Will Markup Schema Change the Way You Do Internet Marketing ?
Introduction
You may avoid reading this page but you cannot avoid the changes that can affect Internet Marketing.
Changes? Yes, with Markup Schemas and HTML 5 on the way and Google, Yahoo and Bing coming together (certainly not a new story, though!), the Internet Marketer at APSense should be alert and get re-oriented asap!
But a little story here (to warm up!)
When Professor Stephen Hawking was ready with the draft of his masterpiece “A Brief History of Time”, his agent did not want any equation in the book. He is said to have told the professor, “Each equation will cut the sales by a half!” Grudgingly, the agent accepted to include the famous Einstein’s equation: E = mc2
Well, I am avoiding writing the technical stuff and trying to explain the whole issue in simpler terms.
How does a web crawler or spider work?
You are aware, all the billions of pages we made on the internet are indexed by crawlers or spiders or bots. When we write the HTML programs, they are called “Structured Data” which means we arrange our pages in a systematic order like Title, Description, Keywords, Meta tags, Anchor Texts, Header, Footer etc. The spiders index the whole lot of websites (including quite an amount of garbage) with the help of semantic indexing of keywords and page related factors (algorithms) and place them in “Databases”. When we type in a few words into the Search Box, it retrieves the related web pages in a rank order in HTML format but the original structured format is lost (that is, when the transfer takes place from Database back to HTML format).
This is the problem being addressed by Google, Yahoo and Bing together with the help of Markup Schemas. Why together? Because all three of them want (thankfully!) to use a common notation and syntax to make our already perplexed lives a little easier.
Have you seen Rich Snippets?
Perhaps, many of you are aware of “Rich Snippets” introduced by Google in 2009. See the image below:
The snippet gives relevant information, so the searcher can go straight to his relevant page instead of searching every page. He may ignore the top nine results and select the tenth if he sees the snippet shows what he is looking for.
What is Markup Schema?
These are additional tags introduced for HTML 5 which will subsume HTML 4, XHTML , DHTML etc. The additional tags are syntax called “Micro-Data”. The micro-data tags will store relevant bits of information separately so that the poor spider gets spared of doing hard labor.
According to Google, “On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web.”
For example, when you sell a thing on the internet, you can now include relevant data without bothering so much about keywords, anchor texts etc. You may want to show, the number of reviews your page got, the number of buyers, the ratings or any attractive information in micro-data format so that the searcher may notice the importance and relevance of your page and decide to click. In the same way, the spiders or bots will give preference to micro-data formats.
The Way Forward
There is no need to panic but you should be alert and be ready for the future if you want to pursue internet marketing. Especially, our RevPages will find it tough with their simple copy – paste- link strategy! I have made a RevPage based on Markup Schema: Portable Countertop Dishwasher
On the RevPage, just right-click and view the source code for the program.
For details of Markup Schema, please visit: Google Schema.Org
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Comments (17)
Tricia (Patricia) Fa...4
I can second that Mohann. You are a good speaker and you make it easy to discuss. How are you my friend? I hope all is going well for you.
I will be absent tonight until about 8:00 p.m., I have to spend time on LinkReferral to build some credit for my site. Visit a few sites, write a few reviews, visit a couple of forums, etc, etc.
So this is going to be a busy evening. I will check back in later to see how the conversation is going.
Until later,
Tricia
Philippe Moisan16
Tutorial videos, sci-fi writer
Mohann, you do the "figuring it out and making it digestible" part, we do the rest :)
Mohann Krish6
Thanks, Sergio! I thought of posting some stuff like the micro-data codes but I guess very few people seem to be interested in things that are going to affect them in the future. Like even article writing will have to be structured in a way the search engines will love. Yes, I agree the commentators specially Philippe and Patricia use dissecting methods!
Sergio Felix7
IT Pro
Amazing article Mohann and what's really funny is that a lot of this stuff is unknown to me and I took an HTML5 and CSS3 course not very long ago.
Would have to go back to my notes and thanks for sharing this as well as the commenters, they did add more value to the article itself.
Tricia (Patricia) Fa...4
::grin:: Mohann, you are more in the know than either of us. I will look into the Schema site and see what I can gather from there.
BUT I agree with Philippe, you make it easy to understand. :-)
Philippe Moisan16
Tutorial videos, sci-fi writer
Why should I visit the site when our in-house experts like you will put it in simple words for us SEO dummies :)
Mohann Krish6
Phil, I am also no expert on Schema! I only wanted to start getting used to the tag things in HTML 5. The main features of HTML 5 would be video and audio among other things. We will have
Mohann Krish6
Pat, it will take time for any changes to take place and people getting used to it. How the Markup Schema will be used along with search rank factors remains to be seen till after HTML 5 takes over. Even then it will be a mere guesswork for SEO experts because search engine algorithm is a big secret. I would advise you to visit Google's Schema site for any further info!
Philippe Moisan16
Tutorial videos, sci-fi writer
Mohann, sorry for dumb question, there are things where I'm still a newbie :)
Tricia (Patricia) Fa...4
okay so i have my facts slightly twisted. not real time, but cache like old times. but the caches have to be made different too because the spiders (algorithms) from the old system would bring up the same old stuff time after time. So if it is reading it and creating new caches for each search then you can typically have multi layer caches for the same site. So your stuff does not have to be seen with jane doe's site (because she has a bigger budget) even though you have the same merchandise. If
Mohann Krish6
That is for indexing! Cache is a snapshot of last indexed version. The issue here is of retrieval during when search is made.
Philippe Moisan16
Tutorial videos, sci-fi writer
Mohann, Google is not quite in real time, they use cache, I don't know how far back it goes though
Mohann Krish6
Phil, it has been and will be real-time when a search is made on the internet. The actual issue is like this in simple terms: A web page is a structured format. When we submit the page to the search engine (or when it takes it on its own), its spiders index the page and store in a database format like a table or a matrix containing the words we use on the web page. When somebody types a word or two in the search box of the search engine, the spiders (or algorithms) retrieve the info from the dat
Tricia (Patricia) Fa...4
I am like Philippe. I could not just scheme the article. I read every single word. I like the idea that it will be in real time. That should mean it will be just ask likely for my site to be seen as a million dollar seller if the products are the same and presented correctly?
Am I reading it correctly?
Anxious for our answer.
Philippe Moisan16
Tutorial videos, sci-fi writer
it will be in real time then ?
Mohann Krish6
Thanks for the comment. I hope it is understood that the spiders, instead of piling up databases for later retrieval, will directly grab the micro-data from the website itself and retain the structured data for search results.
Philippe Moisan16
Tutorial videos, sci-fi writer
LOL
I love that bit: "the poor spider gets spared of doing hard labor."
Well, actually, I love the whole article. Man, it's so rare I read an article from the first word to the last, I skim through most. There was no way I could have done that here. Every sentence is a gem.
Awesome! Now to see that HTML 5 RevPage :)