Tag: rich snippets

How to Properly Add SEO-Friendly â€˜How toâ€™ Schema in WordPress

Are you wondering how to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress?

By adding ‘how to’ schema to your content, you can show images, videos, and detailed step-by-step instructions directly in the search results. This can make your content stand out and get you more clicks and visitors.

In this article, we will show you how to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress.

Why Add ‘How To’ Schema in WordPress?

‘How to’ schema markup is a type of HTML code that’s added to your WordPress website.

Instead of appearing on your site, ‘how to’ schema gives search engines more information about your tutorial articles. This can include detailed step-by-step instructions, a list of tools and supplies the reader will need, and how long the tutorial takes to complete.

This helps the search engines understand your pages and posts and show them to people who are looking for content just like yours.

Even better, search engines such as Google may use the ‘how to’ schema to create rich snippets and results. For example, Google might show your ‘how to’ steps in an ordered list.

Depending on how your schema is set up, search engines may even display this information in the ‘people also ask’ section.

These boxes appear for many search queries and offer a list of additional questions, each linked to a website for more information.

This section appears at the very top of the search results, so they can get you even more clicks and increase your blog traffic.

Some rich results even include useful information, such as a list of required tools or how much money readers need to spend to complete the guide. This can help people quickly decide whether your ‘how to’ guide is right for them, which will improve the user experience.

It’s important to note that adding ‘how to’ schema in WordPress will not guarantee that your content appears as a rich result. However, it will improve your chances, especially if your website is already SEO-optimized.

Google’s ‘How To’ Schema Guidelines

Before adding ‘how to’ schema to your pages and posts, it’s important to understand Google’s content guidelines.

Firstly, you can’t use the ‘how to’ schema for advertising purposes or include any content that’s obscene, explicit, or violent. You also shouldn’t add ‘how to’ schema to any content that promotes dangerous or illegal activities.

You can only use ‘how to’ schema once per page, and all the content in your schema markup must also be visible on that page. This means you can’t type out unique instructions or add images that don’t appear in the actual ‘how to’ guide.

Finally, you can’t use the ‘how to’ schema for recipes. For this type of content, you will get much better results by using the SEO-friendly recipe schema.

How To Add ‘How To’ Schema in WordPress

The easiest way to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress is with All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress, used by over 3 million sites.

AIOSEO allows you to add a growing number of schema types to your pages, posts, custom post types, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, and more. This can help search engines understand your content and increase your chances of getting rich snippets.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate AIOSEO. For more details, see our guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.

Note: There is a free version of AIOSEO that allows you to optimize your site no matter what your budget is. However, you will need the premium version to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress.

Upon activation, the plugin will run a setup wizard, so simply follow the onscreen instructions. If you need more detailed instructions, then you can see our guide on how to properly set up All in One SEO for WordPress.

Once you have completed the setup wizard, AIOSEO will take you back to the WordPress dashboard. Now that All in One SEO is installed and activated, simply open the page, post, custom post type, or any other content where you want to add the ‘how to’ schema.

After that, scroll to the bottom of the WordPress content editor, where you will see a new ‘AIOSEO Settings’ section.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Schema’ tab.

Here, you will see the schema settings are enabled by default.

To add the ‘how to’ schema, just click on the ‘Generate Schema’ button.

This will open AIOSEO’s Schema Catalog, where you can choose from a wide range of different schema types. For example, you can add FAQ schema in WordPress, add GTIN, ISBN, and MPN schema, and more.

Here, simply find the ‘how to’ option and click on its ‘Add Schema’ button.

This opens a window where you can type in all the information you want to use in the schema.

By default, AIOSEO adds a ‘Post Title’ smart tag to the ‘Title’ field. AIOSEO automatically replaces all its smart tags with real values, so you can create unique markup without having to manually type in all the information you want to use.

If you want to use a different title, then simply delete the ‘Post Title’ smart tag. You can then type in the information you would like to use instead.

Next, you will need to add a description. Search engines like Google typically show the description below the post title and above the list of steps, so it’s a great way to introduce the guide to potential readers.

You can either type this information into the ‘Description’ box or click on any smart tag you want to use. To see the full list of smart tags, click the ‘View all tags’ link.

If the reader needs any specialist equipment or resources to complete the guide, then you should type them into the ‘Supplies’ field.

After each item, press the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard to add it to the schema.

Similarly, if the reader needs any specialist tools, then just type these into the ‘Tools’ section.

With that done, you can specify how long it will take readers to complete the ‘how to’ guide. Simply type the correct numbers into the fields marked ‘Days’, ‘Hours’, and ‘Minutes’.

Sometimes, you may want to show the finished result. For example, if you are writing about how to create an email newsletter, then you might show a professionally-designed newsletter. If readers like what they see, then they are more likely to visit your website.

Unlike other images that must be unique, you can reuse this image in the final step of your ‘how to’ schema. However, as always, the image must appear somewhere on the page or post.

Simply click on the ‘Upload or select image’ button and then choose an image from the WordPress media library.

Sometimes, readers will need to spend money to complete a ‘how to’ guide. For example, if you are writing a post about how to start a WordPress blog, then readers will need to buy WordPress hosting.

In this case, simply type the total cost into the ‘Price’ field and select the currency.

With that done, you are ready to add each step to the ‘how to’ schema.

According to Google’s guidelines, each step must only include the information readers need to complete that step. With that in mind, you shouldn’t include any non-step data, such as an introduction section or a list of related posts.

To start, type in a title for the step and enter the instructions into the ‘Description’ section.

Have you added anchor links in WordPress? For example, you might help readers find their way around the page by creating a table of contents where each step is an anchor link.

If this is the case, then you can add the step’s anchor link to the ‘URL’ field.

You may also want to add an image that represents this step. This image must be unique and be visible on the page or post.

According to Google’s guidelines, you should never use images that don’t reflect the step’s content or use the same image for multiple steps.

When you are happy with how the first step is set up, just click on the ‘Add Another Step’ button.

This creates a section where you can add a title and description, plus an optional anchor link and image. Simply repeat this process to add all the steps to your ‘how to’ schema.

When you are happy with how the schema is set up, go ahead and click on the ‘Add Schema’ button.

You can now go ahead and publish or update the page to make the schema live on your WordPress website.

If you want to test whether your ‘how to’ schema markup is working correctly, then scroll down to our section on how to test your WordPress ‘how to’ schema.

Optional: Create a Reusable’ How To’ Schema Template

If you publish lots of ‘how to’ guides, then you might create your own schema template. You can then apply this template to any page, post, custom taxonomy, custom post type, or other content with the click of a button.

Schema templates tend to work best when you use smart tags. For example, tags can add the post’s title, excerpt, author, publication date, and other content automatically. In this way, you can create unique schema without having to manually type in all the information.

Sometimes, you may even use the same tools, pricing, currency, or other information on all your posts.

For example, if you run a photography blog, then you might always recommend that readers use your favorite camera model or lens. By typing this information into the template’s ‘Tools’ field, AIOSEO will automatically apply this schema to your content, which saves you even more time.

Even better, you can override these default settings every time you use the template, so you can still customize the template for individual pages.

To create a reusable template, you need to open any page or post and then click on the ‘Generate Schema’ button.

In the popup that appears, click on the button next to ‘How to’.

This takes you to a screen where you can build the template. By default, AIOSEO will use the post’s title as the name.

To change this, simply delete the ‘Post Title’ tag and then click on ‘View all tags.’

You can now choose any tag from the dropdown menu.

You can also use a combination of plain text and tags or multiple tags.

For example, you might use ‘Post Title’ and ‘Post Date.’ AIOSEO will then replace these tags with real values every time you use the template.

When you are happy with how the title is set up, you can add a description.

