[How to] Avoid Google's new penalty: spammy rich snippets

[How to] Avoid Google's new
penalty: spammy rich snippets
Make sure your site is not at risk of getting penalized
for misusing structured markup or rich snippets.

View complete guide on WebMeUp blog:
http://webmeup.com/blog/spammy-structured-markup.html

Why care about Google thinking your
rich snippets are spammy?
Google is now sending a new type of manual action notifications to
site owners who use spammy structured markup on their resources.

In the meanwhile, website owners might not
even suspect their structured markup might be
considered spammy (or that their site is using
something called “structured markup” at all!


So first, let’s make sure
we all understand
a) what is structured markup at all
and
b) what’s the difference between
structured markup and rich snippets


Structured markup
is a piece of HTML code on your page that's organized (structured)
in such a way that it gives search engines additional information
about your content.

Basically, it is like telling search
engines, "Look! This piece of content is a food
recipe."


Example of structured markup:


A rich snippet
is the representation of your marked-up information in search results.
So, if structured markup is a piece of code, then a rich snippet is the
visual part of that code displayed on Google.

By the way, Google provides a tool (called Structured Data Testing
Tool) that lets one see which structured data the search engine is
capable of recognizing on a page.


Example of a rich snippet


Good to know:
Sometimes Google derives additional connotations from your
page's HTML code independently, even if you don't explicitly mark
up anything on your site.
Besides, Google has been trying to build its services (such as
YouTube or Google+) in such a way that structured data is easily
retrieved and displayed in search results:


It’s quite enough to know the most
popular structured data uses
… because even though there are hundreds of structured data
templates available (including Schemas, OpenGraph formats, etc.),
only about a dozen of them are widely used by webmasters/SEOs.
So let’s take a look!


Authorship markup

Google began supporting rel="author" tag back in
June, 2011, and the format gained mass adoption among online
marketers.
And that's easily understandable - what could
be easier than claiming your authorship over a
piece of content, and getting your headshot
appear next to the said piece in search results!


Video object markup
If you have a video on your webpage that's relevant to the rest of
the content, it's always a good idea to highlight it using either the
Video Object Schema, or the OpenGraph video template.


Music piece markup
This popular format lets one mark up a music piece on a site. At
Schema.org, you can find the MusicRecording template that can
be used for these purposes, while OpenGragh has a number of
music-related forms for it.


Article markup
Needless to say, article markup is a must these days for any online
journal or news resource that has online presence.

Both Schema for articles and OpenGraph's article standard let one
specify different information about a news piece such as its
name, image, author, publication date, and more.


Recipe markup
Google used to have a separate search product one could use to
search recipes, but it’s no longer provided. Hence, implementing
recipe markup on your site to stand out among other recipe results
is now as important as ever.

BTW, Google has a format one can use to
markup recipe details on a site.


Reviews and ratings
Oh well…


Are they the reason Google went
all nuts?
It's been several years since webmasters began noticing that some
competitors would manipulate their visible reviews/ratings by
playing with micro formats in their code.
So, it may be the case that the recent Google's rich
snippets penalty (which we're going to talk about in
the following section of this presentation), deals with
fake ratings/reviews among other things.


A legitimate way
to have your rating/reviews information displayed in the search
results would be to markup the sections where you have this
information using the AggregateRating Schema.

Good to know:
Rating/review markup is incorporated into a whole number of
general-interest Schemas (such as
CreativeWork, Recipe, Offer, Place, etc.) That's because virtually any
type of product or service you can think of, can potentially have
reviews.


Product markup
This type of markup would probably be of the biggest
interest to e-commerce sites. The Product Schema lets you
specify various characteristics of your products.


Local search
They say 20% of all search queries on Google have local intent. So,
if you have a local business, consider being represented not only in
Google's 10-blue-links search results, but also in Local Search.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Right now, the easiest way to claim your local
listing is to create a Google+ Page for local.


And one more thing…
If you’re a local biz, remember to encourage your customers
to leave honest reviews for your biz through their Google+
accounts.
This will increase your chances of ranking higher in local
search results.


Now let’s get to the main part.

How to avoid spammy
structured markup penalty?


As we learned earlier,
Google just began penalizing webmasters for what they call
"spammy structured markup.“

It's a manual penalty (meaning a real human
must have looked at your site) and can only
be reversed if one removes spammy markup
and files for reconsideration.


So far, Google has not specified
what kind of behavior can lead to a structured markup penalty. It
may provide an example or two in Google Webmaster Tools if
your site gets affected, so, keep an eye on that.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Apart from it, we will now list some simple rules to follow that we
think will minimize one's chance of getting hit by this penalty.


Rule 1. Check for manual penalties
To make sure your site is currently not penalized for spammy structured
markup, head to Google Webmaster Tools -> Search Traffic -> Manual Actions.
If you see the following message there (see the screenshot below), this
means everything is fine:


Rule 2. Use Google's
Structured Data Testing Tool

Use Structured Data Testing Tool (also available in Google Webmaster Tools ->
Other Resources) to see if any of your pages have structural markup issues.
Google would often alert you if any of the markup used is inappropriate.


Example 1:

Example 2:


Rule 3. Pick the right Schema
to mark up pages
When implementing structural markup on your
site's pages, make sure the formats/templates
you use are the best choice for the data you are
using them on.


Beware of hypernyms!
If you look at the assortment of Schemas (structured data
formats/templates) available at Schema.org, you'll see that some of
them are hypernyms like “Thing” or “Event”, while others describe
more specific things, such as “MusicEvent”, “SportsEvent”, etc.


What's a hypernym?
It's a common term that can be used for a group of terms.
For example, flower is a hypernym for such words as
daisy, rose, lily, etc.

So do not use hypernymic templates
when there is a specific one.


When deciding which template
to use in which case…
choose the one that's most relevant to the type of information you
have on the page.

For example, if your page is about an upcoming music
concert, use the MusicEvent schema, and not the
MusicRecording one.


In conclusion
If you think structured markup is implemented correctly on your
pages (and Structured Data Testing Tool confirms that)
… yet it doesn't show up in search results

DON’T WORRY!


At the same time
As far as getting a manual penalty for spammy structured
markup is concerned, unless you're purposefully implementing
markup that's manipulative or misleading, your website should
be on the safe side.

View more SEO guides on WebMeUp blog:
http://webmeup.com/blog/
Review the instructions you’ve read in this presentation, and feel
free to ask us any questions you might have!

This guide has been brought to you by WebMeUp,
the team behind world’s finest SEO tools.

[How to] Avoid Google's new penalty: spammy rich snippets

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[How to] Avoid Google's new penalty: spammy rich snippets