Schema.org: Comin’ on more than <strong>
My first reaction last week to schema.org was pure excitement. “Finally. the semantic Web is going to make a real difference in the world of search” I gushed.
I’ve been spicing up my markup with Microformats for years. Any chance I have to add more semantics to a webpage, I’ll take.
A couple of months ago—impatient with the wait for the semantic Web to hit search—I started playing around with SPARQL to query RDFa datasets from DBpedia. I’ve known for several years that the semantic Web is the future, and I’m beyond psyched that I can start incorporating more semantics–real semantics, on a macro level–into projects I work on. Woohoo!
I just have to forget about RDFa if I want the VIP treatment from Google,Bing and Yahoo.
But wait.
What about my beloved DBpedia; the jewel of semantic data knowledge bases? How are they going to deal with this? According to Christian Bizer, DBpedia might begin publishing Microdata with it’s next release, mapping DBpedia’s ontology to Schema.org’s with OWL.
What about Wikipedia itself though. How do they feel about these changes? It certainly affects their vast implementation of structured data.
And why the proprietary format again?
Granted, the W3C moves slowly
Yes, we’re all aware of the W3C’s painfully… slow… process of going from drafts to recommendations and standards, but to be fair, certain browser vendors (do I need to name names) are even slower to adopt them. It’s difficult to observe the adoption of Web standards in wild if a huge chunk of the market doesn’t even implement the specifications.
Internet Explorer. Okay, there, I said it. Like I had to. How ironic is it that that they’re 1 of the W3C’s 324 members? Discuss amongst yourselves ;)
But seriously.
Stepping away from my enthusiasm for search 3.0—at least for a minute or two—because something deserves attention:
As great as it is that structured data will really get some recognition in the world of search, wouldn’t it have been a good idea in the spirit of the open Web to get some public opinion on what to include/not include in schema.org?
Why Google wants control of the semantic Web
My observation is that with Google’s attempted (and many failed) advances into the world of social media, now is a good time to have some control in the semantic web. The social space opens up a whole new application for semantic technologies. Their also-ran +1 button will probably benefit from a ubiquitous schema.org and help in their competition with Facebook.
The schema.org news is sudden, and though I’ll gladly play along with my new Web 3.0 toys, Im really hoping that Mr BYG (Bing, Yahoo & Google—you heard it here first folks ;) ) will listen to the dev community, and take public opinion seriously.
Remember Web 2.0—2 way conversations—before quickly moving on to Web 3.0
What (Not) to Look for in an SEO Company
Search visibility can be very profitable for any business, but equally important is how it’s achieved.
What to avoid: keyword spam and content-farmed backlinks
A closer look at the websites of many SEO companies—and their clients—shows that without keyword spam, they’re often left only with massive—and often weak—backlink campaigns and exaggerated search visibility guidelines taken out of context as their main strategies.
Also watch out for:
- Monthly maintenance plans: These default plans are usually much more beneficial to SEO companies—not their clients. There are exceptions, but that’s what they are; exceptions.
If you continue to make payments, be sure to know what you’re paying for—and make sure it isn’t content farm linking campaigns. - Mini-sites: Mini-sites drive traffic from one or more exact-match domain websites to a main company website.
This is frowned upon by Google, and according to Matt Cutts, exact-match domain names will be losing more search result favoritism in the near future.
There are legitimate uses for mini-sites, but driving traffic from exact-match domains isn’t one of them. - Other tricks such as passing off HTML validation as an SEO benefit and other lies that SEO salesmen love to tell.
Why do the overwhelming majority of SEO companies use tactics that are below par? Because doing it right takes more time, staff, and know-how, and doing in wrong “justifies” what they love to call monthly maintenance.
Why avoid the cheap SEO tactics?
Getting to the top of the rankings is important, as long as you aren’t sacrificing your website’s content or brand reputation.
While spammy, “over-optimized” sites might rank for their keyword targets (for a while), often the results are achieved with some collateral damage: Content modified with unnatural, keyword-repeating text and unintuitive and user-unfriendly navigation structure can kill the user-experience, and scream “unethical company, run!“.
Results are also often short-lived, as sketchy backlink strategies typically involve content farms passed off as “article marketing”, which expose reputation-damaging associations with what amount to as basically Web spam.
What to look for in an SEO company (or any company working on your website)
The areas of Web development that should never be ignored or tarnished with any search visibility initiative are the following:
- Web content strategy
- User-centric content marketing and copywriting.
- Web usability
- Information architecture
- Conversion optimization
- Web standards
Look for a company that demonstrates proficiency in these areas—they have profound effects on competitive search visibility, and if focus on them is lost, eventually, so might be your search rankings.
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