Schema - Getting Started

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This is a technical article which requires basic understanding of HTML.

Search engines can understand content the way humans do, with microdata. Microdata allows you to tell search engines what is what on a web page, from the title to user comments and much more. In our Schema series of tutorial posts we will explore the vast possibilities of microdata.

Familiarize yourself with Schema and microdata with our introduction article.

Also Read: Schema – An Introduction

Microdata will help your web content’s visibility on search engines.

Well crafted web content can boost your search ranking. Schema can be combined with OpenGraph meta, social integration on WordPress, Twitter Cards, Pins and any other functionality available by major social platforms. Microdata is a specialization for search engines, which are equally important as social media. In fact, Google and Google+ might share a bit more.

Things are not as technical as they sound, so let’s get right to business and experiment.

Microdata for WebPage

Let’s presume we want search engines to better understand WeAreSocialMedia‘s homepage. By implementing microdata on our HTML markup we will be able to tell search engines where is the navigation, what is the main content, what’s the copyright and so much more.

First thing’s first, let’s tell them that this is a properly organized webpage:

<body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/WebPage" ... > ... </body>

Now, we can use microdata for basically every section of our webpage. Schema has a weird sense of humor and defines navigation with itemprop name “breadcrumbs”. Our navigation is the black bar beneath the logo, which is suitably tagged as follows:

<nav ... itemprop="breadcrumps" ... > ... </nav>

We also want to specify that our logo should be the image associated with our particular webpage. We will go ahead and use our <img> tag as our itemprop:

<img ... itemprop="primaryImageOfPage" ... ></img>

Next of, we want to direct search engines straight to our About Page. As our homepage offers significantly less information than our about page, we will style the last quite differently. If your web content is offered across multiple webpages, you can make sure there is a connection between all of them with Related Links or a single Significant Link.

Microdata can help search engines understand your sitemap better.

<li> <a href ... itemprop="significantLink" ... > ... </a> </li>

We can also use Related Links to bind our webpage with social profiles. Search results greatly depend on how visible a social platform is and what our activity and keywords mean to that particular platform. Microdata and Related Links can help search engines better understand the connection between your webpage and external content – in our case, social media profiles.

We need to make sure that link itemprops are within <a> tags.

<a href ... itemprop="relatedLink" ... > ... </a>

The possibilities are endless. You can keep exploring microdata for web pages and customize to your heart’s content. In a quick summary, microdata can help your web content become more visible on search engines and ultimately increase their ranking.

Next stop: Microdata for Articles.

Would you like to add anything to this story? Share your insight on the comments below. If you require any help with implementing microdata on your website, don’t be a stranger and tweet me @cinegk.