This is the presentation I gave at SMX London 2015 on how to bring your website to the next level by implementing schemas with schema.org. The presentation is a high level overview which introduces the fundamental concepts of data, information and how the combination of both can produce entities, defined as items in schema.org. I cover the basic aspects of how to implement schema onto a website by covering an example. I also highlight the importance of nesting types and properties in order to provide as many useful signals to the search engines as possible, in an effort to provide structure and disambiguate: by doing so we reduce uncertainty by providing context which is of great help to the search engines. There are a number of challenges and technical difficulties in creating a schema with existing HTML: for this I believe the the search engines have decided to recommend the us of JSON LD - very powerful and does not interfere with existing HTML or CSS. The creation of a schema model is not an IT task, rather a strategic initiative to be undertaken by management and marketing staff. IT should take over once the mode has been defined and is ready to be implemented. A schema model is an ongoing effort which should reflect the business model of the enterprise as well as the evolution of schema itself.

1. May 21, 2015
Schema
Modelling
Sante J. Achille
Search Marketing Consultant
@sjachille
From Documents & Data To Information & Entities

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@sjachille
#SMX #22B
• Search Marketing Specialist
• Has analysed and optimized countless websites of all sizes and types in 20
years of professional activity
• Loves proverbs
• His motto: Why Be Normal?
http://achille.name/
Today I’m going to show you how to take your
website to a New Level with Schema Markup

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Data
Information
What is the biggest challenge Search Engines face?
“Reduce Uncertainty” and “Reduce Equivocality”

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Data
Information
Requirements
Available
Consistent
Unambiguous
Reliable

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Data
Information
Attributes
Properties (person, animal, or thing)
Characteristics (dimensions, weight, name,
… )
Features (aspect, peculiarities, … )
Location(Continent, Country, City … )

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Data
Information
Entity

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http://schema.org/docs/full.html

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“Your web pages have an underlying meaning that
people understand when they read the web
pages.
But search engines have a limited
understanding of what is being discussed on those
pages.”
Why Use Structured Data?

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Why Use Structured Data?
By adding additional tags to the
HTML of your web pages … you can
help search engines and other
applications better understand
your content and display it in a
useful, relevant way.

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Itemscope & Itemtype
<div>
<h1>Avatar</h1>
Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)
Science fiction
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html">Trailer</a>
</div>
“To begin, identify the section of the page that is "about" the movie Avatar. To do this,
add the itemscope element to the HTML tag that encloses information about the item,
like this:”

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Itemscope & Itemtype
<div itemscope>
<h1>Avatar</h1>
Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)
Science fiction
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html">Trailer</a>
</div>
By adding itemscope, we are specifying that the HTML contained in the <div>...</div>
block is about a particular item.

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Itemscope & Itemtype
<div itemscope itemtype=“http://schema.org/Movie”>
<h1>Avatar</h1>
Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954)
Science fiction
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html">Trailer</a>
</div>
But it's not all that helpful to specify an item is being discussed without specifying
what kind of an item it is. We can specify the type of item using the itemtype attribute
immediately after the itemscope.

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Itemscope & Itemtype
<div itemscope itemtype=“http://schema.org/Movie”>
<h1 itemprop=“name”>Avatar</h1>
Director: <span itemprop=“director”> James Cameron</span>
(born August 16, 1954)
Science fiction
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html”
itemprop=“trailer”>Trailer</a>
</div>
We can give search engines additional information: Movies have properties such as actors,
director, ratings. The itemprop attribute is used, for example, to identify the director of a
movie, and the URL of the trailer…

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Nesting…
Before…
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Movie">
<h1 itemprop=“name”>Avatar</h1>
Director: <span itemprop=“director”> James Cameron</span> (born August 16,
1954) Science fiction
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html” itemprop=“trailer”>Trailer</a>
</div>

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Nesting…
After…
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Movie">
<h1 itemprop="name">Avatar</h1>
<div itemprop="director" itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
Director: <span itemprop="givenName"> James</span> <span
itemprop="familyName">Cameron</span> (born August 16, 1954)
<meta itemprop="birthDate" content ="1954-08-16" />
</div>
<span itemprop="genre">Science fiction</span>
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html" itemprop="trailer">Trailer</a>
</div>

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https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/

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Using Meta Tags with Schema
“Sometimes, a web page has information that would
be valuable to mark up, but the information can't be
marked up because of the way it appears on the
page.”
http://schema.org/docs/gs.html#advanced
This technique should be used sparingly. Only use meta with content for information
that cannot otherwise be marked up.

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Schema Markup Model for IMAGES

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Schema Markup for Documents
<div itemprop="image" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject">
<meta itemprop="description" content="I-797, Notice of Action: I-601, application
for travel document: approval notice. " />
<div itemprop="exampleOfWork" itemscope=""
itemtype="http://schema.org/CreativeWork" >
<meta itemprop="isBasedOnUrl" content="http://www.uscis.gov/i-601" />
</div>
[caption]<a itemprop="url" href="XXX"><img itemprop="image" src="XXX"
alt="XXX" width="" height="" class="XXX" /></a> [/caption]
</div>

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It will take a number of iterations before you get
this right and fit it into your corporate CMS
The more you markup, the better it is!
Test test and test again!

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