Often, it makes sense to use the ‘Excerpt’ tag so that AIOSEO will use the WordPress post’s excerpt. However, you can use any smart tags you want or even type plain text into the ‘Description’ field.

With that done, you may want to add some plain text to the other fields. For example, there may be some tools and supplies that you use in all your ‘how to’ guides.

Using WPBeginner as an example, it might make sense to add a domain name or Bluehost WordPress hosting to the ‘Tools’ field since most of our ‘how to’ guides require a domain and web hosting.

Remember, you can override these settings each time you use the template.

After typing in any extra information you want to use, it’s time to go ahead and create the template. Simply click on the ‘Save Schema as Template’ button.

You can now type in a title for the schema template. This is just for your reference, so you can use anything that helps you identify the template in your WordPress dashboard.

With that done, click on the ‘Save Template’ button.

To apply the template to your content, simply click on the ‘Generate Schema’ button to open the schema catalog as normal.

Then, click on the ‘Your Templates’ tab.

You will now see the template you created earlier.

If you want to apply the template without making any changes, then click on its ‘+’ button.

However, we recommend customizing the template as it typically creates more SEO-friendly schema. This can improve your WordPress SEO and help you get valuable rich snippets in the search engine results.

To do this, simply click on the ‘pencil’ icon.

You can now make changes or type in any extra information you want to use for this specific ‘how to’ guide.

With that done, click on ‘Add Schema’.

Simply repeat these steps to use the same template anywhere on your online store, website, or WordPress blog.

How to Test Your ‘How to’ Schema in WordPress

Since the ‘how to’ schema doesn’t appear on your website, you will need to test it using a free Google tool.

To check that the schema is formatted correctly, head over to Google’s Rich Results Test page. Here, simply type in the URL where you added the ‘how to’ schema and then click on ‘Test URL.’

Google will now analyze your page for all kinds of schema markup. With that in mind, you may see multiple results if the page uses other kinds of schema, such as local business schema and FAQ schema.

Once the test is complete, click on the section marked ‘How to’.

You should now see all the information you added to this page or post. If this data is correct, then your ‘how to’ schema is working perfectly.

If the information is wrong or it’s formatted incorrectly, then you will need to open that page or post in the WordPress content editor. Then, scroll to the AIOSEO Settings and select the ‘Schema’ tab.

Here, find the ‘how to’ schema you added earlier and click on its pencil icon.

You can then edit the schema by following the same process described above.

When you are happy with the changes you have made, just click on ‘Update Schema.’

You can now re-test the URL using Google’s Rich Results Test page.

If you are still seeing the wrong information, then try clearing your WordPress cache because caching plugins may show an outdated version of your content to Google.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add ‘how to’ schema in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to make money online blogging with WordPress or see our expert pick of the best SEO plugins and tools that you should use.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Properly Add SEO-Friendly â€˜How toâ€™ Schema in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

27.09.2023

Structured data with Schema.org: the ultimate guide

Master the art of using Schema.org to elevate your online visibility with our ultimate guide to structured data. Dive into the heart of Schema.org and how it can revolutionize how your site interacts with search engines like Google. Explore its power in improving the presentation of your pages when describing products, reviews, events, and recipes. Discover how to get rich results such as snippets, interactive mobile results, voice-activated actions, or securing a spot in Google’s coveted Knowledge Graph. Embrace structured data — your ticket to better online exposure and interaction.

What is structured data?

Structured data is a way of describing your website to make it easier for search engines to understand. You need a so-called vocabulary to make it work, and the one used by the big search engines is Schema.org. Schema.org provides a series of tags and properties to describe your products, reviews, local business listings, job postings, et cetera in detail.

The major search engines, Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo, developed this vocabulary to reach a shared language to understand websites better. Search engines use it today for many things, from fact-checking content to listing job postings!

If added well, search engines can use the applied structured data to better understand your page’s contents. As a result, your site might be presented better in search results, for example, in the form of rich results like rich snippets. However, there are no guarantees youâ€™ll get rich results — that’s up to the search engines.

A simple example of structured data

Below is an example of a simple structured data using Schema.org in JSON-LD format. This is a basic schema for a product with review properties. This code tells search engines that the page is a product (Product); it provides the name and description of the product, pricing information, the URL, plus product ratings and reviews. This allows search engines to understand your products and present your content in search results.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <title>Product Title</title>
    <meta name="description" content="Brief description of the product">
    <script type="application/ld+json">
    {
      "@context": "https://schema.org/",
      "@type": "Product",
      "name": "Product Name",
      "image": "https://www.example.com/product-image.jpg",
      "description": "Product description",
      "brand": {
         "@type": "Brand",
         "name": "Brand Name"
      },
      "offers": {
        "@type": "Offer",
        "priceCurrency": "USD",
        "price": "99.99"
      },
      "aggregateRating": {
        "@type": "AggregateRating",
        "ratingValue": "4.5",
        "reviewCount": "11"
      },
      "review": {
        "@type": "Review",
        "reviewRating": {
          "@type": "Rating",
          "ratingValue": "4",
          "bestRating": "5"
        },
        "author": {
          "@type": "Person",
          "name": "Reviewer's Name"
        },
        "reviewBody": "Review text goes here"
      }
    }
    </script>
</head>
<body>
    <!-- Your webpage content goes here -->
</body>
</html>

Why do you need structured data?

Structured data, particularly when using the Schema.org vocabulary, breathes life into your site for search engines. It describes your products, reviews, events, job postings, and more in a language that search engines instantly understand. The beauty of structured data lies in its precision and detailed presentation of your site’s content. Gone are the days when search engines had to make guesses about your content: with structured data, every site element is deciphered clearly.

Structured data is crucial because it can outline clear connections among diverse website components. It fosters a new understanding for search engines, helping them see your site’s content and how everything relates. Itâ€™s a roadmap of your site’s content, with each piece connected and important to the bigger picture.

In a world where clarity equals visibility, structured data is no longer nice but necessary. By applying structured data, you speak the language of search engines, augmenting your website’s comprehensibility and attracting more organic traffic.

Is structured data important for SEO?

Implementing structured data using Schema.org is a strategic move in bolstering your website’s SEO. While it may not directly improve your site’s rankings, it enriches search result listings, making your site a more appealing click to prospective visitors.

Envision your search result as a movie trailer: The preview captivates the audience and compels them to watch it. An enhanced search result crafted with structured data offers a similar advantage. It gives searchers a more detailed, enriched preview of your website, significantly increasing the likelihood of being chosen from a sea of links. If your website delivers on what the enhanced listing promises, congratulations – you’ve just become a reputable source for your visitor. This user satisfaction translates into a lower bounce rate, signaling to search engines like Google that your site is a credible and reliable resource.

Moreover, with structured data gradually gaining traction, now is the perfect opportunity to leapfrog your competitors. It’s not just about keeping pace in the SEO race; it’s about being a frontrunner. Our structured data guide is designed to equip you with pragmatic tips and recommendations to maximize your website’s potential using structured data

Structured data can lead to rich results

By describing your site for search engines, you allow them to do exciting things with your content. Schema.org and its support are constantly developing, improving, and expanding. As structured data forms the basis for many new developments in the SEO world — like voice search –, there are bound to be more shortly. Below is an overview of the available rich search results; examples are in Google’s Search Gallery. At the moment, these are a couple of the available rich results:

Article	FAQ	Q&A
Book	Home activities	Recipe
Breadcrumbs	How-to	Review snippet
Carousel	Image metadata	Sitelinks searchbox
Course	Job posting	Software app
Critic review	Learning video	Speakable
Dataset	Local business	Subscription and paywalled content
Education Q&A	Logo	Video
Employer aggregate rating	Math solver
Estimated salary	Movie
Event	Practice problem
Fact check	Product

The rich results formerly known as rich snippets

Rich results are your golden ticket to creating dynamic, engaging, and information-packed search result listings. They are much more than the standard, black-line meta description text on a search engine results page. Harnessing the power of rich results enriches search listings with additional information and interactive functionalities.

