One of the least-tapped areas of local business website
optimization continues to be semantic markup. It increases chances that
information from your website will be highlighted in search engine results
pages via rich snippets, attracting greater attention and clickthroughs.
While special markup likely may not directly improve your
rankings in search, it does apparently increase clickthrough rate or “CTR”, as
consumers are more drawn to your site’s listings. Just this increase in CTR
alone could benefit your rankings over time, as clickthroughs can influence
rankings; so, there are a few reasons why semantic markup is worthwhile. This
is for Google, Bing, and Facebook search, too. Only a few of these may impact
your listing in the local 7-pack or in Google maps, your site can also attract customers via the regular, keyword
search results pages; and, regular listing can and do appear on the same
results pages as the 7-pack!
So check to see if you’ve added the following markups to
your local website (if applicable). To improve your traffic, even on search results
which are not directly related to something you sell.
There are some
Semantic Markup Strategies For Local Business Websites:-
Authorship Markup:- first
of all best semantic markup is likely authorship – it allows your personal
photo to appear with pages you author, and your website, when they are listed
in search engines results. For local search, this may be even more compelling
in Google, making your listing appear far more interesting and professional in
the 7-pack.
To enable this to happen, you must have a Google+ profile
for the business proprietor, link to it from your website including a
querystring with rel=author.
<a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google</a>
Then, link back to your site from your Google+ profile in
the “Contributor To” section. It’s also a good idea to have a good author for
Google+.
Local Business Schema
and Geotag:- you can use this to markup your address and contact
information on your site, although there are additional fields you can include
such as hours of operation, payment types accepted, and more.
Example Markup
Testimonial:- through
this Google allows local businesses to disclose that they have a testimonial by
using semantic markup for reviews, and Google sometimes will display that
information in conjunction with the business’s listings in SERPs. Testimonials
can increase their chances of being displayed in the snippet text beneath your
listing, and in the sample text callouts shown variously in the cached images
of your webpage
Breadcrumbs:-
breadcrumbs can help a user orient themselves in the site’s hierarchy, and
provide them with related pages that they might wish to visit. For this reason,
Google began bubbling-up this data to display in rich snippets as additional
links beneath the hyperlinks page name. simply from a statistical perspective,
having additional links to your site on search results pages increases the odds
of you having users click through overtime – so, breadcrumb links are highly
desirable! Google does a fair job of automatically detecting by them in order
to be displayed in the snippet. To increase your chances, use the breadcrumb
markup on your site pages.
Events:- if your
company participates in some events or provides special services at different
times/dates during the year, you might consider incorporating the events schema
markup. You don’t feel confident at doing the coding necessary; Google does
give you another option for Events at this time.
In your Webmaster Tools account, Google has provided a beta
service called the Data Highlighter for Events. Using the interface, you can
highlight elements of events and tell Google which data item is which event
element – Name, Date, Venue, Address, URL etc. if Google deems the Data
Highlighter to be successful, they’ll likely expand it to include other types
of rich snippets as well.
Coupons/Offers:- if you have coupons or special offers, use the
Offer Schema. Its not clear to me that Google or Bing does any special snippet
treatment for coupons or offers at this time, but they included it in
Schema.org, and it would make sense for them to consider incorporating it more
visibly at a future date.
Video:- Google
recommends that you use the VideoObjectSchema to help them to better interpret
and represent your video content in search result. Consumers apparently like
seeing videos of products or of businesses providing services, so this can help
with conversions as well.
Recipes:- recipes
get tons of searches on the net, and for that reason search engines highlight
the presentation of their listings in search results. Your reason for
publishing a recipe doesn’t have to be dramatic, though – just do it to
interact with the web community more and your business may benefit.
Individuals:- in
addition to displaying author information, you can also mark up information
about executives and employees on your site as well by using the Schema for a
Person.
Table & Bulleted
Lists:- this is not mostly in use but if you have tabular data or content
that lends itself to production in a list, providing this on your website can
again make your listing in search results get more consideration, and it
affords you the chance to display more info about products and services before
probable customers have even reached your website.For example, this could work great for many restaurants, if
they put their menu in an HTML table – preferable, compared with the
Flash/PDF/image formats that many eateries use instead.
Products:- if your business sells products,
seriously consider incorporation data about them on your site and marking it up
with the Product Schema. Product markup can enable your listings to show price,
rating, and availability in the search results.
Meta Descriptions:- meta
descriptions have been one of the earliest and longest surviving semantic
markup elements. They’re possibly the most-influetial as well, since they often
appear as the entire snippet text in search results. The description Meta Tag
is still frequently neglected on many small business websites.
Facebook Open Graph:- to help ensure your site’s pages are
presented well in Facebook search and various interface, incorporate. Use it
simultaneously with Schema.org protocol – the two do not conflict with one
another. Each time you insert semantic markup, be sure to check it using
Google’s structured data testing tool. So go through this checklist and add any
of the semantic markup options you can, and it may help you achieve a very rosy
year for your website and business in 2013