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When to Use Schema vs. Facebook Open Graph?
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I have a client who for regulatory reasons cannot engage in any social media: no Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ accounts. No social sharing buttons allowed on the site. The industry is medical devices.
We are in the process of redesigning their site, and would like to include structured markup wherever possible. For example, there are lots of schema types under MedicalEntity: http://schema.org/MedicalEntity
Given their lack of social media (and no plans to ever use it), does it make sense to incorporate OG tags at all? Or should we stick exclusively to the schemas documented on schema.org?
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Serendipitous timing - this article was posted yesterday about using mark-up, and how Open Graph and Schema.org are used, and why to use both:
Facebook Open Graph serves its purpose well, but it doesn’t provide the detailed information search engines need to improve the user experience. A single web page may have many components, and it may talk about more than one thing. Even if you mark up your content for Facebook Open Graph, schema.org provides an additional way to provide more detail about particular entities on the page.
http://searchengineland.com/schema-org-7-things-for-seos-to-consider-post-hummingbird-172163
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I personally would use both. They way that I look at it with the OG tags is that you are controlling the consistency of the brand across platforms that you do not officially support. This is very much in my mind the same thing as making a page display correctly in older version of IE.
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OG and Schema can live in the wild together. They are both ways to show information around the entities which they describe.
IMDB is using both OG and Schema to mark up their data:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/ -
Thanks, Craig. Do you know if any of the OG and schema tags would duplicate or conflict? I see a lot of documentation about using one or the other, but not how to use both harmoniously.
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Thanks Keri, interesting example. While the GE Healthcare site is more commercial in intent, I like how they've treated the share functionality using the node icon. Subtle, yet shareable
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I haven't checked in depth, the regulations are with the FDA and they aren't the most up-to-date with social media practices! No competitors are using OG yet, but their sites are also very under-optimized.
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This may be way over-the-top, but have you checked if OG tags would violate the regulations at all, or if they could potentially be a violation down the road? Granted, even though I haven't read the regulations, I don't think it should...but it's just something I'd double-check. I could see a potential problem if the wording is ambiguous and a competitor wants to stir up trouble for you.
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Given that other people may share those pages, I would incorporate both OG and Schema on the site.
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Just because you can't share doesn't mean people aren't going to share it on FB. Just yesterday, I shared http://www3.gehealthcare.com/en/Products/Categories/Accessories_and_Supplies/Adventure_Series_for_CT/Pirate_Island on FB with my friends. I don't have formal experience in this area, but did want to point that out. There was an article on slate.com about the design of these, and I went looking for more information, and found that page.
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