Schema - Has it worked for you?
-
Hi all! For a while now I've been trying to convince the higher ups that Schema (or related semantic markup languages) would be a plus for our sites. Predominantly we're in ecommerce and so far I still haven't noticed any of our competitors really using Schema. So I was asked to hold off on it until other projects had been handled. But now the coder I had been working closely with has moved to another job so I basically need to re-explain all of this to someone else. But that's not really the point of this discussion post.
I recently read Barry Schwartz's post on the Google Structured Data Markup Helper Tool over on Search Engine Land [link] and thought it'd be a good time to bring up Schema to management again. But first, I wanted to ask how Schema has worked for the rest of you. Have you seen any increases in clickthroughs? Have rich snippets in Google made you more visible? Have you seen a decent ROI for the time spent on implementing it? Are you seeing an increase in people implementing it across your verticals? Have you found certain types of semantic data are less useful than others? Any tips, tricks, pointers concerning their use and implementation for those who are considering it? Any good case studies you can share?
Thanks all!
-
I have over 60 pages on my site identified by Google in GWT as having structured data with 4 types listed but overall since employing this to the site I've not seen anything that I can with confidence say that by employing schema it has benefited or hindered the site.
Hoping to reap what I've sown in due course.
Actually can I add though that on the pages where I've been adding adding schema I have noticed that in the SERPs these pages do not serve the information listed in the itemprop e.g. description but it is serving the information listed in the first H1 tag of each page. So at the moment I've been making sure the
text makes relative sense and is optimised for specific search terms. I was not expecting to see this but for others it might be worth looking at your pages in GWT where you have started to use schema, view what Google has on them and export them and review.
Would love to hear from others on this as well.
-
You could always change his name to an alias as a ghost writer for someone important in the company?
-
I was thinking management might be more up to letting me toy with Schema if I chose a product line on one of our sites that has decent but not exemplary sales & traffic to test the Product schema on. Problem being that since we haven't seen competitors do it yet I don't have an adequate way to show them that it will be a good move for us in order to overtake anyone edging us out and they also don't want me giving our competitors any ideas that would inadvertently help them out by copying us.
-
We had considered Rel=Author for our blogs but our regular blogger also does freelance for some sites that we might not want to have tied to our sites (nothing bad just not things that mesh well with the image we want to portray). So that idea was scrapped.
-
Ive had some good results by purely putting a rel author in there linked to my Google+ page. Just having my photo next to the serps entry stands out and encourages more clicks, even though im not top two for the keyword. So far this month ive had more traffic compared to whole of last month.
-
Hi Mike,
I have seen some good results with local business and breadcrumb markup for visibility. The jury is still out on product markup and I have not seen it used much in the search results that I track. That being said, the implementation is usually pretty quick and painless so no real reason not to implement at least the basics.
-
Iv recently (about 20 days ago) updated my website and added scheme for local business but yet to see any effects. In fact, the rankings have dropped for what I entered as business description.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Website Form Doesn't Work for Visitors from Google Search App
I've got a strange issue where if visitor is viewing a website from within the Google Search App, the app doesn't seem to be able to handle online forms. The form relies users on entering data, which is then POSTed to an external booking engine site. Normally this works fine, except when Google Search App is acting as the browser, the post payload is empty and the URL breaks. We're a bit stumped as to how to move forward. So far the only lead is that Android users can override having the app behave as a browser - but doesn't seem like iOS users can. Any additional ideas/tips are welcome here - thanks. 🙂
Web Design | | mirabile0 -
How to write Schema for Before After Results
HI All We are cosmetic surgery clinic. A lot of our business is dependent on Before After results of patients. But We want to tell add structured data for it but didnt find any. There are options of portfolio but that is strictly not what it is. Suggestions please
Web Design | | Aman_1230 -
New To SEO Management, I just want to double check that my idea will work.
