Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Schema Markup Errors - Priority or Not?
-
Greetings All...
I've been digging through the search console on a few of my sites and I've been noticing quite a few structured data errors. Most of the errors are related to: hcard, hentry and hatom. Most of them are missing author & entry-title, while the other one is missing: fn.
I recently saw an article on SEL about Google's focus on spammy mark-up. The sites I use are built and managed by vendors, so I would have to impress upon them the impact of these errors and have them prioritize, then fix them.
My question is whether or not this should be prioritized? Should I have them correct these errors sooner than later or can I take a phased approach? I haven't noticed any loss in traffic or anything like that, I'm more focused on what negative impact a "phased approach" could have.
Any thoughts?
-
In that case I would say a phased approach would be fine. It is an issue that should be addressed, but I wouldn't classify it as "critical".
-
Thanks for the responses.
These changes will be managed by the developers, so it won't impact any other priorities that I have in the queue. My concern was whether this was pressing enough that I would have to push the developer towards a hard timeline vs a more phased one. I took a look at other clients on this platform and saw the same errors. So, this may be a platform wide markup error.
These are automotive clients, so their sites are OEM mandated. Therefore, I don't have any say in the types of markup they use. But, my goal is to impress upon them the fact that these errors could definitely negatively impact my clients (if not now, in the future).
-
I think it depends on what else you have in the queue for your clients. Without knowing what other priorities you have, I can't say whether this is more or less important. However, as Patrick said, correct markup helps search engines understand more about the context of what's on the page. It probably won't make a big ranking impact, and I doubt you're going to get penalized for some markup errors as long as you're not trying to spam using markup.
I definitely prefer Schema.org markup over Hcard, but rather than implementing it as per Schema.org you may want to consider JSON-LD - https://developers.google.com/schemas/formats/json-ld .
-
Hi there
Yes, I would consider this a priority as you want to have the most upto date and relevant markup on your site, so that crawlers can better understand your important information and attribute the right properties to your site/content.
I would also focus on Schema, as it's recognized by major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex, so you are pleasing multiple crawlers at once. Pages that have this markup also tend to rank four positions higher than pages without. So it is definitely worth the investment of time.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
520 Error from crawl report with Cloudflare
I am getting a lot of 520 Server Error in crawl reports. I see this is related to Cloudflare. We know 520 is Cloudflare so maybe the Moz team can change this from "unknown" to "Cloudflare 520". Perhaps the Moz team can update the "how to fix" section in the reporting, if they have some possible suggestions on how to avoid seeing these in the report of if there is a real issue that needs to be addressed. At this point I don't know. There must be a solution that Moz can provide like a setting in Cloudflare that will permit the Rogerbot if Cloudflare is blocking it because it does not like its behavior or something. It could be that Rogerbot is crawling my site on a bad day or at a time when we were deploying a massive site change. If I know when my site will be down can I pause Rogerbot? I found this https://developers.cloudflare.com/support/troubleshooting/general-troubleshooting/troubleshooting-crawl-errors/
Technical SEO | | awilliams_kingston0 -
Subdomain 403 error
Hi Everyone, A crawler from our SEO tool detects a 403 error from a link from our main domain to a a couple of subdomains. However, these subdomains are perfect accessibly. What could be the problem? Is this error caused by the server, the crawlbot or something else? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
Schema for blogs
When I run a wordpress blog through the structured data testing tool I see that there is @type hentry. Is this enough for blogs etc? Is this a result of Wordpress adding in this markup? Do you recommend adding @blogposting type and if so why? What benefit to add a specific type of schema? How does it help in blogging? Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al4 -
404 errors
Hi I am getting these show up in WMT crawl error any help would be very much appreciated | ?escaped_fragment=Meditation-find-peace-within/csso/55991bd90cf2efdf74ec3f60 | 404 | 12/5/15 |
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve
| | 2 | mobile/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 3 | ?escaped_fragment=Tips-for-a-balanced-lifestyle/csso/1 | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 4 | ?escaped_fragment=My-favorite-yoga-spot/csso/5598e2130cf2585ebcde3b9a | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 5 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6 | 404 | 11/29/15 |
| | 6 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Tag/yoga | 404 | 11/30/15 |
| | 7 | ?escaped_fragment=Inhale-exhale-and-once-again/csso/2 | 404 | 11/27/15 |
| | 8 | ?escaped_fragment=classes/covl | 404 | 10/29/15 |
| | 9 | m/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 10 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Page/1 | 404 | 11/30/15 | | |0 -
Some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error.
