From Microdata and Schema to Rich Snippets Markup for the Advanced SEO
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Transcript of From Microdata and Schema to Rich Snippets Markup for the Advanced SEO
Baking in the Dough
A Sweet Story of Recipe Rich Snippets
Created by Samuel Edwards of Tenthwave Digital for SMX London
About Me
Samuel Quincy EdwardsOnline Media StrategistTenthwave DigitalNew York, New York
Fun Facts:• First time speaking at SMX• First time outside of the USA• Favorite EPL team is Chelsea
(SCORE!)
Services:
Some of our clients include:
Duncan Hines® makes cake mixes, frostings, fruit fillings and toppings
for passionate bakers of all skill levels to create delicious desserts.
Bakers can create hundreds of surprisingly simple recipes or
submit their own for inclusion on www.duncanhines.com.
Schema Markupfor Recipes
“The goal of a recipe rich snippet is to provide users with additional information about a specific cooking recipe…
when recipe information is marked up in web pages, search engines may use that information to show rich snippets in results.”
-Google Webmaster Tools Support
Total Reviews
Aggregate Rating
Recipe Image
Nutritional Info
Prep/Total Time
Recipe Type
Instructions
Saturated Fat
Summary
Calories
Carbohydrates
Sugar
Fiber
Published Date
Unsaturated Fat
Author
Serving Size
ProteinCholesterol
Cooking Method
But most importantly…
If you’re strategic and thorough with your approach, implementing schema markup for recipes will create rich snippets, boost click through rates and improve the quality and quantity of visitors coming to your site.
Google Guidelines That Apply for Recipe Snippets• Main topic of the page needs to be about a specific
recipe. Using recipe markup on a page containing multiple recipes is not supported.
• If the recipe markup contains a single review, the reviewer’s name needs to be a valid name (Person or Organization). For example, "50% off ingredients" is not a valid name for a reviewer.
• Recipe rich snippets will only show if at least two of the following are marked up: Photo, Prep Time, Cook Time, Total Time, Ingredients, Calories, Review.
What Users See
Recipe Author
Recipe Name
Recipe Description
Total Time
Prep Time
Serving Size
Recipe Image
Aggregate Rating
What Crawlers See
Recipe Name
Recipe Author
Recipe Description
Recipe Image
Total TimePrep Time
Serving Size
Item Type (Recipe)
What Google Displays
What Bing Displays
You may be thinking…
“Sam, that sounds great and all, but do I really need to implement structured data markup for all my recipes? I have so many!”
“Yes.”
-Sam
Which one of these results is not like
the others?
This one.
Prior to implementation, Tenthwave analyzed the top 263 organic search terms driving traffic to DuncanHines.com from Google and we found that:
For each of the 263 queries, at least one result had some form of rich snippet on page one, including: images, reviews, prep times and calories.
And out of those queries, on average, 3/5 resultshad implemented some form of markup.
EVERYONE IS DOING IT!
So we were all like…
And they were all like…
Getting Started
Step One: Using http://schema.org/Recipe we looked through the item properties that were applicable to Duncan Hines® based on the information provided about each recipe that users could see on site. In the end we went with the follow:
Step Two: We then implemented a template containing HTML markup, the schema tags, as well as placeholders into which the server injects the actual recipe data when rendering the recipe detail page.
Site Wide Implementation
Placeholders Schema Tags
HTML Markup
Validation
Step Three: After rendering the sample detail pages, we validated a number of user generated recipes using the Structured Data Testing Tool to ensure all was displaying properly. Now, we can stamp out an infinite number of recipes with the correct markup.
Before
After
Early Test Results
• Markup implemented mid February 2014– Organic search traffic from Google to user
generated recipe pages increased by 12.72% from January 2014 (prior) to March 2014 (post). YoY increase was 16.76%.
– Quite a few highly trafficked user generated recipes saw increases significantly higher than the average.
32% increase in traffic from Jan to March
280% increase in traffic from January to March
73% increase in traffic from January to March
80% increase in traffic from January to March
Observed Ranking IncreasesWhile Google claims adding mark up doesn’t affect rankings, we found that (all else being equal) within 2 weeks of implementing Schema markup, 75% of the 263 terms analyzed in the initial test had seen an improvement in search results. Of those:
196 had improved rankings44 had unchanged rankings23 had declined rankings
The average listing for Duncan Hines® improved by 2.42 positions.
Before: Position 11.5 (Page 2)After: Position 9.08 (Page 1)
Why is that significant?
(or page 1 of Bing)
Because the best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google
search results.(JUST KIDDING!)
(but not really...)
But not all recipes came out of the oven baked to perfection…
Misfires
After adding micro data markup we were pleased with the majority of early results, but noted that some recipes had seen a decline in organic search traffic.
Curiously, we began to wonder…
Problem
The average recipe page looks something like this:
Table "Comments":- recipe_id (references the recipe)- user_id (references the comment author)- message (the actual comment)- rating (one of the following values: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, NULL; where NULL is a value representing "No Data")
For a given recipe:
1. Get all comments that have a rating (i.e. NOT NULL)2. Calculate average of all ratings found in step #13. Take information from step #2 and place it in itemprop=“ratingValue”
Solution
Final Notes
GWT IS YOUR BEST FRIEND!
Amazing MS Paint Smiley Face
Validate
Fetch and Index
Fix Errors
Thank You!
Twitter: @Samuel_Quincy
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/samuel-edwards/4b/a34/962
Email: [email protected]