My SMX Toronto presentation on using structured markup for search engine optimization.
Includes a brief overview of semantic web principles, a comparison of the different flavors of structured markup (microformats, microdata and RDFa) and examples of rich snippets generated from structured markup.
Because of its obvious relevance to SEO, schema.org is the primary
vocabulary discussed, although the importance of GoodRelations for ecommerce sites is also acknowledged.
See the section below the embedded presentation for a brief addendum.
I wasn't able to squeeze these into the presentation list of relevant people to follow on Twitter, but here are some great search marketers that sometimes tweet about schema.org and related topics:
And here's the main list from the presentation, reiterated here because somehow SlideShare has pointed all these links simply to twitter.com (Twitter's damnable implementation of rel="canonical" perhaps?):
- Dan Brickley
Currently under contract from Google to oversee schema.org matters - Martin Hepp
The irrepressibly enthusiastic GoodRelations lead - Jay Myers
Web architect for Best Buy, responsible for the first major implementation of RDFa in an ecommerce enviroment - Matthew Brown
SEO and news optimization expert at AudienceWise, previously Director of Search Strategy at the New York Times - Manu Sporny
RDFa/RDF WebApps chair at W3C and one of the world's key semantic web technologists - Gregg Kellogg
Semantic media consultant and a part of the W3C's RDF Web Applications Working Group
Finally, in determining what sort of sites and topics might experience search visibility benefits by employing structured markup, I'd like to stress these two broad categories:
- Any and all entities (people, places and organizations)
- Anything relevant to the vending of goods and services, from online stores to brick-and-mortar local businesses