successful seo with structured data markup by aaron bradley

#SMX #23A1 @aaranged

Aaron Bradley – Sr. Manager, Web Channel Strategy, Electronic Arts

SUCCESSFUL SEOWITH STRUCTURED DATA

MARKUP


WHAT ISSTRUCTURED DATA?


?https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a

<meta description> tagskeep these clear and relevant, though use the added space to expand on the <title> tag in a meaningful way…

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en

Create good meta descriptionsThe description attribute within the <meta> tag is a good way to provide a concise, human-readable summary of each page’s content…

<meta name="description">


STRUCTURED DATA IS LINKED DATA

schema.org/description




VOCABULARIESAND

SYNTAXES


• Developed by and for search engines• Stable, reliable and extensible• Has become the go-to vocabulary for

linked data development• Strikes the right balance between

complexity and expressiveness• Community driven• Little development elsewhere

Why so much talk of schema.org?


Highlights of recent schema.org vocabulary changes

• Extensive hotel and accommodation vocabulary added (3.1)

• Improved Dataset vocabulary (3.1)• DigitalDocument and subtypes added (3.0)• New extensions published• health-lifesci.schema.org (3.0)

• pending.schema.org, meta.schema.org (3.0)

• bib.schema.org, auto.schema.org (2.1)

3.1 – 9 Aug. 20163.0 – 4 May 2016


Upcoming schema.org vocabulary changes

• Vocabulary for food menus• hasMenu, Menu, MenuItem,

MenuSection…

• Course and related terms move from pending to core

• Extensive vocabulary originating from The Financial Industry Business Ontology Community Group (FIBO)

• BrokerageAccount, exchangeRate…

3.2 – Spring 2017

See what’s on deck for schema.org:webschemas.org/docs/releases.html


• The Open Graph Protocol is Facebook’s structured data vocabulary

• Syntactically it is based on RDFa

• Twitter Card markup is Plain Old Semantic HTML (POSH)

• Pinterest uses others’ structured data• Open Graph, Twitter Card markup

very static

Other vocabularies and POSH


• Mechanism for including detailed structured data about products on web pages

• Initial focus is "consumer-facing properties for clothing, shoes, food beverage/tobacco and properties common to all trade items”

• Designed to extend schema.org “with many more detailed properties”

• Is schema.org’s first external extension

GS1 Vocabulary: the standard for GS1 SmartSearch


• A script that can be placed in the <head> or the <body>

• The order of types and properties does not matter

• Does not require equivalent on-page content

• Now supported by Google for all public data types

Syntaxes: JSON-LD


{"@context": "http://schema.org","@type": "Article","headline": "Man bites dog","datePublished": "2016-06-10","author": {

"@type": "Person","name": "John Smith"

},"description": "He bit because, he said, the dog

deserved it."}

Syntaxes: JSON-LD (example)


• Classes and properties declared using HTML elements

• Relies on the proper opening and closing of tags (so error prone)

• Declaring values that do not appear on-page requires the use of <meta> tags

Syntaxes: Microdata and RDFa


Syntaxes: Microdata and RDFa (microdata example)<body itemscopeitemtype="http://schema.org/Article">

<h1 itemprop="headline">Man bites dog</h1>

By <span itemprop="author" itemscopeitemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><spanitemprop="name">John Smith</span></span>

<p>June 10th, 2016</p><meta itemprop="datePublished"

content="2016-06-10" /><p itemprop="description">He bit because, he

said, the dog deserved it.</p></body>


{"@context": "http://schema.org","@type": “Restaurant",“name": “The Sizzling Widget“

}[…]<div itemscopeitemtype="http://schema.org/Review"><spanitemprop=“reviewRating">3</span> stars!</div>

Combining syntaxes: it’s “allowed”, but…

SizzlingWidget «««

Google sees this:

«««

Not this:

SizzlingWidget


Data consumer structured data capabilitiesBased on tests of each data consumer’s validation tool, 28 February 2017

schema.org OpenGraph JSON-LD RDFa Microdata Microformats

SearchEngines

GoogleBingYandexApple

SocialMediaNetworks

FacebookTwitterPinterest


MARKUP-POWEREDSEARCH FEATURES


• Logos• Organization properties logo and

url

• Corporate contact points• Organization property

contactPoint

• Social profile links• Organization or Person property

sameAs

Markup-powered Knowledge Graph card features


Markup-powered site features in SERP search snippets

• BreadcrumbsFinal data type to get explicit JSON-LD support from Google (August 2016)

• Site name• Sitelinks search box


Long-standing rich snippet/rich card types

• Articles• Events• Products

image rich cards added Dec. 2016

• Recipeshost-specific list support added May 2016

• Reviewsdisplayed in a variety of rich results

• Videos


Product information in Image Search (Dec. 2016)

• Chiefly fueled by the same Product and Offer properties that generate product rich cards in Web Search

• availability property required to appear in “Related Items” Image Search feature

• image property is required (but no longer for Web Search, where product images no longer appear)


Rich cards for courses (Sept. 2016)

• Typically appear in a host-specific list• Requires use of Course properties name, description and provider

• Course type not yet in schema.org (expected to be added in ver. 3.2)


Rich cards for books (Dec. 2016)

• Facilitates generation of a “Buy e-book” link• Leverages book property workExample for

declaration of platform and offer information

• As of March 2017 still only “open to popular retailers that have broad book availability”; publishers not included may use a form to register interest


Datasets (Sept. 2016 – no rich results for these yet)


Are rich results for jobs coming to the Google SERPs?

Actively-maintained inventory ofall major structured data developments:

bit.ly/sdataevents


Host-specific lists for recipes

Standard list

Expanded list

Multiple lists(including “Top” lists)


Events and venue-specific lists for events

OpenLink Structured Data Sniffer Chrome extension)bit.ly/datasniffer


Articles and host-specific lists for articles

Multiple sources

Host-specific list

RIP “In the news”Oct. 2014-Dec. 2016


Host-specific lists for restaurants (Nov. 2016)

Mobile only

Requires AMP


Apple is now making use of structured data

Currently supported schemas• AggregateRating

• Offers

• PriceRange

• InteractionCount

• Organization

• Recipe

• SearchAction

• ImageObject


Apple uses multiple protocols, ignores some schemas

og:description

og:titleor

<title>og:image

schema.org/AggregateRating

schema.org/Offer


TESTINGAND

VALIDATION


Main structured data testing and validation toolsBing

Yandex

Structured Data Linter

GoogleList of structured data testing tools:

bit.ly/sdatatools


The SDTT now supports multi-typed entities (Feb. 2017)


Structured Data Testing Tool preview: recipes

To appear in previews, image URLs provided must be indexed


Structured Data Testing Tool preview: products


Structured Data Testing Tool preview: restaurants…


… and other types of local businesses?


Search Console structured data and rich card reports


Apple’s App Search API Validation Tool


THANK YOU!

Continue the conversation at:

Semantic Search Marketingon Google+

bit.ly/semsearch