Hello I'm a seo newbie and some help from the community here would be greatly appreciated. I have submitted the sitemap of my website in google webmasters tools and now I got this warning: "When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error. All accessible URLs will still be submitted." How do I fix this? What should I do? Many thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | GoldenRanking140 -
403 forbidden error website
Hi Mozzers, I got a question about new website from a new costumer http://www.eindexamensite.nl/. There is a 403 forbidden error on it, and I can't find what the problem is. I have checked on: http://gsitecrawler.com/tools/Server-Status.aspx
Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
result:
URL=http://www.eindexamensite.nl/ **Result code: 403 (Forbidden / Forbidden)** When I delete the .htaccess from the server there is a 200 OK :-). So it is in the .htaccess. .htaccess code: ErrorDocument 404 /error.html RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^home$ / [L]
RewriteRule ^typo3$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^typo3/.$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^uploads/.$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^fileadmin/.$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^typo3conf/.$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule .* index.php Start rewrites for Static file caching RewriteRule ^(typo3|typo3temp|typo3conf|t3lib|tslib|fileadmin|uploads|screens|showpic.php)/ - [L]
RewriteRule ^home$ / [L] Don't pull *.xml, *.css etc. from the cache RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..xml$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..css$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^.*.php$ Check for Ctrl Shift reload RewriteCond %{HTTP:Pragma} !no-cache
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cache-Control} !no-cache NO backend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !be_typo_user [NC] NO frontend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !nc_staticfilecache [NC] We only redirect GET requests RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} GET We only redirect URI's without query strings RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ We only redirect if a cache file actually exists RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html -f
RewriteRule .* typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html [L] End static file caching DirectoryIndex index.html CMS is typo3. any ideas? Thanks!
Maarten0 -
404 errors on non-existent URLs
Hey guys and gals, First Moz Q&A for me and really looking forward to being part of the community. I hope as my first question this isn't a stupid one but I was just struggling to find any resource that dealt with the issue and am just looking for some general advice. Basically a client has raised a problem with 404 error pages - or the lack thereof- on non-existent URLs on their site; let's say for example: 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towels/asdfas' Obviously content never existed on this page so its not like you're saying 'hey, sorry this isn't here anymore'; its more like- 'there was never anything here in the first place'. Currently in this fictitious example typing in 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towels/asdfas**'** returns the same content as the 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towels' page which I appreciate isn't ideal. What I was wondering is how far do you take this issue- I've seen examples here on the seomoz site where you can edit the URI in a similar manner and it returns the same content as the parent page but with the alternate address. Should 404's be added across all folders on a site in a similar way? How often would this scenario be and issue particularly for internal pages two or three clicks down? I suppose unless someone linked to a page with a misspelled URL... Also would it be worth placing 301 redirects on a small number of common mis-spellings or typos e.g. 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towles' to the correct URLs as opposed to just 404s? Many thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | AJ2340 -
Schema for Price Comparison Services - Good or Bad?
Hey guys, I was just wondering what the whole schema.org markup means for people that run search engines (i.e. for a niche, certain products) or price comparison engines in general. The intend behind schema.org was to help the engines better understand the pages content. Well, I guess such services don't necessarily want Google to understand that they're just another search engine (and thus might get thrown out of the index for polluting it with search result pages). I see two possible scenarios: either not implement them or implement them in a way that makes the site not look like an aggregator, i.e. by only marking up certain products with unique text. Any thoughts? Does the SEOmoz team has any advice on that? Best,
Technical SEO | | derderko
schuon0