Bowst Team
Writing clean code is something we always strive for and is one of the keys to site and SEO success. We have been spending more time looking into schema.org and trying to figure out the best way to work it into our design and development process.
I have started obsessing over Structured Data, and since all companies should add schema.org organization markup on their websites, I am struggling with knowing what is right and wrong. There are plenty of tools out there to help you write the schema, and plenty to help you validate, but what schema should be on your home page? Contact or About Page? How do you best manage multiple locations? None of that is clear or concrete.
Here are some of the things I have found. Adding structured schema markup to your company “About” or Homepage is vital. It is also super important to claim your “Google My Business” listing and I am surprised at how many people are not paying attention to this simple to use the tool. Google loves it and here is the official Google stance on it structured markup. One thing to note is that when you are creating your Schema Markup you should try and match the type of organization with what you have listed in you GMB account. (GMB and Schema.org do not use the same categorization so that may not be always possible. )
What we are really trying to do is make it easy for the bots to confirm who you are. It also helps validate that you are legit, so make sure you connect to all your social media accounts using the “sameAs” field.
The other challenge I am running into is what is the best way to get the markup on the site. Clearly, JSON-LD is the winner, since that is what Google likes. It also makes sense because you can manage it all through Tag Manager and don’t have to touch any of the markup.
What I am really talking about is should you use some sort of plugin, or do it all with GTM and I can’t say I have the answer to that yet. More on this later when I know a little more.
For now, this list is intended to be for helpful to us and will be changing over time.
Google Tools
Structured Data Markup Helper
Structured Data Testing Tool
Webmaster Central Help Forum
Generators
Schema Apps JSON-LD Generator
Microdata Generator
Other Tools
Yoast Cleanup tool for Google Tag Manager
Steal Our JSON-LD
Chrome Structured Data Test Tool
WordPress Plugins
Schema Pro
Markup (JSON-LD) structured in schema.org
DuracellTomi’s Google Tag Manager for WordPress
Yoast
Education
I just finished this course.
Yoast Structured data training
Google webmasters quality guidelines
Google My Business
Link to help you get reviews directly:
https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=<place_id>
Google My Business ID Generator
https://support.google.com/business/answer/7035772