Some listings offer extra information, like star ratings or product details

Consider rich results as added-value details that elevate a user’s search experience. From showing critical product data such as pricing and reviews to practical navigational tools like breadcrumbs or in-site search functions, rich results make your listing stand out in a competitive digital landscape.

Where a conventional search result offers a glimpse into your site, a rich result is akin to rolling out a red carpet, enticing users with a premium overview of what they can expect when they click through. These enriched listings can effectively boost click-through rates (CTR) and enhance user interaction, providing an SEO advantage that improves your site’s visibility and drives more traffic.

Keep reading: Rich snippets everywhere »

Rich results on mobile

In today’s mobile-driven world, rich results are pivotal in shaping a distinctive and interactive search experience. Rich results find a particular resonance in mobile searches, becoming more prevalent and impactful. Specific searches for local restaurants, recipes, movies, how-tos, and courses benefit from a specialized treatment in mobile search results.

They are often presented in a touch-friendly and user-engaging, swipeable manner, making rich results intuitive and streamlined on mobile devices. This format, frequently called the carousel, significantly enhances the user experience and the ease of information access.

Google significantly emphasizes fostering rich, interactive elements within these results. With Google’s touch of innovation, you can conveniently reserve a table at your favorite restaurant, order movie tickets, find delectable cheesecake recipes, or even book flight ticketsâ€” all directly from the search results. Google’s advancements have turned the humble search engine results page into a powerhouse encompassing almost every aspect of daily life, with structured data propelling parts of it.

With structured data and rich results, your website gains the potential to offer more than just links and text â€” it becomes more visible to the user. It elevates the user experience by leaps and bounds, improving your site’s visibility and creating potential for greater user engagement. Remember, the precision and dynamism offered by structured data and rich results are still in the early adoption phases across the web. Therefore, harnessing them presents a lucrative opportunity to gain a competitive edge. And from the looks of it, we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of potential here.

Knowledge Graph Panel

When you search Google, you’ll commonly see a large box of detailed information on the right side. This dynamic feature, Google’s Knowledge Graph Panel, provides an enriched snapshot of information tied to your specific search.

So, how does Google amass this information? It systematically evaluates related content about the subject in question, with structured data from a website being a significant resource. This exhaustive examination of interconnected data helps to unveil a more holistic picture of the search subject.

Imagine you’re a verified business or an authority on a particular subject. The Knowledge Graph Panel can showcase your name, logo, and social media profiles. This visibility warrants a sense of prestige and credibility conferred by Google.

But the implications of the Knowledge Graph Panel go beyond just surface-level information. Linking to a multitude of related content creates a comprehensive web of knowledge that helps users delve deeper into their areas of interest. This enhances user experience and increases the time spent on Google services, making it a win-win feature for both ends.

Moreover, the Knowledge Graph’s influence extends to SEO strategy. A billboard showcasing your site’s relevance and authority is featured in search results. It underscores the importance of structured data in shaping a website’s digital visibility and underlines how optimized, high-quality content can pave the way for enriched search results.

Featured snippets

This might be a sneaky addition because featured snippets are rich results, but they do not get their content from structured data. A featured snippet answers a search question directly in the search results but uses regular content from a web page to do so.

A featured snippet for the search term [site structure]

Does structured data work on mobile?

Yes, the results of implementing structured data work everywhere. Mobile is one of the places where the results of a Schema implementation are most visible.

If a page meets the criteria Google sets, you can now book movie tickets or reserve a table at a restaurant directly from the search results. If you implement structured data correctly, you could also be eligible for several interactive extras on the mobile search results pages.

Different kinds of structured data

Sitelinks Searchbox

A Searchbox is where the internal search engine of a site is presented within the search results of Google. Google uses Schema.org code for this as well. Yoast SEO has support for this built in, and there’s more info in our Knowledge Base.

If you look at the Schema.org website, youâ€™ll notice a lot of information you could add to your site as structured data. Not everything is relevant, though. Before implementing structured data, you need to know what you should markup. Do you have a product in an online store? Do you own a restaurant? Or do you have a local business providing services to the community? Or a site with your favorite cheesecake recipes? Whichever it is, you need to know what you want to do and explore the possibilities. Don’t forget to check the documentation by search engines to understand what they need from you.

Yoast SEO does a lot of these

Yoast SEO has Schema controls, which help translate your content into a language search engines understand and appreciate. It automatically generates structured data for your site with sensible default settings, which you can also manually adjust based on over twenty supported content types. This granular control over your Schema settings can increase your chance of obtaining coveted rich results.

For instance, our Schema tab lets you specify your contact page as a ContactPage, removing potential ambiguities for search engines. Beyond this, Yoast SEO makes automatic connections that guide search engines in deciphering the meaning of your site. We also provide additional features that enhance Schema elements and center around content specificity, all contributing to a cohesive structured data strategy.

Yoast SEO helps you fine-tune your schema structured data settings per page

Creative works

The Creative Work group encompasses all creative things produced by someone or something. Youâ€™ll find the most common ones below, but the list is much longer. Youâ€™ll also find properties for sculptures, games, conversations, software applications, visual artworks, and much more. However, most of these properties donâ€™t have a rich presentation in search engine results, so they are less valuable. But, as mentioned earlier, if your site has items in the categories below, mark them up with Schema.org.

Articles

An article could be a news item or part of an investigative report. You can distinguish between a news article, a tech article, or even a blog post.

Books

A book is a book, whether in paper form or digital form, as an eBook. You can mark up every property type, from the author who wrote it to any awards it has won.

Courses

Courses can also appear as a rich result.

Datasets

Google understands structured data for datasets and can use this to help surface and understand these datasets better. Find out more on Google’s developer pages.

FAQ pages

Make a great FAQ page to answer your customers’ frequently asked questions. Yoast SEO helps you turn those FAQs into something Google can understand properly, with the Schema structured data FAQ content block.

How-tos

You can markup your how-to articles with HowTo structured data. Our structured data content block for how-tos is in the WordPress block editor. By following a step-by-step process, users can get a specific task done.

Image metadata

By incorporating detailed image metadata, Google Images can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the image, including details about the creator, usage permissions, and acknowledgment specifics.

Music

Music also gets the structured data treatment. There are a couple of Schema.orgs of interest for music, like MusicRecording, MusicAlbum, MusicEvent, and MusicGroup.

Q&A pages

Question and answer pages are eligible for rich results as well. According to Google, Q&A pages differ from FAQ pages, where you can find multiple questions and answers on a page â€” more in Google’s Q&A page documentation. Use the Yoast SEO structured data content blocks to provide structured data for your FAQ pages.

Recipes

Adding Recipe structured data to the recipes on your cooking website lets you get your recipes featured directly in search results. Moreover, with mobile rich results, recipes look great on mobile featuring great images — if you add them. And that’s not all, because you can now send your recipes to Google Home and get Assistant to speak it out loud. How cool is that?

Speakable

Google is currently testing the implementation of speakable Schema.org. With this code, you can tell a search engine that a piece of content is specially written to be spoken aloud by digital assistants like Alexa, Siri, Cortana, or Google Assistant.

TV & Movies

Movies and TV shows get their piece of structured data as well. Searching for a movie in search engines will yield a rich result with reviews, poster art, cast information, and even the ability to order tickets for a showing directly. You can even mark up lists of the best movies ever made or your favorite TV shows.

Videos

Itâ€™s possible to do all kinds of interesting things with video. Google, in particular, is working on new ways to display videos in the search results.

