#Ask8now – Understanding Schema.Org
Markups for #ContentMarketing
This is very likely to be one of the next
‘big things’ in #SEO and #digitalmarketing..

Understanding Schema.Org Markups for Content Marketing

‘Structured data’ is the next big thing in digital marketing and is particularly important if you have a focus on content marketing. If you remember ‘rich snippets’ then essentially this is the natural evolution of that – lines of code that go on your website that tell Google and other search engines what different bits of content represent.

In other words then, markups can tell Google’s ‘bots’; if your list is a recipe, if your image is a company logo, or what date your content was published on. And as a result, this then allows Google to show your data in a more useful way – even listing key facts and points from your page directly underneath your search result. If you have written a page about an event for example, Google might show the time, date and location of that event right underneath your link. This way Google’s users will be able to get the details of your event without even having to visit your site and your listing is much more likely to stand out and get noticed.

More importantly, structured data is going to be even more important in the future as services like Google Now and Siri will rely on this information in order to relay useful points to users by voice.

This is very likely to be one of the next ‘big things’ in SEO and digital marketing, so you need to make sure you’re on it and ahead of the curve.

How to Use Schemas

But how do you go about using schemas? What do they look like?

For many, the easiest and simplest way to use schemas will be via a WordPress plugin. A great one for this purpose is ‘Schema Generator’ which is completely free to use. Once you’ve installed this plugin, you’ll then have the option to ‘Add Schema’ when you’re publishing new posts. Click this button and you can select person, product, event, recipe, organization etc. from the drop-down list. Now just insert the details into these boxes and you’;ll be able to add extra details to your content. The rest: headline, image, description etc. will be taken care of automatically.

After you’ve done that, all you need to do is publish the article as normal and from there on your page will be more likely to show details in the search results. If you write long, in depth articles and link out to lots of resources, then you may even be able to make it as a featured ‘;in-depth article’ on Google!