14 replies to this topic

[EGOL]

As I was watching today's video on the SEOmoz blog (it deals with all of the metadata that can be used to provide information about your content to the search engines) it occurred to me that the scope of work that falls into the category of search engine optimization is expanding significantly with all of the schema markups for authors, images, logos, ratings, snippets, organizations, locations, etc.

There is a LOT of potential metadata.

If an SEO gets a job to apply these to a large, existing site the job of doing this work - in a top quality manner - could be onerous and mindnumbing. Screwing it up or sending it out where a halfass job will be done could cost you a lot of lost traffic and lost revenue. For a top quality site you want an erudite person doing this work - and the job will be ongoing.

How do you plan to do this work? If you look at how bing has marked up their SERPs with logos, ratings and other data drawn from the code. See this example from the video for avatar movie.

I think that this will be too important to ignore.... and if google starts to mark up their SERPs like the Bing example above it will be urgent to get at least your best content and most important products marked up and out there.

Probably a good idea to prepare a template for this information that matches your content and start using it right away.

Edited by EGOL, 09 June 2011 - 10:06 AM.

[SEOigloo]

Hi Egol,
Really glad you started this discussion, and Rand's video was good. I have been playing on the borders of this type of concept in some way in terms of using hCard for Local SEO clients. hReviews are just beginning to make waves on the small business level. Now, we have this whole new set of attributes to choose from and it is going to be a lot to learn.

It strikes me that SEO is about to go through a huge change...probably the biggest one we've seen since my husband and I started our business. Writing a good title tag, h tags and good meta description tags has been the standard for as long as I've done business. This is something very new and exciting, and I agree with you...it is going to take real care to do right.

I am only just trying to figure this out right now. These are my first impressions.

[EGOL]

I think that a lot of people are going to have the same resistance to this that they have for writing content. Maybe more since this is on the abstract side with lots of options and lots of rules.

I am betting that a lot of this type of work is going to be outsourced where some of the writing will be done poorly.

There could be a demand for people who are erudite, careful, understand search, understand searchers and able to edit for long periods without going bonkers.

Perhaps library science and information literacy folks would do really well doing this or maybe even studying sites and setting up templates for implementation. If someone like that came to me with a real understanding of these codings and who could grasp the concepts of my sites I would probably hire them to prepare a template that would get me up and running fast.

There might be a small biz for folks who study, make a template and then code it into wordpress.

Edited by EGOL, 09 June 2011 - 09:06 PM.

[Michael_Martinez]

I think those who can afford to keep it in house will do so. They'll have more control over the quality. Those who have to outsource the work will struggle to find good resources. It may be that people can specialize in these kinds of markup may be able to build good referral businesses IF they make the right connections.

[A.N.Onym]

It's SEOs, who need to be uptodate, naturally, instead of chasing the next algo thing to gain minimal, if existing, short-term advantage.

If just a template doesn't help, then a SEO can write guidelines for inhouse copywriters or outsource to a quality provider. Depending on the size of the team, this can be supervised by the chief editor (content curator - a web 2.0 title for editor? )

There's nothing new or shocking about this, just real work.

Same goes for rel=author, etc.

As for SMB services, how do you explain the ROI of integrating hReview, rel=author, etc into buying your template? Do you have concrete examples? If it's minimal ROI (other than being found by Google Maps for reviews, if you are a Yelp competitor), then it'll be at the bottom of things to get for SMB, IMHO.

Edited by A.N.Onym, 10 June 2011 - 12:36 AM.

[EGOL]

Imagine how rich search engines could become.

Instead of listing title tag, snippet and URL they could have a custom image, author, rating, domain logo and other information.

The web team who can effectively take advantage of this will have a huge advantage over competitors.

Quality sites will do this.

[Dr.Marie]

EGOL...have you implemented this in your sites yet? I'm still waiting to see how it pans out. It's a lot of nitpicky work. But if it's going to help my site then I want to be one of the first to be on board!

[EGOL]

I will probably wait a short time to see what people are saying about this stuff in forums. Also, I want to see it what the SERP mark-ups look like in Google. So far I have only seen important SERP embellishments happening on Bing.

However, once I see this stuff driving important SERP changes in Google I will go straight to my high traffic and high value pages and start experimenting.

[EGOL]

OKay... I am seeing this stuff in the Google SERPs. Not as spashy as bing.

Check out the SERPs and look for the Internet Movie Data Base site.

Avatar Movie in Bing

Avatar Movie in Google

[SEOigloo]

Hi Egol,
I spent part of the morning going through the main pages on schema.org.

Now, I'm looking at your link to the Google results, and I'm looking at the IMBD site. What are you seeing that is different? Please, educate me.

[EGOL]

Avatar (2009) - IMDb
Rating: 8.2/10 - from 323,637 users
Directed by James Cameron. Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver.
Top News; Movie News; TV News; Celebrity News; Featured News; IMDb Snapshot ... Avatar
Still of Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington in Avatar Bill Paxton at ...
Full cast and crew - Trivia - Goofs - Plot Summary
www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/ - Cached - Similar

That's what I see... rating, links to people, minor sitelinks and some data from the page.

I think that they could have done a better job... but this is still more eye catching than the other items in the SERPs.

Edited by EGOL, 10 June 2011 - 09:32 PM.

[Michael_Martinez]

I cannot replicate those results. I guess you're seeing a test.

[EGOL]

I have been seeing them when I search google.com for "Avatar movie" from a few locations in southwestern Pennsylvania. Also seeing enhanced results on my iPhone.

[JVRudnick]

fyi...I see them too, in g.ca !!!!

nice catch here, Egol....

:-)

Jim

PS gonna have to vary that keyword and move to my own client's channels and retry same.....will report back here too....when I've got some kind of hypothesis....that is...

[A.N.Onym]

I see that on Google, too, at #5, under the images,.

Edited by A.N.Onym, 14 June 2011 - 09:50 PM.