Commerce

There is also structured data for commercial goals. Here, you’ll find a couple of important ones:

Events

Marking up your event listings with the correct Event Schema.org, might lead to search engines showing your events directly in the search results. This is a must-have if you own a nightclub, a venue, or any business regularly organizing events.

Businesses and organizations

If you make money with your website, you might own a business. If you’re a site owner or work on a company site, you’ll find the business and organization Schema.orgs interesting. Almost every site can benefit from the correct business Schema.org. If you do it well, you could get a nice Knowledge Graph or another type of rich listing in the search engines. You can even add special structured data for your contact details so customers can contact you directly from the search results. For local businesses, our Local SEO plugin helps you take care of all your local structured data needs.

Read on: Local business listings with Schema.org and JSON-LD »

Job Postings

Have job postings on your site? Mark them up with the job postings structured data to have them show up nicely in Google. We use this on all our Yoast job postings as well.

Products

Schema.org for products is almost as important as the one for businesses and organizations. Using Product Schema.org; you can give your products the extra data search engines need to give you rich snippets, for example. Consider all the search results with added information, like pricing, reviews, availability, etc. This should be a significant part of your structured data strategy if you have products. Remember to mark up your product images. Our WooCommerce SEO and Shopify SEO products output proper product structured data.

Keep on reading: Rich snippets for product listings with Schema.org »

Reviews

Reviews and ratings play an important role in today’s search process. Businesses, service providers, and online stores all use reviews to attract more customers and show how trustworthy their offer is. Getting those five stars in search engines might be the missing link to creating a successful business.

Actions for voice assistants

Voice assistants are interesting, but they have yet to reach the adoption levels they were predicted to have. Still, there’s stuff happening on this front if you see it as part of the conversational search movement. Take recipes, for instance; you can send a recipe from the search results to your Google Home to read aloud while cooking. These are called Actions, and there are a whole bunch of them. If you want your recipes to appear in the Google Assistant library, add a specific structured data set and adhere to additional rules. You can find more on that on the Creating a recipe action page. Visit Google’s Assistant site to get a feel for what’s possible (a lot!).

Google Assistant uses a lot of structured data to understand your content

The technical details

To start marking up your pages, you must understand how Schema.org works. If you look closely at the full specs on Schema.org, youâ€™ll see a strict hierarchy in the vocabulary. Everything is connected, just like everything is connected on your pages. Scroll through the list to see all the options, and note the ones you need.

Google Search Console

If you need to check how your structured data is performing in Google, check your Search Console. Find the structured data insights under the Enhancement tab and you’ll see all the pages that have structured data, plus an overview of pages that give errors, if any.Read our Beginner’s guide for Search Console for more info.

Letâ€™s look at the structure. A Schema.org implementation starts with a Thing, the most generic type of item. A Thing could be a more specific type of item, for instance, a Creative Work, an Event, Organization, Person, Place, or Product.

For example, a movie is a â€œThingâ€ and a â€œCreative Workâ€, which falls under the category â€œMovieâ€. You can add a lot of properties to this, like a â€œDescriptionâ€, a â€œDirectorâ€, an â€œActorâ€, a poster â€œImageâ€, â€œDurationâ€ or â€œGenreâ€. There are loads to add, so you can get as specific as you want. However, donâ€™t overdo it since not all search engines use every property – at least not yet. For instance, you should look at the specifications in Googleâ€™s documentation to see which properties are required and which are recommended.

A sample Schema.org structure

If we put what we know now in a hierarchy, this is what you will end up with:

Thing
- Creative Work
  - Movie
    - Description (type: text)
    - Director (type: person)
    - Actor (type: person)
    - Image (type: ImageObject or URL)
    - etc.

If it would be a local business, you could use something like this:

Thing
- Organization (or Place)
  - LocalBusiness
    - Dentist
      - Name
      - Address
      - Email
      - Logo
      - Review
      - etc.

For local businesses, you could pick a more specific type of business. This makes it easier for search engines to determine what kind of business you own. There are hundreds of types of local businesses, but your business might not fit one of the descriptions. Using the Product Types Ontology you can get more specific information if your listing is too broad.

In the local business example, youâ€™ll see that Google lists several required properties, like your business’s NAP (Name and Phone) details. There are also recommended properties, like URLs, geo-coordinates, opening hours, etc. Try to fill out as many of these as possible because search engines will only give you the whole presentation you want. You’ll find our Local SEO plugin very helpful if you need help with your local business markup.

What do you need to describe for search engines?

Looking at Schema.org for the first time is daunting. The list is enormous, and the possibilities are endless, so itâ€™s easy to become overwhelmed. To get over this, you need to go back to basics. Think about your site, business, or product and write down the specifications and properties you feel are necessary, then work up. Also, Yoast SEO covers the most essential properties automatically — so there is no need to worry about those if your plugin is configured correctly!

Having said that, there are a couple of sections you should prioritize in your plan to add structured data to your site. If you start with these three, youâ€™ll have the basics covered, and then you can build on that. You should start with structured data for your business details, products, and reviews. These will have the biggest effect in the short term.

How to implement structured data

Donâ€™t be frightened, but here comes the technical part of the story. Before we do that, we’d like to remind you that Yoast SEO comes with an excellent structured data implementation. It’ll automatically handle most sites’ most pressing structured data needs. Of course, as mentioned below, you can extend our structured data framework as your needs become bigger.

Do the Yoast SEO configuration and get your site’s structured data set up in a few clicks! The configuration is available for all Yoast SEO users to help you get your plugin configured correctly. It’s quick, it’s easy, and doing it will pay off. Plus, if you’re using the new block editor in WordPress you can also add structured data to your FAQ pages and how-to articles using our structured data content blocks.

Thanks to JSON-LD, thereâ€™s nothing scary about adding the data to your pages anymore. This JavaScript-based data format makes it much easier to add structured data since it forms a block of code and is no longer embedded in the HTML of your page. This makes it easier to write and maintain, plus both humans and machines better understand it. If you need help implementing JSON-LD structured data, you can enroll in our free Structured data for beginners course, our Understanding structured data course or follow a high-level course on Google’s Codelabs.

Structured data with JSON-LD

JSON-LD is the preferred method of adding structured data to your site. However, not all search engines have been quick to adopt it — Bing being the last hold-out. Thankfully, Microsoft came around in August 2018 and now supports this, as the most efficient method.

Since Yoast SEO 11.0, the plugin comes with a fully-featured Schema.org implementation. Yoast SEO now creates a structured data graph for every page on your site, interconnecting everything. While working on this, we’ve also created complete, detailed documentation on Schema, including a specification for integrating structured data. You’ll find some example graphs for various standard pages on your site.

The old ways: RFDa and Microdata

The classic way of writing structured data for inclusion on your pages involves directly embedding it into your HTML. This made a really inefficient and error-prone process and is much of the reason why the uptake of Schema.org hasnâ€™t been swift. Writing and maintaining it via RDFa or Microdata is a pain. Believe us, try to do as much as you can in JSON-LD.

Microdata needs itemprops to function, so everything has to be inline coded. You can instantly see how that makes it hard to read, write and edit.

Tools for working with structured data

Yoast SEO automatically handles much of the structured data in the background. You could extend our Schema framework, of course — see the next chapter –, but if adding code by hand seems scary, you could try some of the tools listed below. If you need help with how to proceed, ask your web developer for help. They will fix this for you in a couple of minutes.

Generators
Validators and test tools
WordPress Plugins
- Yoast SEO Local (Our Local SEO plugin adds Schema.org for your business details, like address, geo-location, opening hours, etc.)
- The Yoast SEO WooCommerce plugin outputs product Schema to highlight your products in search.
- Yoast SEO uses JSON-LD to add Schema.org information about your site search, your site name, your logo, images, articles, social profiles and a lot more to your web pages. We ask if your site represents a person or an organization and adapt our structured data based on that. Also, our structured data content blocks for the WordPress block editor make it easy to add structured data to your FAQs and How-to’s. Check our the structured data features in Yoast SEO.

