Lesson 1: How to integrate Structured Data into your site

Let’s start with lesson 1 from module 2 of the Structured Data Training Course. Now I guide you through an example on how you integrate structured data into one of your pages:

Transcript

Hey and welcome back. Nice to have you in the first lesson of module 2. In module 2 we’re getting our hands dirty and push some Structured Data out into this world. I’m happy that you made it till here.

I’m Florian, the developer of SNIP, the Rich Snippets and Structured Data Plugin for WordPress. If you want to use the plugin, please feel free to follow the link that you can find in the description area.

So let’s start.

Repeat: how to find the right schema type

In the last lesson of module 1 I’ve taught you how to find the right Structured Data Type and their properties. Let’s go through it quickly once again.

First, you have to identify, what Schema Type you need to integrate. Let’s say you’re offering a self-made Teacup on one of your landingpages. So you know, you want to add a Schema Type for a cup, if that exists.

Now you go to schema.org to see if there is a schema type for tea cups.

You search under the „CreativeWork“ because you think it’s something creative you have made. But as you find out: there is nothing that would fit exactly! Hm… so what to do now?

Of course you could use „CreativeWork“ here because your hand-made tea cup is exactly that. And because there is no Tea-Cup-Schema you need to use the next type that fits.

From the other lessons you know that a CreativeWork does not create a Rich Snippet in search result. But you want to stand out. You want to get this product picture into search results. Just like you saw it in the very first lesson of module 1 because that is, what’s more visually attractive to the user.

So because the Product-Schema fits best here, you’ve decided to stick with it.

Now you have to go to Googles Reference to see how a product type should look like in order to get a Rich Snippet in search results. From the previous lessons you know that you can find the reference here.

If you’re on the podcast right know, you’ll find all the links in the description area. So feel free to stop here and take a look at Googles Reference for the Product Type.

Now, carefully read through the description and the guidelines. It will help you understand what you can and what you cannot do.

If done, scroll down to the property-list of the product. You’ll find a list of properties that are required and some that are just recommended.

So now you know that you want to use the Product Schema-Type. And you know what properties to use

Example: add a snippet to a page

Now let’s add them to your landingpage using SNIP – My Rich Snippets and Structured Data Plugin for WordPress.

By the way: You can also use the Structured Data Generator that you can use for free on rich-snippets.io. This is a reduced version of the generator that I’ve built-in into my plugin. In the end you’ll get a ready-to-use JSON+LD code snippet.

There is one more clarification that I have to make. In the plugin I often use the word „Snippet“. By that I mean a Code-Snippet that will be generated out of the syntax that you’re generating with the generator.
Don’t be confused because a single search result is also called „snippet“.

Let’s move on .

I assume you’ve installed and activated the plugin already. Just make sure that the post type „Page“ is selected on the settings page of the plugin, because we’re now adding a snippet to a page.

[Screencast]

Googles Search Console

So let’s jump over to the other tool that I’ve mentioned. This is the URL where you can find the Google Search Console.

In Google Search Console there is a menu called „Structured Data“ that you can find under „Search Appearance“. If you can’t see it, you’re maybe on the new Search Console. That looks like this:

Google currently works on a new Search Console that looks more pretty. At the time this video was made, there was no „Structured Data“ menu in the new Search Console. So if you’re using the new Search Console, you should switch back to the old one using the menu item that says „Go to the old version“.

So let’s have a look at the Structured Data Analysis in the Search Console. It mainly helps you identify errors on Structured Data.

As you can see, the current page had a lot of errors two month ago. They were fixed, sorted out and are now valid. Because this site is a job posting site, the number of Schemas are increasing with every new job post, because the JobPosting schema together with the Organization Schemas is used very heavily on this site.

So the primary use case is to find errors. If there are errors, the Analysis Tool will tell you exactly

  • on what page the error occurred and
  • what the error is.

So in this case the author-property is missing.

If you click on the error, Google shows more detailed information about what it has gathered from this page, when it was crawled, how the Schema-Type looks like and so on. A click onto the button „Test live data“ brings you back Googles Structured Data Test Tool

Conclusion

Now. Let’s repeat.

  • In this video you’ve learned – like in the lesson before – how you can find the right schema type.
  • I’ve showed you how you can generate Structured Data within SNIP – the Rich Snippets and Structured Data Plugin for WordPress.
  • I’ve mentioned that you can also use the Structured Data Generator free of charge on rich-snippets.io. However as you saw in the video, it has some limitations that the original version doesn’t have.
  • We used Google Structured Data Test Tool to validate the snippet.
  • And I’ve quickly mentioned the „Structured Data“ menu in Googles Search Console.

Very well done!

In the next video I’m going to show you how Global Snippets work and how it makes your life a whole lot easier.

See you there!