The benefits of structured markup for SEO have long been lauded, though often without much concrete details. After conducting a test we're able to pinpoint some correlations of schema.org markup and organic search ranking improvements. Stay tuned for future developments!

1. Structured Markup
Schema.org, Rich Snippets and Lady Gaga
July, 2014

2. Where Would You See It?
Knowledge Graphs, Carousels, Review Stars, Authors, Medical Info, and more

3. What is Schema?
● Schema is code that is added to a website
● Google reads this code like people read nametags

4. Who?
Schema.org markup for “Person”

5. Where?
Schema.org markup for “event”

6. Why Do Search Engines Support It?

7. Google Wins
• Search Engines support it so they can
give better results that are semantically
appropriate
• Get people to stay on Google
longer, more chance to show ads and other
Google things, more money for Google

8. WHY IS IT GOOD FOR SEO?
Structured Markup

9. Enhance Click Through Rate
Traditional CTR CTR with Structured Markup
Clicks to the site dramatically increased by +150% and this
improvement resulted in an increase of visits and page views.

10. Rankings Correlation
• Event markup for Example.com
on “All Events”
• 15 keywords with “Event Type
1” improved in rank. Average
gain of 3.7 rankings positions
• event keyword 1 9 4
(880 monthly searches)
• event keyword 2 5 2
(320 monthly searches)
but, be wary of spurious correlations
Sorry,
confidential
stuff here.

11. Correlate ≠ Cause
• Correlation shows us that two things are happening in a similar pattern
(either direct or inverse) and start the investigative journey
• Correlation does not mean that one of those things caused the other to
happen

12. So What Does It Do Again?
• Correlates with first page rankings
• Look Good: Get more visual real estate in the SERPs for a better
CTR
–Video
–Event sitelinks
–Review stars
–Local (SERP w/ phone #)
–Local Carousel

13. HOW DO WE DO THIS?
Implementing Structured Markup

14. SEO Scope Project
• SEO reviews the site for potential structured markup that can be
implemented on the site
• SEO scope will require development team estimate to update code
(more on the next slide)
• SEO will then be able to provide proposed structured data to
implement and the time the project will take

15. Account Managers Work
• Inform the Client:
–Who will do the implementation?
–What will the results look like?
–Where will the best ROI be?
–When will results be seen?
–Why are we doing this (revisit)?

16. SEO Work
• Reviews and proposes structured data that is relevant for the site
and notes if additional content is needed for desired markup
• Outlines the structured data to add to the site
– This can require additional content to be added to page (which should
be noted in project scope)
• Reviews implementation and notes changes in rankings or rich
snippet appearance
• Keeps up-to-date on industry developments for new opportunities

17. Development Team Work
Developers are typically the ones who implement schema because it’s
adding code to a site.
• Scenarios when development team should be included:
– Implementing on dynamically created content
– Implementing on dynamically called content blocks (such as headers
and footers)
– Implementing using JSON-LD
Basically always, unless otherwise noted.

18. LET’S GET THIS DONE
The nuts and bolts of it

19. Options for Structured Markup
Type of
Markup
Schema.org
Markup
RDF A JSON-LD Teach
Google!
More info @ All markup provided on
schema.org
Markup provided
on
Markup through
GWMT
Skills needed Novice coder can
implement
Need Drupal skills Need some skills Novice
What kind of sites
use it
Most websites use this
form of markup
Drupal puts on
some elements
Adventurous Google says you do
it, and do it now.
Preferences? Applicable to any HTML
code
Preferred by
Drupal
PHP delight? Desired by Google

20. AND WE’RE DONE.
Bask in the glory of your completed structured markup and
beautiful SERP results.

21. Thank you
by
Nicole Hess
@nicolecherieh
www.delphicdigital.com