A decade ago, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) was all about your website's content and the metadata that helped make your website searchable. Today, web technology has become so dynamic and interactive that it is now easier than ever to find exactly what you are looking for. There are now many direct methods for sharing data that can improve SEO. One such method is utilizing data markup to add code to your website's HTML to help search engines understand and display your content. Want to learn more? Our specialists here at Cyber-NY would love to be your guide. First, let's look at the benefits of using data markup to improve SEO for your website.
How can markup benefit your business?
Markup added to HTML on your website can tell Google™ and Bing™ how search queries are structured allowing them to embed a search box directly in the search result. This helps Googlebot properly index your search pages, which also helps them further index your websites. Google get's the data in the format that works best for them, your business receives better visibility, and searchers find what they are looking for. A win-win for everyone!
Even better, markup also identifies important pages on a website and places direct links to them in the search result. For example, you can link to top categories, products, contact, and support pages directly. By doing this you can gain valuable real estate on Google’s search results page and ultimately convert more searches into customers.
Example: Search results for “Apple” returns this result with the embedded listing and the top key links Apple created with their markup:
Markup of product pages provides clear details on products. For example you can spoon-feed Google and other search engines details on the name, image, description, sku, brand, aggregate ratings, offers, pricing, condition of the product, availability, and the details on the seller.
Here is an example:
What markup format is right for your business?
Google currently supports 3 formats: JSON-LD, RDFa, and Microdata.
JSON-LD is a method of encoding Linked Data using JSON. The goal was to require as little effort as possible from developers to transform their existing JSON to JSON-LD. This allows data to be serialized in a way that is similar to traditional JSON. This is one of the easiest methods to introduce.
RDFa is a W3C Recommendation that adds a set of attribute-level extensions to HTML, XHTML, and various XML-based document types for embedding rich metadata within web documents. The RDF data-model mapping enables its use for embedding RDF subject-predicate-object expressions within XHTML documents. This is recommended for some types of products or websites that cannot easily utilize the JSON method.
Microdata is a WHATWG HTML specification used to nest metadata within existing content on web pages. Search engines, web crawlers, and browsers can extract and process Microdata from a web page and use it to provide a richer browsing experience for users. This method is not recommended as it requires a more labor intensive, manual process, but may be an appropriate choice for static websites or websites with limited services and/or products.
Cyber-NY has experience with all three of these methods and can assist with choosing the appropriate solution for your business.
How to get started.
Cyber-NY can help guide you through the process of structuring your products and services to improve visibility across Google and all major search networks. Call us at 888-70-CYBER to speak to a specialist.
