This document discusses how to use schema markup to improve search engine results and website click-through rates. It explains what rich snippets are, how to identify relevant schema types like movie and person, and how to structure HTML tags with itemscope and itemprop attributes to mark up content like movie names, genres, directors according to the appropriate schema. An online tool is also presented for testing schema markup implementations.

1. December 2012
Rich Snippet Markup

2. Contents
1. Introduction
2. How To Use Schema
3. Tools
4. Next Steps

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Summary
This presentation explains what rich snippets are and how they
can be used to improve search engine results and website click
through rates.

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What Are Rich Snippets?
Rich snippets provide search engines with ‘context’.
They enable a website owner to highlight important or useful
pieces of information to the search engines.
For example a ‘product’ schema type could be applied to a
particular product on a website.
This enables the website to tell the search engine where the
product description, product cost and product name can be
found.

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Rich Search Results
The below screenshot outlines two search engine results which
have the ‘review’ schema type applied to their content.
Rating
Reviews
Description

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Rich Search Results
Search engine result for
‘movies Tuggerah’ Source of
information for
the search
engine result.

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HTML Structure
Below is a quick overview of how HTML code is structured.
HTML Element
HTML Property
Most HTML Elements
have a start and an end

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Using Schema
There is a schema type for just about any piece of content including
‘people’, ‘books’, ‘recipes’ and much more.
In the below example we’ll take a look at the ‘movie’ schema type.
Content before schema mark-up
Content after schema mark-up

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Schema Properties
Below is the property list for the ‘movie’ schema type.
Properties from Movie
Person A cast member of the movie, TV series, season, or episode, or
actor
video.
Person A cast member of the movie, TV series, season, or episode, or
actors
video. (legacy spelling; see singular form, actor)
director Person The director of the movie, TV episode, or series.
Duration
The duration of the item (movie, audio recording, event, etc.)
duration
in ISO 8601 date format.
musicBy MusicGroup orPerson The composer of the movie or TV soundtrack.
Person The producer of the movie, TV series, season, or episode, or
producer
video.
Organization The production company or studio that made the movie, TV
productionCompany
series, season, or episode, or video.
trailer VideoObject The trailer of the movie or TV series, season, or episode.
*Not all properties have to be applied when defining an object.

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Schema Properties
The ‘movie’ schema type also uses properties from ‘thing’
Properties from Thing
URL An additional type for the item, typically used for adding more specific
types from external vocabularies in microdata syntax. This is a
relationship between something and a class that the thing is in. In RDFa
additionalType
syntax, it is better to use the native RDFa syntax - the 'typeof' attribute -
for multiple types. Schema.org tools may have only weaker
understanding of extra types, in particular those defined externally.
description Text A short description of the item.
image URL URL of an image of the item.
name Text The name of the item.
url URL URL of the item.

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Using Schema Properties
Schema properties can be applied to any HTML tag. Most
commonly you would apply it to a <h1> - <h9>, <div>, <p>, or
<span> tag.
In the example above schema properties have been applied
to <div>, <h1>, <span> and <a> tags.

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Defining A Schema Type
Like all mark-up you need to define where a schema starts and
ends.
To start defining a schema type, you would place the following
code within the page content.
<div itemscope itemtype=“http://schema.org/{schema type}>
The content that is going to be used for this schema type has
been encased in a <div> element.

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Defining A Schema Type
In most cases you will need to apply multiple schema types to
a dataset.
In the example above, we have defined a ‘movie’ schema
type.
Within the ‘movie’ schema there is the ‘director’ property.
Because the director is a person, you will also have to apply the
‘person’ schema type.

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Defining Schema Properties
Once you have defined where your schema type begins and
ends, it is time to apply ‘properties’.
To achieve this, the ‘itemprop’ attribute is used.
In the example above the ‘name’ and the ‘genre’ has been
tagged using the ‘itemprop’ attribute.

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Schema Test Tool
Entering the above code through the Google rich snippet tool produces the
below output.
When Google sees this now
‘structured data’ it can easily
determine that the page
content is a ‘movie’
Additionally, Google can easily
see the movie name and other
properties defined using schema
mark-up.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

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Broken Schema
The below screenshot shows what is displayed when there is invalid schema
applied to a webpage.
In this case, the ‘name’ item property has been incorrectly implemented.

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Summary
By applying schema mark-up to webpages:
• Search engines can easily understand your data.
• If content is well understood by search engines, they can display richer
results for your website based on your mark-up.
• This in turn increases the click through rates.

18. THANK YOU!