The Yoast SEO Schema structured data framework

Implementing structured data has always been challenging. Also, the results of most of those implementations often needed improvement. At Yoast, we set out to enhance the Schema output by millions of sites. For this, we built a Schema framework — ready to be adapted and extended by anyone. We combined all those loose bits and pieces of structured data that appear on many sites, improved these, and put them in a graph. By interconnecting all these bits, we offer search engines all your connections on a silver platter.

See this video for more background on the schema graph.

Of course, there’s a lot more to it. We can also extend Yoast SEO output by adding specific Schema pieces, like how-tos or FAQs. We built structured data content blocks for use in the WordPress block editor. We’ve also enabled other WordPress plugins to integrate with our structured data framework, like Easy Digital Downloads, The Events Calendar, Seriously Simple Podcasting, and WP Recipe Maker, with more to come. Together, these help you remove barriers for search engines and users, as it has always been challenging to work with structured data.

Expand and improve your structured data implementation

You’ll need to follow a structured and focused approach to effectively implement and enhance Schema.org markup on your website. This includes understanding the key concepts, identifying your goals, leveraging the right tools, and regularly reviewing your strategy. Here’s a guide on how you can do this:

Understanding Schema.org Markup: First, you need to understand what Schema.org markup is and why it’s crucial for your SEO strategy. Yoast’s developer portal provides a detailed insight into the functional approach of constructing Schema.org markup. This will help you to comprehend its importance in generating rich results on search engines.
Selecting the right format: Choosing the right format for your structured data is critically important. Yoast’s approach recommends JSON-LD as the preferred format for structured markup. According to their Technology and Approach page, JSON-LD provides usability and efficiency in conveying structured information, making it a recommended format by major search engines, including Google.
Integrating with Yoast’s structured data framework: To seamlessly add Schema.org markup to your web pages, you can use our structured data framework. Yoastâ€™s Schema Integration Guidelines provide an easy and beneficial way to integrate Schema.org markup, optimize communication with search engines, and potentially improve its SEO performance.
Reviewing and enhancing your implementation: To keep your structured data markup implementation effective, reviewing and enhancing it regularly is advisable. Not only does this help in identifying any potential issues, but it also presents opportunities to improve your existing markup for better SEO performance.

Read up

By following the guidelines and adopting a comprehensive approach, you can successfully get structured data on your pages and enhance the effectiveness of your schema.org markup implementation for a robust SEO performance. Read the Yoast SEO Schema documentation to learn how Yoast SEO works with structured data, how you can extend it via an API, and how you can integrate it into your work.

Several WordPress plugins already integrate their structured data into the Yoast SEO graph

Keep reading: Open-source software, open Schema protocol! »

External links

Most search engines have their developer center where you can find more information on the inner workings of their structured data implementations. You can read these to see what works and what doesn’t. It would be best to stick to their rules because a bad Schema.org implementation could lead to a penalty. Always check your code in the structured data test tool to see if itâ€™s correct. Fix errors and regularly maintain the code on your site to see if it is still up to scratch.

In the end

You can’t run away from structured data anymore. If your site means anything to you, you should look into it and figure out the best way to use Schema.org. Still need some help? Read more on how Yoast SEO makes it easy for you. Or check out our digital story on rich results, structured data and Schema, or take our free structured data for beginner’s online training course. If implemented correctly, it can do great things for your site, now and in the future. Search engines are constantly developing new ways to present search results, and more often than not, they use Schema.org data.

Adding structured data to your site is an essential part of technical SEO. If you’re wondering how fit your site’s overall technical SEO is, take our technical SEO fitness quiz to find out. This quiz helps you figure out what you can still work on!

Read on: How to check the performance of your rich results in Google Search Console »

The post Structured data with Schema.org: the ultimate guide appeared first on Yoast.

07.09.2023

Product page SEO: 5 things to improve

Having great product pages is important for your sales. After all, it’s where people decide to click that buy button. Besides optimizing your product pages for user experience, you also want to make sure these pages work for your SEO. You might think this is obvious. That’s why weâ€™ll show you a few less obvious elements of product page SEO in this post. And we’ll explain why itâ€™s so important to take these things into account. Let’s go!

1. The basics of product page SEO

First things first: a product page on an online store is a page too. This means that all the SEO things that matter for your content pages, matter for your product pages as well. Of course, there’s a lot more to product page SEO. But for now, this will be your basic optimization. Tip: If you offer not-so-exciting products on your site, you may want to read our post on SEO for boring products.

Let’s start with the basics.

1. A great title

Try to focus on the product name. And include the manufacturer name, if applicable. In addition, if your product is a small part of a larger machine (screw, tube) for example, you should include the SKU as well. People might search for that specifically.

2. A proper and unique product description

While it might be tempting to use the same description as the product’s manufacturer, you really shouldn’t. That description might be found on hundreds of websites, which means it’s duplicate content and a sign of low quality for your website (to Google). Remember, you want to prevent duplicate content at all times!

Now, you might think: “But all my other content (content pages, category pages, blog) is unique!” However, if the content on hundreds of product pages isnâ€™t unique, then the majority of your website’s content still won’t be up to par. So make time to create unique content! And if you need help, the Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin comes with a product-specific content and SEO analysis that helps you produce great product descriptions.

3. An inviting meta description

A product page usually contains a lot of general information, like the product’s dimensions or your company’s terms of service. To avoid Google using that unrelated text in a meta description, you want to add a meta description to your product pages. It’s arguably even more important than adding one to your content pages!

Next, try to come up with unique meta descriptions. This can be difficult sometimes. You might come up with a sort of template, where you only change the product name per product. Thatâ€™s okay to start with. But ideally, all your meta descriptions should be unique.

4. Pick a great and easy-to-remember URL

We recommend that you use the product name in the URL. However, make sure that the URL is still readable for site visitors! Keep it short and simple.

5. Add high-quality and well-optimized images with proper ALT text

Include the product name in at least the main product image. This will help you do better in visual search. Also, donâ€™t forget video â€” if applicable.

6. Focus on your product page UX

Last but not least: UX, or user experience. This is an important step, because it’s all about making your product pages as user-friendly as possible. Plus, it’s an important part of holistic SEO. There are many parts to UX, which is why we wrote a post with product page UX examples. Give it a read!

Read more: Write great product descriptions with WooCommerce SEO »

2. Add structured data for your products and get rich results

Structured data is an essential part of a modern SEO strategy. You simply can’t do without structured data for your product pages anymore, because they help your product page stand out. For example, there is a specific Product schema that helps you get highlighted search results, so-called rich results. These are great for your site’s visibility, and they can also increase your click-through rate! And if you mark up customers’ reviews with Review structured data, they will show up in the search results. Seeing those beautiful stars underneath a product page will convince people they should check out your site!

Another reason to add it is to manage expectations from customers. Your visitors will know your price up front and that the product is still in stock. Howâ€™s that for user experience!

Search engines will understand your page better

Structured data is also important for your product page SEO because the major search engines came up with this markup, not the W3C consortium. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex agreed upon this markup, so they could identify product pages and all the product elements and characteristics more easily. Why? So they could a) understand these pages a lot better and b) show you rich snippets like this:

That’s a lot of info in the search results, right?

The Product schema tells the search engine more about the product. It could include characteristics like product description, manufacturer, brand, name, dimensions, and color, but also the SKU we mentioned earlier. The Offer schema includes more information on price and availability, like currency and stock. It can even include something called priceValidUntil to let search engines know that the price offer is for a limited time only.

