now with automated rich snippets & star ratings…</h2>
With version 6.5, I’ve automated the schema.org markup (no need to wade through endless form fields to add data that’s already part of your post) and added the option to apply one-click star ratings to your reviews. For example, you can assign a reviewed item a star rating (from 1 to 5, including half points like 3.5, 4.5, etc). Those listings will look like this:<br />
<div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_159" style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 20px auto; padding: 5px 0px 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; width: 514px; z-index: 5;">
<img alt="rich-snippets" class="size-full wp-image-159" height="136" src="http://clickbump.com/wp-content/uploads/rich-snippets.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px !important; max-width: 100%;" width="504" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="font-size: 11.5200004577637px; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px 0px 5px;">
Rich Snippets with “Ratings” Coming to ClickBump Version 6.5</div>
</div>
With ClickBump 6.5, getting search results listings like this could not be simpler. To turn a standard post into a review with star rating, you simply click on the star rating pulldown menu and choose a rating.<br />
<div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_3591" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 20px auto; padding: 5px 0px 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; width: 485px; z-index: 5;">
<img alt="Convert a standard post to a starred review in one click" class="size-full wp-image-3591 altcaption" height="369" src="http://clickbump.com/wp-content/uploads/rich-snippets5.png" style="border: none; height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px !important; max-width: 100%;" width="475" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="font-size: 11.5200004577637px; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px 0px 5px;">
Convert a standard post to a starred review in one click</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
That’s it. Its that simple.</div>
<blockquote style="border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; color: rgb(127, 127, 127) !important; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 18.7199993133545px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 10px 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 10px 0px 50px; position: relative; quotes: “, “;">
If you’ve assigned a star rating to the post, Google will index it as a special “<strong>Review</strong>” post, complete with your star rating and Google+ profile pic next to your review listing.</blockquote>
Why is this better than using a plugin? For one, ClickBump theme already maps your post titles, post/page excerpt, author title, post date, etc to your page as metadata. There’s no need to duplicate this metadata just to tell the schema markup engine something it should already know.<br />
So we don’t.<br />
We default in all of that data and pass it along to the schema engine so that you don’t have to duplicate efforts. Just create the post, give it a title or custom title, add a post excerpt and a rating, you’re done. You don’t have to take extra steps to tell a plugin what your post is about, that you are the author, that the post was written today, etc. etc. That’s madness!<br />
<h2 style="font-family: 'Fjalla One'; font-size: 21.6000003814697px; font-weight: normal !important; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; text-align: center; visibility: visible;">
What about articles & posts that are not reviews?</h2>
ClickBump automatically marks up your “standard” posts & articles up in the proper “Article” schema as outlined at schema.org. For example, If you have not assigned a <strong>star rating</strong> to the post, ClickBump automatically marks it up as an “<strong>Article</strong>“, with the proper schema to insure your posts validate in the <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets" style="border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #2970a6; text-decoration: none;">Rich Snippets Testing Tool</a>. You don’t have to do a thing other than continue writing great content.<br />
<em>This assumes you’ve already added yourself as a contributor to the site under your <a href="https://plus.google.com/100373328351307939190/about">Google+ Profile page</a></em>. If you haven’t done that, head there now and click on “<em>Profile > About > Links > Edit”</em> and add your site to the list of sites you are a “<strong>Contributor to</strong>“.<br />
This insures that your  page provides Google (and other search engines that support schema markup) with all the necessary markup code they need to properly classify your article.<br />
<blockquote style="border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; color: rgb(127, 127, 127) !important; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 18.7199993133545px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 10px 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 10px 0px 50px; position: relative; quotes: “, “;">
Providing structured data in this manner insures your pages get maximum exposure in search results.</blockquote>
That’s it. No messing with complex schema markup or having to know all of the complicated jargon at schema.org. And no fussing with complex, memory hogging plugins. The Clickbump theme does it all for you under the hood.<br />
<h2 style="font-family: 'Fjalla One'; font-size: 21.6000003814697px; font-weight: normal !important; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; text-align: center; visibility: visible;">
Why not just use a plugin for this?</h2>
The core benefits of using an integrated schema tool like ClickBump vs using a plugin are two-fold:<br />
<ol>
<li style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 20px;">First, the structured data markup is applied to the semantically clean html5 tags that are already in your markup. There are no extra div containers added to your markup just to support schema. Plugins have no choice but to add extra wrapper divs and spans all around your content.</li>
<li style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 20px;">The second advantage is that everything just works. No worrying over conflicts. And its super easy to implement. Just one click if you want to classify a post as a review with star ratings. That’s it.</li>
</ol>
<blockquote style="border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; color: rgb(127, 127, 127) !important; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 18.7199993133545px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 10px 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 10px 0px 50px; position: relative; quotes: “, “;">
I tested dozens of plugins before I decided to bake this functionality into the core theme and I can tell you, they are way over the top in the amount of data they require you to input – they make my head hurt!</blockquote>
Adding star ratings to your posts could not be easier to do. I’ve added a “Google Search Preview” panel to the post editor to allow you to see your search results listing before it appears in Google!<br />
<h2 style="font-family: 'Fjalla One'; font-size: 21.6000003814697px; font-weight: normal !important; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; text-align: center; visibility: visible;">
See Your Search Results Before they Appear on Google!</h2>
<div class="wp-caption alignnone" style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 20px auto; padding: 5px 0px 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; width: 560px; z-index: 5;">
<img alt="rich-snippets3" height="498" src="http://clickbump.com/wp-content/uploads/rich-snippets3.png" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); height: auto; margin-bottom: 0px !important; max-width: 100%;" width="550" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="font-size: 11.5200004577637px; line-height: 1.25em; padding: 0px 0px 5px;">
New in 6.5 – preview how your page will look to Google searchers</div>
</div>
<h2 style="font-family: 'Fjalla One'; font-size: 21.6000003814697px; font-weight: normal !important; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; text-align: center; visibility: visible;">
What about all the other Article types like Event, Person, Product, Recipe etc?</h2>
Google currently applies rich snippet markup to numerous article types like Event, Person, Product, Recipe, Organization, etc. However, <em>for the purposes of highlighting your search results</em>, they all look exactly the same as the standard “Article” markup in search results listings – <em>with the exception of Review, Recipe and Event</em>.<br />
When and if Google rolls out a new update that expands this to provide noticeable differences in highlighted search listings for various document types, it may make sense to enhance the markup selector tools in the theme in order to classify your posts into one of these microtargeted document types.<br />
<blockquote style="border-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; color: rgb(127, 127, 127) !important; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 18.7199993133545px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 10px 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 10px 0px 50px; position: relative; quotes: “, “;">
Currently, I believe Article and Review offer the most bang for the buck, and I’m open to your suggestions for additional types you will be using.</blockquote>
Hit the Submit button in the comments below and let me know what you think.</div>

