Semantic Markup Strategies For Local Business Websites

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