Many options to add structured data for product page SEO

Schema.org has a lot of options, but only a limited set of properties are supported by search engines. For instance, look at Googleâ€™s page on product page structured data to see what search engines expect in your code and what they can do with it.

This is why you want to add Schema.org data for product page SEO: It’s easier to recognize for Google, and it makes sure to include important extras in Google already. If you have a WooCommerce shop, our WooCommerce SEO plugin takes care of a lot of this stuff behind the scenes.

Keep reading: Rich results, structured data and Schema: a visual guide to help you understand »

A preview of how your product might look in Google thanks to structured data

3. Add real reviews

Reviews are important. In fact, 95% of consumers say that they check reviews before buying anything online. Although not everyone trusts online reviews, a lot of people do, so they can be very helpful.

88% of American consumers find online reviews at least somewhat helpful

If you are a local company, online reviews are even more important. Most reviews tend to be extremely positive, but it might just be the negative reviews that give a better sense of what is going on with a company or product. In addition, getting awesome testimonials is another way of showing your business means business.

Leading Dutch online store Coolblue gives consumers a lot of options to make relevant and useful reviews of the products they buy

Try to get your customers to leave reviews, then show the reviews on your product page. Do you get a negative review? Contact the writer, find out whatâ€™s wrong and try to mitigate the situation. Maybe they can turn their negative review into a positive one. Plus: Youâ€™ve gained new insights into your work.

If you’re not sure how to get those ratings and reviews, check out our blog post: how to get ratings and reviews for your business. And don’t forget to mark up your reviews and ratings with Review and Rating schema so search engines can pick them up and show rich results on the search results pages.

4. Make your product page lightning fast

People donâ€™t like to wait. Especially in todayâ€™s mobile-focused world, every second counts. Even more so if you spend a lot of time and energy trying to get that potential customer to your product page in the first place. People expect a fast page, and Google does too. Of course, thereâ€™s a lot you can do to improve your site speed. To get you started, here’s a post about how to improve your Core Web Vital scores.

5. User test your product page

Looking at numbers in Google Analytics, Search Console or other analytical tools can give you insight into how people find and interact with your page. These insights can help you improve the performance of a page even more. But there’s another way to ensure that your product page is as awesome as it can be: user testing.

How user testing can help you

Testers can find loads of issues for you: terrible use of images (including non-functioning galleries), bad handling of out-of-stock products, or inaccurate shipping information and return information, which can lead to trust issues. Now, you might be thinking: Surely, my website doesn’t have those issues! But you’d be surprised.

In their 2021 Product Page UX research project, the Baymard Institute found that â€œthe average site has 24 structural UX issues on its product pages, and only 18% of the 60 top-grossing US and European ecommerce sites have a â€œgoodâ€ or â€œacceptableâ€ product page UX performance. The vast majority of benchmarked sites â€” 82% â€” have a â€œpoorâ€ or â€œmediocreâ€ performance. And no sites have a â€œstate of the artâ€ product page UX performance.â€ You can read this fascinating study on their Product Page UX site.

The Baymard report has loads of insights into the most common errors seen on product pages

While you compare your product pages to external user research, donâ€™t forget to do your own user testing! Doing proper research will give you eye-opening results that you probably wouldnâ€™t have found yourself.

Bonus: Build trust and show people your authenticity

Getting a stranger to buy something on your site involves a lot of trust. Someone needs to know you are authentic before handing you their hard-earned money, right? Google puts a lot of emphasis on the element of trust â€” Itâ€™s all over their famous Search Quality Raters Guidelines. The search engine tries to evaluate trust and expertise by looking at online reviews, the accolade a site or its authors receive, and much more.

This is why it’s so important that your About us and Customer service pages are in order. Make sure people can easily find your contact information, information about returns and shipping, payment, privacy, et cetera. This will build that trust for your customers. So, donâ€™t forget!

Conclusion: Be serious about your product page SEO

If youâ€™re serious about optimizing your product page, you shouldnâ€™t focus on regular SEO and user experience alone. Youâ€™ll have to dig deeper into other aspects of your product pages. For instance, you could add the Product and Offer Schema, so Google can easily index all the details about your product and show these as rich results in the search results. In addition, you should make your product pages fast, add user reviews, and try to enhance your website’s trustworthiness. And donâ€™t forget to test everything you do!

Need a helping hand? Be sure to check out our ecommerce SEO training course. Learn what ecommerce SEO entails, how to optimize your site and boost your online presence. Want to get your products ranking in the shopping search results? We’ll tell you how. Start your free trial lesson today! Full access to Yoast SEO academy is included in Yoast SEO Premium.

Check out our overview of product page must-haves

To help you stay on top of your product pages, we created a PDF that you can use to optimize your product pages. Most of what’s discussed in this blog post can be found in the PDF, plus more tips! Just click on the image to go to the PDF and download it.

Click on the image to download the PDF

Read on: 7 ways to improve product descriptions in your online store »

The post Product page SEO: 5 things to improve appeared first on Yoast.

04.09.2023
Yoast SEOâ€™s hidden features that secretly level up your SEO

If you use Yoast SEO on your site, you’re probably familiar with features like the SEO analysis or the snippet preview. You might also know our inclusive language analysis, and how easily you can link to related posts or create redirects in the premium version of the plugin. But there’s (much) more! For instance, the Yoast SEO plugin has so-called hidden features. You won’t find them in your settings, but they do great work. Today, we’ll dive into these hidden features: which ones do we have and how do they lighten your load?

Why hidden features?

You can optimize a website in many different ways. Imagine having a toggle for all these options! That’s why, when developing our Yoast SEO plugin, we decided not to translate all these options into settings. If we believe something is beneficial for every Yoast SEO user, we turn the feature on. We call these features hidden features because as a user you’re not necessarily aware of their existence. You might even think we don’t have certain features because there’s no setting for it. But the opposite is true! We’re quietly taking care of things for you.

The hidden features of Yoast SEO

To help you understand what Yoast SEO does for your website in the background, we’ve listed some of the hidden features for you below. Let’s go through them one by one!

1. A structured data graph

Yoast SEO outputs a fully-integrated structured data graph for your posts and pages. But what is a structured data graph? And how does it help you optimize your site? To answer these questions, you first need to know what Schema is.

A few years ago, search engines came up with something called Schema.org to better understand the content they crawl. Schema is a bit like a glossary of terms for search engine robots. This structured data markup will help them understand whether something is a blog post, a local shop, a product, an organization or a book, just to name a few possibilities. Or, whether someone is an author, an actor, associated with a certain organization, alive or even a fictional character, for instance.

For all these items thereâ€™s a set of properties that specifically belongs to that item. If you provide information about these items in a structured way – with structured data – search engines can make sense of your site and the things you talk about. As a reward, they might even give you those eye-catching rich results.

How does the Yoast SEO plugin help?

Adding structured data to your site’s content is a smart thing to do. But as the number of structured data items grows, all these loose pieces of code can end up on a big pile of Schema markup on your site’s pages. Yoast SEO helps you prevent creating a big and unorganized pile of code. For every page or post, our plugin creates a neat structured data graph. In this graph, it connects the loose pieces of structured data with each other. When the pieces are connected, a search engine can understand, for instance, that a post is written by author X, working for organization Y, selling brand Z.

You can even build full how-to articles and FAQ pages using the free structured data content blocks in Yoast SEO!

A structured data graph: Yoast SEO connects blobs of Schema markup in one single graph, so search engines understand the bigger picture.

If you want to learn more about structured data, we’d advise reading Edwin’s story on how Yoast SEO helps search engine robots connect the dots.

