Today, we’re proud to announce our latest open source WordPress plugin – Really Rich Results. RRR can be used to generate Schema.org structured data, empowering you to take advantage of Google’s Rich Results and featured snippets with minimal effort.
Humble Origins
Really Rich Results started as an internal Pagely tool, developed by Jeff Matson. We wanted a plugin that could build structured data from a multitude of content types and nested child elements. Although other WordPress plugins already exist, they never seemed to be quite what we were looking for. Some lacked extensibility, others required too much manual configuration, and many come bundled with other solutions that weren’t always necessary.
Over time, the idea blossomed into a full-fledged plugin. We could intelligently detect common patterns, integrate easily with other plugins, and provide robust customization options for the power users who want more control. As RRR evolved, it felt like a great way to give back to the WordPress community that has supported us over the last decade. Thus, we began rolling it all into a standalone solution that we’re releasing for everyone to use.
Making Structured Data and Rich Results Approachable
Schema.org structured data has been around for quite a few years but has only recently gained mainstream traction due to Google’s Rich Results and featured snippets. Since then, it has exploded. It has become a well-known fact that providing structured data markup on your website will positively impact your search engine rankings. The unfortunate side effect of this rapid growth is that there’s quite a bit of conflicting information regarding best practices, how to implement some properties, and how those properties may change contextually.
Creating robust structured data on a WordPress site can be quite an undertaking. It often requires a significant amount of skill and experience to build and implement. The result can often be incomplete or, even worse, invalid – resulting in little to no benefit.
Really Rich Results aims to provide every WordPress site with sane defaults and a rich set of customization options for easily adding JSON-LD structured data to your content. Whether you’re a beginner who wants to take a “set it and forget it” approach, or a seasoned SEO professional with a desire for deep customization, Really Rich Results dramatically simplifies the entire process.
Features
Extensive Support for JSON-LD Schema Types
Really Rich Results features several schema types that can be used as-is, extended, tweaked, or entirely replaced on a granular basis. These types include the following:
- AboutPage
- Action
- Article
- BreadcrumbList
- CollectionPage
- Comment
- ContactPage
- CreativeWork
- ImageObject
- ItemList
- ListItem
- MediaObject
- Offer
- Organization
- Person
- PostalAddress
- Product
- Review
- SearchAction
- Thing
- WebPage
- WebSite
And many more through contextual properties within these types.
Due to how these types are built, creating additional structured data objects is a breeze. Over time, we’ll be adding many new types with the goal of offering coverage for all properties within Schema.org and Google’s Rich Results.
Full Customization Options
Although Really Rich Results is fully functional without providing any customization whatsoever, it truly shines with granular control. Changing how your structured data gets output can be customized on multiple levels – from global site-wide changes to individual items and everything in between.
In the future, we’ll be offering even more control with better detection and deeper contextual recommendations based on the limitless scenarios that WordPress sites of all sizes may encounter.
Simple and Standardized Extensibility
Extending Really Rich Results is as simple as providing it with an object to use by either extending an existing object or creating an entirely new one. 3rd-party developers can build entirely new schema objects with only a single hook and class that describes the object.
Always Open and Nag-Free
The freemium plugin model is booming, and it’s pretty common to install a plugin and later find out that you need the premium version for the full features. This isn’t always a bad thing – plugin developers need to make money to keep their products alive and kicking – but we’re an enterprise hosting solution, not a plugin shop.
Since we’re already paying the bills with our main product, Really Rich Results will always be fully featured, nag-free, and never shove advertising down your throat. If you’re a Really Rich Results user and decide that Pagely’s managed WordPress hosting is a good fit for you, awesome. If you only want to use our plugin and don’t care at all about Pagely, we’re totally cool with that too. We’ll keep improving RRR and releasing new features for everyone’s benefit.
How It Works
Really Rich Results provides defaults for different “views” on your site. It knows what kind of content is being served and builds JSON-LD structured data based on what it sees. Depending on what it detects, it takes different approaches to accurately build everything up before eventually placing it on the page.
Since every site can be different, RRR offers granular customization while inheriting properties from parent elements. For example, you may want to set a specific page as the ContactPage schema type. Really Rich Results allows you to select this type with a single click on the page level, building the applicable properties from other elements as needed.
For The Nerds
Really Rich Results detects what content is being loaded, determines the page’s primary focus, then builds any supplemental properties that the primary object needs. From there, it waits until everything else on the site has finished loading, transforms it all into structured data objects that then get output on the page.
I know what you’re thinking – that all sounds complicated and heavy on server resources. On the contrary, because of this approach, only the relevant content is being processed. Since items compile while they’re already being processed by WordPress and only performing additional processing of schema properties when necessary, everything generates quite quickly. Additionally, this methodology allows repeated objects and properties to live in a cache for future use.
How to Get Really Rich Results
Really Rich Results is available on the WordPress.org plugin directory for FREE.
We’d Love Your Feedback and Contributions
We’d love to hear your thoughts about Really Rich Results. Whether it’s contributing code, testing weird use-cases, reporting bugs, writing unit tests, or anything else, your feedback is valuable. Let us know your thoughts in the comments or on GitHub. Of course, pull requests are always encouraged!
Really nice, thank you for your contribution!
Having the plugin on GH is optimal for contribution from devs for sure, are there plans for this plugin entering the .org repo?