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
-
Should a menu work when JS is disabled? Is that best practice
When I am working on a new website I usually spec that the main navigation should work whether JS is on, or off. I always assumed everyone did that - until today - spent a couple of hours analysing menus on websites and noticed many didn't function when JS was disabled - particularly the menus designed for mobile devices. Any thoughts on this from fellow Mozzers would be welcome.
Web Design | | McTaggart0 -
Needs clarification: How "Disallow: /" works?
Hi all, I need clarification on this. I have noticed we have given "Disallow: /" in one of our sub-directory beside homepage. So, how it going to work now? Will this "Disallow: /" at sub-directory level going to disallow only that directory or entire website? If it is going to work for entire website; we have already given one more Disallow: / at homepage level blocking few folders. How it is going to handle with two Disallow: / commands? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Schema question
What if an info, like an address, is not visible in my content but I would like Google to know the address through a schema markup like the following sample? Is it ok with Google and their guidelines? , , Here's what Google says from this link https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1093493?hl=en&topic=1724124&ctx=topic though it is quite confusing for me: "In general, Google won't display any content in rich snippets that is not visible to human user. It can be tempting to add all the content relevant for a rich snippet in one place on the page, mark it up, and then hide the entire block of text using techniques like display:none, value-title, css etc. Don't do it! Google will ignore content that isn't visible to human users, so you should mark up the text that visitors will see on your web pages." Is it ok if the content is not visible to users but included in a meta tag? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | esiow20130 -
Schema.org - Right way to mark the pages
Dear all, Almost since we started designing our site, we are using schema microdata. It is not only because of the rich snippets, but because I want the search engines to better understand what we have. For example, the +1 buttom would not work properly without schema microdata, because it kind of ignores the OpenGraph parameters that specified image and description; and since we are a (very small) local bussiness directory (between other things), all our clients have a hand written schema complient description on their lisings, including address, opening ours, telephone number, description, etc. It is hand written by us because the tools avialable are simply not good enough to cover all different scenarios that a listing can present. I have not use, until today, a proper for the homepage, and it is probably the cause that our page lost the nice links below the site description in the google snippet. I did not place it on the body tag, but near the description, closing it inmediately after the description finishs. Now this is solved and we will wait to see if the links come back in the next weeks. Now to the question. Our site has three sections, with three different systems installed, two running wordpress and a third running another script. the main site is the local bussiness directory. The front page is mark as "schema.org/WepPage", and I do not know how to mark the other pages of the main site. I was thinking of marking the listings as "schema.org/ItemPage" since they are related to specific clients. Would you consired it to be right? Then, we have landing pages for the categories, should they be mark as WepPage, or as an Article, or something else? Many thanks in advance for your help, Best Regards, Daniel
Web Design | | te_c0 -
Joomla ( title page override not working properly ) any techy guys out there
Hey Mozzers I am having some problems with joomla. I have tried many support forums and since everyone is in the same field as me, i thought this would be a great place to ask this question. I am working with joomla 2.5 and After i have turn on my search engine friendly configuration, you can override the ( alias ) of the page by providing page display options for title tag. so i turned on the SEF in global config and turn on the mod-rewrite and made sure my htaccess file was not txt. But i am having some problems with this.
Web Design | | BizDetox
On some pages the page display option for the _browser page title _works and on some it does. On the pages it doesnt it is pulling the information of the Alias. ( which is common with most site )
Why is it doing this You can check out the pages yourself Here is a page with it not working
http://tungstengem.com/mens-wedding-bands and here is a page with it working
http://tungstengem.com/mens-wedding-...-bands-for-men Also for my homepage when i didnt have my Apach rewrite it show the index.php and i was able to ad an alias to it. Now the Alias for the home page is not working0 -
How to determine if my site map needs work?
I recently spoke to a consultant at a search conference who took a look at my site map and mentioned it looked like google would have a hard time crawling the site and indexing new pages and changes. I am managing an ecommerce site with a bunch of products, however, I am not an XML expert by any means so i'd appreciate any advice on what to look for in the site map that would possibly be affecting googles ability to crawl/index.
Web Design | | GregWhiteStarMedia0 -
Having a new website build, what happens to my SEO work?
Hi, We are in the process of having a new website developed by a web agency. New domain, new business name etc... What is the best process to transfer from old domain to the new one? What happens to all my ranked URLs? What can re-directs do to help me? Will I loose all my link juice on highly ranked keyword domains? I ranked 1st for a brand now, wil lthis go? Any advice, help or hints would be great. Thanks Will
Web Design | | YNWA0 -
Critique a site I'm working on please
Hi guys, I have a list of things to do on this website that is longer than my arm but thought I would gather a few more thoughts on the site before moving on further with it. The site is here. It went live a couple of days ago for live testing. I have a news section coming very soon at theworkplacedepot.co.uk/news - it is in live testing now. One glaring issue for me is that some of the products simply aren't "buyable". What I mean by that is that the options are too vague and too vast - as an outsider I wouldnt have a clue what I was buying! Other issues: The banner at the bottom of the HP is a test - its design will be changing. The sitemap has some issues and will be addressed. There is no area yet to "log-in". However, critique for me pretty please! 🙂
Web Design | | MattJanaway0