2. Self-referencing canonicals

Canonicals were introduced as an answer to duplicate content quite some time ago. So, what’s duplicate content? Duplicate content means you’ve published content that is the same or very similar to other content on your site. In other words: it’s available on multiple URLs. This confuses search engines. They start to wonder which URL they should show in the search results.

Duplicate content can exist without you being aware of it. In an online store, for instance, one product might belong to more than one category. If the category is included in the URL, the product page can be found on multiple URLs. Another example would be campaign tags. If you add these tags to your URLs when you share content on social or in your newsletter, it means the same page is available on a URL with and without a campaign tag. And there are more technical causes for duplicate content such as these.

The solution for this type of duplicate content issues is a self-referencing canonical. A canonical URL lets you say to search engines: “Of all the options available for this URL, this URL is the one you should show in the search results”. You can do so by adding a rel=canonical tag on a page, pointing to the page that you’d like to rank. In this case, you’d need the canonical tag to point to the URL of the original page.

How does the Yoast SEO plugin help?

Should you go through all your posts now and add the canonical tag? Not if you’re using Yoast SEO. The plugin does this for you, everywhere on your site: single posts and pages, homepages, category archives, tag archives, date archives, author archives, etc. If you’re not really a techy person, the canonical isn’t easy to wrap your head around. Or perhaps you simply don’t have the time to focus on it. Why not let Yoast SEO take care of it? Then you can move on to the more exciting stuff!

Read on: rel=canonical: the ultimate guide »

3. Paginated archives with rel=next / rel=prev

Another hidden feature in Yoast SEO is rel=next / rel=prev. It’s a method of telling search engines that certain pages belong to an archive: a so-called paginated archive. A rel=next / prev tag in the header of your site lets search engines know what the previous and the next page in that archive is. No one other than people looking at the source code of your site and search engines see this piece of code.

Not so long ago, Google announced that it isnâ€™t using rel=next/prev anymore. Does this mean we should do away with this feature? Certainly not! Bing and other search engines still use it, so Yoast SEO will keep on adding rel=next / prev tags to paginated archives.

Keep on reading: Pagination and SEO: best practices »

4. Nofollow login & registration links

If you have a WordPress site, you most likely have a login link and a registration link for the backend of your site. But the login or registration page of your backend are places that visitors and search engines don’t ever need to be.

Therefore, Yoast SEO tells search engines not to follow links for login and registration pages. Yoast SEO makes sure that search engines will never follow these links. It’s a tiny tweak, but it saves a lot of unneeded Google action.

5. Noindex your internal search results

This hidden feature is based on Google’s Search Essentials documentation. Google wants to prevent users from going from a search result in Google to a search result page on a website. Google, justly, considers that bad user experience.

You can tell search engines not to include a certain page in their search results by adding a noindex tag to a page. Because of Google’s guidelines, Yoast SEO tells search engines that they shouldn’t display your internal search results pages in their search results with a noindex tag. But the links on these pages can still be followed and counted, which is better for your SEO. The plugin tells them not to show these pages in the search results; the links on these pages can still be followed and counted which is better for SEO.

Read more: Which pages should I noindex or nofollow on my site »

6. Removal of replytocom variables

This last hidden feature is quite a technical one. In short, it prevents your site from creating lots of URLs with no added value. WordPress has a replytocom feature that lets you reply to comments without activating JavaScript in your browser. But this means that for every comment, it creates a separate URL with ?replytocom variables.

So what happens if you get a lot of comments? Search engines then have to index all those URLs, which is a waste of your crawl budget. Therefore we remove these variables by default.

But that’s not all..

Our plugin comes with loads of features and settings that will benefit the online visibility of your website. The free version of Yoast SEO already gives you access to a lot of features that will help you do well in the search results. Yoast SEO Premium gives you access to additional tools, like the internal linking suggestions or the redirect manager. This makes many SEO-related tasks much easier and saving you time.

Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!

Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!

Get Yoast SEO Premium Only $99 USD / year (ex VAT)

Keep reading: Why you should buy Yoast SEO Premium »

The post Yoast SEO’s hidden features that secretly level up your SEO appeared first on Yoast.

19.07.2023
Check validity of structured data in Google Search Console
Google Search Console is an essential tool for website owners. This tool shows you how your site appears in Google’s search results. It also shows you what to improve to maximize your listings in the results. One of the many cool features of Search Console is the structured data analyses found in the Enhancement reports. Letâ€™s dive into that!
What is Google Search Console?

Google Search Console is like the Swiss army knife for site owners. Youâ€™ll get incredible insights into your site’s performance and inner workings at a glance. Not only that, it shows issues and helps you fix those issues by giving guidance. Google even sends you emails when it finds new issues.

Need help getting started? Please read our Beginnerâ€™s guide to Google Search Console.

What is structured data?

In this post, our main focal point is structured data, so weâ€™ll jump to the Enhancements report section of Google Search Console. Clicking on the various structured data reports â€” identified by the layer icon â€” will show you an overview of the pages with some structured data attached.

Structured data is all the extra information you give search engines to help them understand what a page is about. For instance, as the writer of this article, I am both a Person and an Author. I work for Yoast, this is my short bio, and you can find me on social media. Yoast SEO also lets you add extra details to your profile, like your accolades and expertise. All this supports the things search engines know about me and where to find me on the web.

If I add this data to the source code of this page, search engines can use that data to do incredible things. For instance, you can enhance your search listings with reviews, ratings, prices, and availability if you sell products. These might all become visible in the search results.

Author structured data as generated by Yoast SEO

How does Yoast SEO handle structured data?

Yoast SEO has a very sophisticated Schema structured data implementation. Yoast SEO doesn’t just add structured data to separate parts of your site but ties everything together to create a connected graph.

In addition, Yoast SEO has a robust, adequately documented Schema.org structured data framework, including a Schema API that developers can use to connect their structured data to ours, creating an extensive network of structured data. On the Integrations page of Yoast SEO, you’ll see which WordPress plugins integrate with it.

Helping search engines understand your site with Yoast SEO

The SEO plugin handles most of the structured data for you; you donâ€™t need to do anything for it. Well, not that much, anyway. You only have to select whether your site represents someone or an organization and add an image or a logo. This way, Yoast SEO knows what structured data to generate for this particular site.

Yoast SEO generates structured data for your site and individual articles. Using the Schema settings, you can mark your Contact pages as a ContactPage or your Checkout page as a CheckoutPage. Learn how to set the Page or Article type in your Schema settings. Also, with our add-ons, it is possible to have structured data generated for locations, products, videos and news items.

Using the Yoast SEO Schema tab you can determine what your content represents on a per page basis

As we said, one of the things that makes the Yoast structured data framework unique is that all this code is interconnected. That means that search engines can see and make connections between every part of your site and its contents. All this helps make your content findable and readable for search engines.

What is the Enhancements report all about?

The Enhancements tab in Search Console is a place to collect all the insights and improvements that could lead to rich results. You’ll find a list of items in the Enhancements tab, from breadcrumbs to videos. In addition, you can find information on your product’s structured data in the Shopping tab. All these tabs show how many valid enhancements your site has or how many have errors or warnings. The list only shows what Schema structured data Google found on your site.

Clicking on an item, you’ll get details about the kind of errors and warnings and which URLs these are found. Thereâ€™s also a trend line that shows if the number of issues is increasing or decreasing. And thatâ€™s just the start of it.

The Enhancements reports help you find and fix issues that hinder your performance in search. By checking the issues, reading the support documentation, and validating fixes, you can increase your chance of getting rich results in search.

For instance, if you have described your FAQs on your site with valid FAQ schema, these might appear highlighted in the search results. You can try to give search engines as much information about your site as possible — it helps them make the right connections.

You can find the list of structured data Enhancement reports on the left-hand side

What can we find there?

