We're currently not using schemas on our website. How important is it? And are websites across the globe using it?
-
Schemas looks like an important thing when it comes to structuring your website and ensuring the crawl bots get all the details. I've been reading a lot of articles around the web and most of them are saying that schemas are important but very few websites are using it. Why so? Are the schemas on schema.org there to stay or am I wasting my time?
-
Hi Pawan,
You're welcome Yes, I believe you are correct in saying that the data highlighter really only translates to Google right now. However, it seems Bing and Yahoo1 really are doing very little with structured data right now. I think it depends on your industry regarding your timeline of adding the markup. If you are in the restaurant, food or travel industry, I think you really have to start now just to stay competitive. If you're in a niche, maybe it's not so crucial. One thing's for sure, what's true about structured data now will probably be different in 6 months, so whatever you do now will need to reviewed over time, just like most anything else related to SEO There's always something new and always something changing. That's why we love it right?
Dana
-
Thanks for your input Dana. As you are saying that the schema.org markup is still sporadic, will it better if I wait for a couple of months before making the changes? Or is it the right time?
And about the microdata highlighter you are talking about, it'll just help the Google bot, not the crawlers from bing and yahoo, right? So wouldn't it be better if I use the schema.org markups?
-
I totally agree with Lesley. You asked why so few few sites might be using them. I think it's a question of knowledge and implementation. Unless you are extremely comfortable with HTML and XML, schema.org markup can be very intimidating. It also doesn't help that Google is choosing to display only certain elements of structured data right now, and even then, it's sporadic. In fact, recently, Google went from displaying a lot of authorship information to displaying less. This is all still in experimental stages. That being said, will it go away? i.e. Is it just a search fad?
My answer is: "no," structured data (also referred to as "schema," "microdata," "rich snippets," and "microformats" ) will only become more and more important until search engine bots get better at understanding different elements of a Web page, for example, understanding that there might be a MSRP price, an "our price" and a "regular price" simply by crawling the data. Right now, bots aren't very good at that because if they crawl three prices, all they are understanding is a very basic "$10.00" - "$8.00" - "$7.00" - but they won't have any idea how those three prices relate to each other without schema.org markup. Or, as another example, especially for e-commerce, a product page might have many images on it. How does a bot know which image on the page is the main product image? Bots aren't quite smart enough to know this because they can't "see" a page like a human sees a page...they can only crawl code.
But, fear not! There is help! Google initiated a microdata highlighter in Google Webmaster Tools sometime last year. If you have a smaller, simpler site, you can use this tool to markup your pages with schema without knowing a lick of code. Here's how to do it: http://www.danatanseo.com/2013/08/google-finally-demystifies-structured.html
Hope this is helpful!
-
I would consider them important. Most of my clients are e-commerce sites and I put them on every site that I do. A lot of platforms are supporting them out of the box now, if that speaks to importance to you.
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
-
A client rebranded a few years ago and doesn't want to be associated with it's old brand name. He wishes not to appear when the old brand is searched in Google, is there something we can do?
The problem is there was redirection between the old branded site and the new one, and now when you type in the name of the old brand, the new one comes up. I have desperately tried to convince this client there is nothing we can do about it, dozens of news articles crop up with the two brands together as this was a hot topic a few years ago, but just in case I missed something I thought I'd ask the community of experts here on Moz. An example for this would be Tyco Healthcare that became covidien in 2007. When you type tyco healthcare, covidien crops up here and there. Any ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Linking Same Page using Important Keyword as Anchor?
I have came across sites that links to same page from a textual part using their topmost keywords. What is the benefit of linking same page using anchor as keywords to the same page? Does it give SEO benefits?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Is ok to add 'no follow' to every outbound link?
How do you handle outbound links from your site?.. do you no follow them all to be on the safe side?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nick-name1230 -
Organic 'not provided data' - strip out brand?
I cannot strip out brand data on the 'not provided' keywords in Google analytics. Is this not possible anymore? I understand we cannot get specific keywords but can we no longer strip out brand on organic traffic in Google analytics for keywords that are 'not provided' ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
What to do when you buy a Website without it's content which has a few thousand pages indexed?
I am currently considering buying a Website because I would like to use the domain name to build my project on. Currently that domain is in use and that site has a few thousand pages indexed and around 30 Root domains linking to it (mostly to the home page). The topic of the site is not related to what I am planing to use it for. If there is no other way, I can live with losing the link juice that the site is getting at the moment, however, I want to prevent Google from thinking that I am trying to use the power for another, non related topic and therefore run the risk of getting penalized. Are there any Google guidelines or best practices for such a case?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeAir0 -
Should we use URL parameters or plain URL's=
Hi, Me and the development team are having a heated discussion about one of the more important thing in life, i.e. URL structures on our site. Let's say we are creating a AirBNB clone, and we want to be found when people search for apartments new york. As we have both have houses and apartments in all cities in the U.S it would make sense for our url to at least include these, so clone.com/Appartments/New-York but the user are also able to filter on price and size. This isn't really relevant for google, and we all agree on clone.com/Apartments/New-York should be canonical for all apartment/New York searches. But how should the url look like for people having a price for max 300$ and 100 sqft? clone.com/Apartments/New-York?price=30&size=100 or (We are using Node.js so no problem) clone.com/Apartments/New-York/Price/30/Size/100 The developers hate url parameters with a vengeance, and think the last version is the preferable one and most user readable, and says that as long we use canonical on everything to clone.com/Apartments/New-York it won't matter for god old google. I think the url parameters are the way to go for two reasons. One is that google might by themselves figure out that the price parameter doesn't matter (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687?hl=en) and also it is possible in webmaster tools to actually tell google that you shouldn't worry about a parameter. We have agreed to disagree on this point, and let the wisdom of Moz decide what we ought to do. What do you all think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peekabo0 -
My website hasn't been cached for over a month. Can anyone tell me why?
I have been working on an eCommerce site www.fuchia.co.uk. I have asked an earlier question about how to get it working and ranking and I took on board what people said (such as optimising product pages etc...) and I think i'm getting there. The problem I have now is that Google hasn't indexed my site in over a month and the homepage cache is 404'ing when I check it on Google. At the moment there is a problem with the site being live for both WWW and non-WWW versions, i have told google in Webmaster what preferred domain to use and will also be getting developers to do 301 to the preferred domain. Would this be the problem stopping Google properly indexing me? also I'm only having around 30 pages of 137 indexed from the last crawl. Can anyone tell me or suggest why my site hasn't been indexed in such a long time? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOAndy0 -
Can I use the same source for two different websites?
I have developed a successful portal based website but would like to grow my portfolio of sites by expanding into new niches and sectors. I would like to use the same source code to fast track new sites but I'm not sure of the dangers involved. Content, meta details etc. will all be unique and the only similarity will be the html code. Another example of how I want to use this is that my current site targets the UK but I want to target a global market with a .com domain and this would involve using the same source. Is this possible without a penalty or am I overlooking something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0