SEO, Google Structured Data & Search Engines.

It’s beneficial to use structured data on your web pages so that Google, Bing, and Yahoo learn about your content faster. When search engines fully understand your content, your web pages stand a greater chance of being ranked higher and quicker. Essentially, Google structured data consists of tags which highlight name and value pairs. These name and value pairs allow webmasters the chance to inform search engines of all aspects of their content. Using Microdata is one way of encoding your data, however, Google offers several options.

What is Schema & Schema.org?

Schema or Schema.org is a collaborative project by the top search engines who have created a unified language to help webmasters highlight their content. This could be a review, an article, or product that is highlighted to potential visitors or customers in the SERPS. So essentially the Schema collaboration have created a semantic vocabulary whereby a whole host of tags can be used to markup your data.

The semantic vocabulary as per Schema.org can be encoded in three ways:

• RDFa;
• Microdata;
• JSON-LD.

What Does Google Structured Data Markup Look Like?

Have a look at the following graphic to gain an insight into how structured data markup is created.

Use the following link to encode your own article and test your markup:

Google Testing Tool

To fully understand Google structured data and Schema markup, firstly we need to comprehend semantics.

What Does Semantic Mean?

The word semantic can be best defined as relating to meaning in language or logic. So how does Google for example understand your content? Google uses many algorithms; however, it the Hummingbird algorithm that uses schema markup to better understand your content.

Google’s Hummingbird and Rankbrain Algorithm

Google’s Hummingbird algorithm uses semantics to understand the meaning of words and sentences before it can rank web pages. One way Google can learn the meaning of a sentence in your content is by interpreting the markup.

Four of the top search engines collaborate to produce the Schema markup that helps their search bots understand your content. Their aim is to promote schemas for structured data for web pages, the Internet and email messages etc.

In conclusion, Google structured data helps their search engine bots to better understand your content. I personally use the JSON-LD encoding format for my web pages. For WordPress, you can either use Yoast’s SEO plugin or the Schema plugin. Alternatively, you can encode your web pages manually using the tags set out by Schema.org. See below for some great links.

JSON-LD markup tags help search engine bots to better understand your content. A better understanding can lead to faster and higher rankings in the SERPS.

Schema for WordPress.

Useful Links for Further Information & WordPress Plugins.

Schema.org

Schema for WordPress

Yoast Plugin for WordPress

Yoast Structured Data Info

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My previous blog post highlighted the top 3 Google ranking factors, but what are some of the other factors Google uses to rank web pages in the largest search engine on the planet?

In no particular order, other key Google ranking factors are:

• Effective use of a blog;
• Social media signals;
• Mobile friendly or responsive website;
• Secure https web pages.

These Google ranking factors are quite essential in helping Google’s search engine to understand your blog, product, or service etcetera and to allow visitors to have a more positive experience.

Web pages that load quickly, have lots of well written and useful content that can be found easily on all internet devices will have a much better chance of being noticed and therefore ranked more favourably.

It all sounds straight forward but what entails using a blog effectively or how do you use social media in the most beneficial way?

As with SEO for web pages, a blog article or post treated with the same amount of SEO attention will stand a greater chance of being noticed by Google’s ranking machine. All on-site, technical, and off-site SEO techniques should be used as well as making the best use of categorising your posts and providing useful keyword rich tags.

This together with a well written and useful blog article will go a long way to becoming a strong contender in the plethora of Google ranking factors. Always remember to use your keywords in the URL of the post as this will send a signal for Google to notice your article quickly and ensure your XML sitemap lists your posts, and ideally for it to be automated.

Most people that have a WordPress website prefer using the free plug-in by SEO Yoast. I would highly recommend this plug-in as it has an enormous amount of useful and beneficial free features.

I am going to talk about the benefits of social media signals in a future article…

In conclusion, mobile friendly or responsive and https or encrypted websites have a greater edge, therefore, I would ensure these are in order before tackling the other ranking factors that appear to carry less weight. In a world where we require information quickly, user experience will always play a crucial role in how web pages and blog articles are positioned in Google’s search engine.

Quickly grade your website Website Grader

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This is a very good question and the answer will change over time but right now, I would say the top 3 SEO factors for Google:

• High quality, useful, keyword rich content – the more quality and relevant the content the better;
• External linking or backlinking from relevant, useful, informative, and authoritative websites;
• User experience or UX especially for mobiles – the mobile-first approach has arrived.

These key 3 SEO factors are not in order and by focussing on all 3 major elements you will adhering to three key Google search engine algorithms i.e. the Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird respectively, with RankBrain being the artificial intelligence or AI element of the Hummingbird algorithm.

This might sound straight forward but there are many SEO techniques and principles required to make the best possible use of this knowledge and hiring the services of a SEO expert with a proven track record can save companies enormous amounts of money in the long term.

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I briefly talked about the everchanging landscape of SEO on our homepage but the world of SEO encompasses so many factors that their existence can only be maintained through evolving algorithms – complex mathematical equations or formulas that define and redefine how SEO experts conduct their daily work.

websites discuss the number of factors that Google uses to rank web pages, the figure of over 250 factors has to highlighted time and time again but the actual number may never be known. New algorithms are being created all the time and updates to the current algorithms are probably happening on a weekly basis.

If you are patient and have an analytical mind, and you are passionate about SEO, you will start to see many of the factors in action.

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