A lot! For every different type of enhancement, Google built a dashboard showing you how your site or page is doing. These insights help you to see how you are doing quickly and find areas to improve. The visual aspect helps make the data more concrete and easier to absorb, plus you can quickly locate the issues and on which pages these occur.

The report shows errors and warnings

Of course, youâ€™d like to see structured data succeed in one go, but youâ€™ll probably run into issues at some point. Following the guidelines and adding the required properties will be fine once you fix the issues. However, there are cases where Google asks for more input, the so-called recommended properties. Adding these will make your structured data item go from orange to green. So it boils down to this:

Errors are problems, warnings are potential enhancements to improve the results.

A warning is a chance to do better

For example, some how-to posts on our site use the Yoast SEO How-To structured data blocks for WordPress. These blocks automatically generate valid how-to structured data that leads to rich results. We havenâ€™t built in support for the recommended supply and tool types, so we see Search Console generate a warning. Our how-to, however, is still valid, and we have a rich result to prove it.

In this case, valid with warnings still leads to rich results

Errors mean not eligible for rich results

If you have errors in your structured data, you’ll not be eligible for rich results. That doesnâ€™t mean, however, that your page wonâ€™t rank well. These are separate things. Having valid structured data might make you a better fit, though.

There are many reasons why your structured data implementation may need fixing. Sometimes, you forget to add necessary stuff correctly; sometimes, it’s an issue with code quality. For whatever reason, pages with structured data issues will not get rich results in the search results pages. So you’ll need to work on that.

Clicking on a page with an error opens a modal with the structured data highlighted. From here, you can copy the code to start fixing it. Once you do that, mark this issue fixed, so Google knows youâ€™ve worked on the problem. If the problem persists, the issue will come back to Google Search Console.

Search Console highlights the line where the error appears

You can also hit Inspect in the bottom right corner to retrieve the page from the index to see what else is happening on that page. From there, you can run the live URL to do further testing.

If Search Console canâ€™t read your structured data due to programming errors or determine which type itâ€™s supposed to describe, itâ€™ll send these messages to the Unparsable structured data report. Run your code in the Schema Markup Validator, fix the errors and see if they disappear.

Eligibility for rich results

Green is good! These items have properly structured data attached, which might lead to a rich result. Red is an error and something you should fix if you want the whole, rich result experience. Warnings are orange and allow you to improve or extend your structured data to get the whole experience. However, it is up to you if you want to fix it. Sometimes, fixing a small thing is easier said than done.

This page is eligible for articles, how-to, breadcrumbs, logos, video and sitelinks rich results

Trends in crawling and errors

A handy little addition to Search Console is the trend line. This helps you determine a trend in the number of items validated and error changes.

Trend lines help you uncover trends in errors or validations

Retrieve post from index to evaluate/fix

As Search Console gives you insights into how your pages perform in Google, it would be cool to get an idea of how Google sees those pages. Luckily, you can! There are several ways to do this, but the easiest is pasting your URL in the big search bar at the top of the Search Console interface.

Comparing indexed and live pages can lead to interesting insights

This gives you an overview of everything index related to this URL, including how Google crawled the page. See below. You can even compare the indexed URL to the live URL by hitting Live Test URL button in the up-right corner. These should be the same, but sometimes there are errors on your live page that have yet to reach the index. From here, you can perform all kinds of tests and checks.

Sometimes, the indexed page doesn’t have errors while the live page does

Which types are available in Google Search Console?

Google is quickly expanding the content types we see in Search Console. There are enhancements for things like books, reviews, app listings, events, courses, movies, recipes, and many more. You can see the complete list of supported structured data in Googleâ€™s structured data documentation or an overview of the different types of rich results in the search gallery. Below is a sampling.

Remember, when implementing, try to follow the rules, or you might not get any results. Badly implemented structured data doesnâ€™t do you any good.

Breadcrumbs

Adding breadcrumb structured data to your site helps Google determine how your navigation works and how a specific page fits in the site hierarchy. Yoast SEO automatically generates this for your pages. You only have to add some code to your WordPress theme to activate the feature. After that, enable the breadcrumbs in Yoast SEO and set the breadcrumbs to your liking. After a while, check your Search Console to see if there are any errors in your implementation.

Events

Marking up your events with event structured data helps them stand out in search results. Event markup is available for every type of event. You can add dates, locations, images, performs and more to maximize your listings. In Search Console, youâ€™ll see if your events are properly marked up with the essential items and the recommended properties that help to enhance your listing.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

One handy piece of structured data is the FAQ, which marks up frequently asked questions pages. By implementing this, you might get a nice eye-catching dropdown in the search results. Building a valid FAQ listing is peanuts, thanks to the structured data content blocks in Yoast SEO. Pick the FAQ block, fill in the fields, and ready. Hereâ€™s how to build a structured data-powered FAQ page using Yoast SEO. Search Console will show you if your listing is valid. After that, you can check it in the Rich Results Tester to see what it will look like.

How-to

Next up is another handy structured data powered rich result: the how-to. You can add how-to structured data to content that describes how to do something in a couple of steps. Like the FAQ above, Yoast SEO has structured data content blocks to help you build a valid how-to. Pick the block, fill the fields, add images and publish. Itâ€™s that easy! Learn how to add HowTo Schema to your how-to article. Again, in Search Console, youâ€™ll see if your how-tos are valid or can be improved. The free Yoast SEO How-to content block helps you add it in you WordPress posts.

Job Postings

Job Postings are another interesting addition. Google runs a job site that loves to present its listings in a structured way. Adding job posting structured data to your available jobs helps them enrich your job postings, which in turn leads to better visibility for your jobs. As with the previous enhancements, Search Console gives you an idea of how your listings are doing and gives you tips to further improve them.

Logos

Adding markup to your logo helps search engines validate your logo to use the correct one in search. Google likes to use these files in things like the Knowledge Graph-powered knowledge panels on the right-hand side of your screen. Yoast SEO automatically adds structured data to your logo so search engines can pick it up properly.

Products

Products are the lifeblood of many sites. Structured data can help showcase products in search. By adding relevant data, you might get highlighted in search with reviews, ratings, prices, availability, and much more. Like all the other reports here, Search Console shows you which products are valid for rich results and which arenâ€™t. Plus, you get tips on what you should fix to get them.

If youâ€™re using Yoast SEO, our WooCommerce SEO add-on offers an easy way to add structured data for your products. It automatically arranges everything for you and even adds your product structured data to the rest of Yoast SEOs structured data, building a complete and interconnected overview for search engines.

Sitelinks searchbox

You know the search bar you see for some sites in the search results? Thatâ€™s a sitelinks searchbox. This allows users to directly search on a site, without opening the site first. Yoast SEO automatically adds all the structured data necessary for sitelinks searchboxes for your site, but itâ€™s up to Google to decide who gets one and who doesnâ€™t. In Search Console, youâ€™ll see which URLs on your site might get a searchbox.

Video

The Enhancement reports is also has a Video video section. Youâ€™ll find more information about how Google sees your embedded videos here. Also, Google also implemented a special search feature in the Search Appearance part of the Performance tab so you can see how many times your videos showed up in search and how many people clicked on them. The Yoast Video SEO add-on automatically adds the necessary code and ties everything neatly together. Hereâ€™s more information on how to get Googleâ€™s video reporting with the Yoast Video SEO plugin.

Keep an eye on your structured data in Google Search Console

As we mentioned several times: Google Search Console is a goldmine. It should be your go-to tool to see how your site is doing in the search engine. Thereâ€™s a lot to see and do. The Enhancement reports, for instance, show you if your structured data implementation is valid for rich results. These reports help you fix errors and warnings to get the most out of your structured data.

Need more structured data? Read our Ultimate guide to structured data with Schema.org.

The post Check validity of structured data in Google Search Console appeared first on Yoast.
23.02.2023