In recent
times, the most innovative shift that we have seen in the internet marketing
world has been the search engine’s ability to understand the “meaning” behind the
content and queries. The old ways of producing SERPs, based on the progressive
ordering of less relevant sites are getting redundant. Google has taken a big
leap in optimizing the format of the ordered list from the one based on just
the plain text or keywords matches to the one that accounts for the sentiment,
intent, freshness and relevancy of the content.
Through Semantic
search, the goal is to respond to both implicit and explicit queries based on
the meaning behind the queries. Most webmasters are familiar with HTML tags on
their pages. The purpose of HTML tags is to display the text included in the
tag. However, the HTML tag doesn’t include any information about the meaning of
the text string. This leads to the irrelevancy of the content or results that
appear on the SERPs.
Semantic markup
is a crucial starting point for the search engine optimization to factor in the
underlying information hierarchy of a webpage. Images, video and flash elements
require supplementary HTML-text to be seen by a spider. A “spider”, also known
as a “bot,” is a program which analyzes (“crawls”) website content, then
indexes the site to enhance its visibility on the search engine.
Semantic
markup goes beyond the plain text and explains the meaning of the data to
search engines. It effectively caters to the optimization of content rather
than just keywords. Semantic markups are
accompanied with rich snippets that give the users an engaging experience. Seeing
the images, ratings and reviews on the SERPs itself, without going through the
numerous clicks and hefty sentences, is a big plus for the internet marketing.
Markup types
use microdata and data classification to “talk” to search engines. Just as HTML
integrates with the browser to display the content, microdata and data
classification explain the search engines about the content and indexing.
There are different
types of markups that you can use. It can be perplexing when you’re just
starting out and aren’t quite sure which markup to go for. It helps to look at
a list of options.
Organization Markup
Organization
markup provides search engine users a way to connect to your site with an
iconic image. By using this markup, you can make your logo appear on the SERPs.
You can also specifically set the location of your preferred logo on the search
result pages. You can also link your website’s logo back to the homepage. This
is something that Google always likes to see.
Markup like
this is a good way to give your preferred image a preference over others, for
example when Google shows the Knowledge Graph on the right hand side based on
users’ queries. This gives a strong signal to Google’s algorithms. So whether
your website is big or small, adding this markup to your website highly
recommended.
Video mark up
It enables
you to mark up the video information on your page and potentially get a snippet
in search results. You can find the instructions to implement the video markup
at Schema.org and also on the webmaster tools. The Webmaster Tools link has
instructions for the Facebook share method, which is especially useful if you’re
posting a lot of videos on Facebook.
Events Markup
Events
markup enhances the visibility of the events. Though, an excess of promotional
language in events markup must be checked. A sale or discount are not considered
to be an event for the search engine purposes. For an event to obtain events
rich snippet, it must meet three criteria:
·
Must
have a specific date for the future
·
Must
be free from any kind of promotional offer or pricing information.
·
Must
carry a specific location.
I hope this blog proves
to be helpful for an internet marketing agency to realize and keep up with the
marketing trends.