RICH SNIPPETS & STAR RATINGS FOR GOOGLE

See Your Search Results Before they Appear on Google & add Star Ratings to your Reviews with One Click w the new real time SERPS previe...

How to Get Your Review’s Star Ratings in Google Search Results

<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
This is possible because of Schema markup. Schema markup is used to better convey to search engines what a certain post or page is about. Text and images can only help them so much. But you can use Schema markup to help tell Google and other search engines exactly what’s happening on that page.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
One small part of Schema is the ability to convey to Google that your post is a <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">review</span> with a <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">rating</span> associated with it. This enables Google to then display the star rating.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
Here’s what the basic format has to look like:</div>
<pre class="wp-code-highlight prettyprint prettyprinted" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 0px; border: 4px double rgb(239, 235, 232); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px; overflow: auto; padding: 7px; width: 669.65625px; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: normal;"><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><div</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"review"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemscope</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemtype</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"http://schema.org/Review"</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">
	</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><meta</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"author"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">content</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"Ashley"</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">
	
	</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><strong</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"itemreviewed"</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">Sweet Peril</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"></strong></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> by </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><a</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">href</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"https://www.nosegraze.com/reviews/authors/wendy-higgins/"</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">Wendy Higgins</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"></a><br</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">/></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">
	
	Other book info can go in here...
	
	</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><strong></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">My Rating:</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"></strong></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><span</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"reviewRating"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemscope</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemtype</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"http://schema.org/Rating"</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">><img</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">src</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"https://www.nosegraze.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/three-stars.png"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">alt</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"3 Stars"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">class</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"stars"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">/><meta</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"ratingValue"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">content</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"3"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">/><meta</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"bestRating"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">content</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"5"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">/></span></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">
</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"></div></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">

