SEO 2.0: Schema.org. What Is It And Why It Matters To You.

Caution. A few computer programming words will be used in this blog post.

Don't worry! It won't hurt and by the end you'll understand everything an Executive needs to know to optimize your website to achieve some serious online visibility. It's really not that difficult. Read on.

Keywords, Links, Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, and Alt Tags--by now everyone who has a website has heard these words in the SEO terminology. If you haven't, Google them. There's a gazillion articles to help you understand what they mean and how they can affect your search engine visibility. Those are the 'SEO 1.0' words.

SEO 1.0 worked really well for your website when everyone was surfing the world wide web on their computers. Browsers caught waves by typing keywords into a search bar and clicked. People don't surf anymore. They search. They buy. They talk to their 'Voice Assistant' during their lunch break and say things like, "Siri, who's the best cosmetic surgeon in this area," or "Siri, who's got the best warehouse automation system?" Yesterday I was running low on gas, and I asked Siri to navigate me to the nearest gas station. She was spot on. She hooked me into Apple maps and navigated me right to the nearest pump. How the heck does Siri do that?!

Enter Schema.org

Hold on. Here comes the unfamiliar words--Schema.org along with Microdata, RDFa, or JSON-LD formats. That didn't hurt too much did it? Hang in there. Let's break it down.

In 2011 Google, Bing and Yahoo actually decided to agree on something. The brilliant engineers envisioned voice search coming, and put together a shared vocabulary to describe stuff. They needed to come up with a language, and hashed out thousands of attributes. The engineers agreed that programming words like "address" would mean a physical place, and not "a dress" (it makes more sense if you say it out loud.) They figured if all the webmasters in the world included schema.org running in the background invisibly on their websites, the search engines could better understand what the website was about.

Then came Microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD. Those are methods to deploy Schema.org on the website. Think of it as a method of transportation to get from Point A to Point B. You can either walk, take a bicycle, or drive. That's it. It's 3 computer languages.

Breathe. No more unfamiliar words ahead.

Why does this matter?

With more people searching on their mobile devices, and apps like Apple Maps integrating with Siri voice search, schema.org takes on greater importance. You can bank on the fact that voice search will continue to grow. As such the search engines need to know more about your business than keywords on the website. The search engines need data about you so you can appear in relevant voice searches. That's why schema.org and microdata is more important than ever. The search engines are doing some serious heavy lifting. Schema.org and microdata running in the background on your website makes the job easier for the search engines. And that means increased visibility for you.

In order to keep up with the changing times, successful websites now employ Schema.org standards. This used to be difficult, painstaking programming. Fortunately there are new methods to deploy schema.org on websites that are fast, easy, and accessible. We'll talk more about them in future articles.

 --Gary Steel, Digital Knowledge Manager consults clients on Online Marketing and Advertising, and is Google Search, Display, Video Analytics, Yext, and Acquisio Certified. Make your site visible in search! As a Yext Certified Partner, I now offer a fast and affordable way to deploy schema.org on your site. Contact me to learn more.