I am new to SEO management. I had a 3 month SEO copy writing internship and a 5 month SEO temp job. In both I mostly wrote copy, but I've been teaching myself SEO on the side, I became Google certified. I ended up getting a telemarketing job and somehow the conversation of SEO came up and I winded up managing their SEO for 12 dollars an hour. They say that every lead generated from the website that turns into a sale will be worth 10 dollars and if and when the sales exceed my paycheck I will starting making commission so long as it stays above my hourly. SEO is very fun and this is like my dream job. They are leaving the planning 100% up to me and I want to make sure that what I am doing will work. My plan is as follows: Part 1: Page Authority via backlinks and social media We are health care brokers and my boss, the owner has a lot of contact. He is talking with large unions like, "The Teamsters," and large company retirment groups like, "Blue flame," which is apparently in some way connected to DTE or GE. Long story short, I am trying to get him to convince them to give us a back link to our main page. He also has a ton of clients that own companies. This is good because they may be persuaded to give us backlinks too. In addition, the tech guy thinks he can implement something where we can get a google +1, facebooks likes/shares, twitter likes and shares and pintrest pin it's that would be a part of an email that we send to people within the list of 12,000 clients. From what I can see, from the client base and the people we are working with we should be able to raise the page authority substantially despite the fact that the site is only a few months old and is not yet out of the sand box. I have been slowly picking off each error with SEO MOZ's website crawling. Part 2: Making a Insurance Jargon Dictionary Guide For The Tri-purpose of gathering traffic, proving our professionalism and helping people understand semi-complex insurance jargon. I could build these 2-3 keywords would be addressed per page and they would be defined in a way to help people looking for terms understand them, while simultaneously netting a strong keyword density and a strong page. I think as far as I can tell there are no issues. Part 3: The dictionary pages will pull in new traffic and the home page will receive links and distribute link juice to the sub-pages. This subpages will guide traffic back to the main page with no-follow links to direct people from the unique termed landing pages to the home page for insurance processing. As far as I can tell my logic is solid and on paper this should work. Am I missing anything (like key details, flaws in my plan)?
Web Design | | Tediscool0 -
Does anyone know if the YOAST SEO plugin works 100% on a responsive wordpress template?
Hi, Does anyone know if the YOAST SEO plugin works 100% on responsive wordpress template? In other words, when you configure the custom title and metadescription is it also configured for the tablet and cellphone views as well? Thanks Carla
Web Design | | Carla_Dawson0 -
WordPress not man enough...has anybody got experience working with Pryo CMS?
Hey folks I'm working with a small team on putting together a new niche accommodation / holiday search portal here in the UK. We are most likely using PHP / MySQL technology for the site - I am a huge fan of WordPress but not sure its quite man enough for the task (many option search over 10,000 plus properties). We can't afford to pay for a bespoke development, so off-the shelf CMS is the most likely route for release 1, and from what I've been reading Pyro CMS seems a good open source choice... https://www.pyrocms.com/ Has anybody come across this, or know how good it is with regards to on-site SEO? Or maybe WordPress is up to the task? If not, what are other good open source options for sites focused around a search function? Cheers Simon
Web Design | | SCL-SEO0 -
How can the Web site designer and the SEO strategist work together peacefully?
The organization I work for has decided to re-design or re-develop the existing company Web site. My part in this project is to come up with new features to add to the site, as well as making the site SEO-friendly (copywriting, link-building, keyword research, etc.). I don’t know a thing about Web site design, coding, format, etc., and I guess I will have to work with a designer on this project. How would I go about finding a Web site designer? Should they have some SEO knowledge? How much designer, coding and site structure knowledge should I have? And how do we not infringe on one another as we work together? (Sorry so many questions.)
Web Design | | Obie0 -
What value could you expect from the use of schema.org metadata?
Google , Yahoo and Bing have now teamed up to develop unified Meta data standards for all types of content. I personally see this as the next step to larger world-wide knowledge availability. Why is this a big deal?
Web Design | | andrewwolf
If everything comes together, and every page had perfect markup, the answers to users questions could be answered and validated against the information found on every website that had that answer. Example: Who is the author of "The catcher in the Rye" 11345 Websites Result : J. D. Salinger
301: Websites Resulted : Jake Salinger Best Result: J.D. Salinger -> Contact J.D Salinger -> Bio etc. Information would become the link , user's navigation intent becoming the Anchors. Here is the URL of the different types of metadata schema's found on google's new schema.org http://schema.org/docs/schemas.html Creative works: CreativeWork, Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, TVSeries ... Embedded non-text objects: AudioObject, ImageObject, VideoObject Event Organization Person Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant ... Product, Offer, AggregateOffer Review, AggregateRating What are the benefits of the different categories of metadata being used? Can anyone site specific case studies done on the enhanced SERP results shown as a result of this metadata?0 -
How WP Themes work with Navigation Structure for SEO and JQuery Headers?
I am trying to find the best WP Theme for our company. I noticed most of them do not offer a left hand side navigation on the home pages, and usually are on the right side on the inside pages. I always thought that Home Page links were very important for SEO. Currenly we have a left drop down navigation with all of our product catagories, keyword optimized. The structure follows for all the pages. Is this not as important to Search Engines anymore? Is it better to have a products link, to all the products and then the inside pages, have just a navigation bar, for that particular catagory? This seems to be very common on all the templates i am seeing. I also noticed, and really like the JQueary Tabs. I would use this for displaying, PDFs and Specifications Charts. Also, some home page images are using a jquery slider with some text, linking to a page. Is Jquery the new javascript and do search engines see what is in the code? I also noticed they all have footers that have links and some other information. Is this a SEO must have?
Web Design | | hfranz0