Your review can go down here...</span></pre>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
So let’s break this down. There are five required fields:</div>
<ul style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px 30px;">
<li style="background: url(https://www.nosegraze.com/wp-content/themes/nose-graze-flowers/assets/images/icon-heart.png) 5px 11px no-repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 235, 232); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 5px 0px 5px 30px;">The overall declaration of a “Review”.</li>
<li style="background: url(https://www.nosegraze.com/wp-content/themes/nose-graze-flowers/assets/images/icon-heart.png) 5px 11px no-repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 235, 232); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 5px 0px 5px 30px;">The name of the person writing the review.</li>
<li style="background: url(https://www.nosegraze.com/wp-content/themes/nose-graze-flowers/assets/images/icon-heart.png) 5px 11px no-repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 235, 232); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 5px 0px 5px 30px;">The name of the item being reviewed.</li>
<li style="background: url(https://www.nosegraze.com/wp-content/themes/nose-graze-flowers/assets/images/icon-heart.png) 5px 11px no-repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 235, 232); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 5px 0px 5px 30px;">Your numerical rating.</li>
<li style="background: url(https://www.nosegraze.com/wp-content/themes/nose-graze-flowers/assets/images/icon-heart.png) 5px 11px no-repeat; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 235, 232); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 5px 0px 5px 30px;">The maximum/best numerical rating.</li>
</ul>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
You have to wrap all your book information in a “review”, as designated by Schema. That’s what the<code style="background-color: #f9f2f4; border-radius: 4px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #c7254e; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace; font-size: 12px; padding: 2px 4px; white-space: nowrap;">itemprop="review" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Review"</code> business is all about.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
Then, you have to designate a reviewer. You can put this in meta tags like this:<code style="background-color: #f9f2f4; border-radius: 4px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #c7254e; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace; font-size: 12px; padding: 2px 4px; white-space: nowrap;"><meta itemprop="author" content="Your name here"></code>. It won’t show up anywhere on the page, but it must be included.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
The next important piece of information is the item being reviewed. You can do this by wrapping the title of the book in these tags: <code style="background-color: #f9f2f4; border-radius: 4px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #c7254e; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace; font-size: 12px; padding: 2px 4px; white-space: nowrap;"><strong itemprop="itemreviewed">Sweet Peril</strong></code> They don’t have to be strong tags, they can be anything (span, div, etc.). You just need to have <code style="background-color: #f9f2f4; border-radius: 4px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #c7254e; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace; font-size: 12px; padding: 2px 4px; white-space: nowrap;">itemprop="itemreviewed"</code> in there to specify that this is the item you are reviewing.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
Then, finally, the most important part: the rating. Here’s what this chunk of text looks like:</div>
<pre class="wp-code-highlight prettyprint prettyprinted" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 0px; border: 4px double rgb(239, 235, 232); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px; overflow: auto; padding: 7px; width: 669.65625px; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: normal;"><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><span</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"reviewRating"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemscope</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemtype</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"http://schema.org/Rating"</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">
	</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><img</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">src</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"https://www.nosegraze.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/three-stars.png"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">alt</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"3 Stars"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">class</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"stars"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">/></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">
	</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><meta</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"ratingValue"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">content</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"3"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">/></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">
	</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><meta</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"bestRating"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">content</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"5"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">/></span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;">
</span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"></span></span></pre>
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You need to wrap the whole thing in these tags:<code style="background-color: #f9f2f4; border-radius: 4px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #c7254e; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace; font-size: 12px; padding: 2px 4px; white-space: nowrap;"><span itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating"></code> After that, you can insert your rating image or text, then afterwards you provide a code version of that rating like this:</div>
<pre class="wp-code-highlight prettyprint prettyprinted" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 0px; border: 4px double rgb(239, 235, 232); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, 'Courier New', monospace; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px; overflow: auto; padding: 7px; width: 669.65625px; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: normal;"><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;"><meta</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"ratingValue"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">content</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"3"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">/><meta</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">itemprop</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"bestRating"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="atn" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #660066;">content</span><span class="pun" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666600;">=</span><span class="atv" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #008800;">"5"</span><span class="pln" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black;"> </span><span class="tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #000088;">/></span></pre>
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This tells Google that you rated the book “3” out of a maximum of “5” stars.</div>
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Test It!</h2>
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Want to see if you’ve done it correctly? You can insert your URL into <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.5s; background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ff7878; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.5s;" target="_blank">Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool</a> to see if you’ve inserted the markup correctly. If you have, it will look like this:</div>
<div class="text-center" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714282989502px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.nosegraze.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/google-rich-snippets-tool.png" rel="lightbox[13902]" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.5s; background: 0px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #ff7878; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.5s;"><img alt="Google Structured Data Testing Tool Results for Ratings" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13903" src="https://www.nosegraze.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/google-rich-snippets-tool.png" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" /></a></div>
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Limitations</h2>
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It took me a long time to figure this out, but you cannot nest certain types of markups. For example, Schema has markups for restaurants, people, reviews, articles, events, products, etc. Sometimes blog themes will add in “article” markup into the theme. However, if you have article markup, you cannot put review markup inside of that. It will throw an error and won’t work (learned after hours and hours of awful debugging… ugh).</div>
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So basically what I’m saying is that if your theme already adds in some kind of Schema markup, your review markup <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">may</span> not work.</div>

How to Get Your Review’s Star Ratings in Google Search Results

This is possible because of Schema markup. Schema markup is used to better convey to search engines what a certain post or page is about. T...