Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important for the success of any online business. SEO has two main goals: to help you understand what users are searching for online and to help you create a website. In the digital era, SEO is becoming more and more important as more and more companies are starting to go digital. In order to gain a competitive advantage against your competition, you need to be able to understand the importance of SEO. Furthermore, SEO not only makes your website be found more effortlessly, but it also makes user experiences and the website’s usability improve even more.
In 2021, Google announced a change to several structured data types. So you may be sitting there, wondering why this update is something that we should be aware of. Well, if you’ve dabbled your hands on HowTo, QAPage, and SpecialAnnouncement structured data before the update, you might have noticed that there have been changes to it that have made it far simpler than what it was before.
The changes made affected the requirements for the HowTo, QAPage, and the SpecialAnnouncement structured data. However, the guidance didn’t come with examples, which made it a little difficult to understand, but fret not! This article will walk you through some of the update’s changes.
What is HowTo Structured Data? And What Changed?
We use HowTo structured data to explicitly tell Google that the content that we are making is a “how-to.” If you don’t know what a how-to is, a how-to is a set of steps to fulfill or complete a task successfully. It can feature a video, image, and text. Try searching on Google “How to tie a tie,” and you’d be able to see what a “how-to” website is.
In the announcement made by Google, it was stated that they had removed the “description” structured data field that pertains strictly to the HowTo data type. Although users could still use the “description” property in other properties even after the update, it’s no longer a necessity in the HowTo part.
Here’s what the code looked like before the update:
<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “HowTo”,
“name”: “How to cut a flower”,
“description”: “Ever wanted to remove the flower head from its stem? Well, here are some ways to do so.”,
“image”: {
“@type”: “ImageObject”,
“url”: “https://example.com/photos/1×1/flowercut.jpg”,
“height”: “406”,
“width”: “305”
},
And here’s how it can be coded after the update:
<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “HowTo”,
“name”: “How to cut a flower”,
“image”: {
“@type”: “ImageObject”,
“url”: “https://example.com/photos/1×1/flowercut.jpg”,
“height”: “406”,
“width”: “305”
},
You might have been a bit puzzled as to what the documentation said as it only said, “Removed the following structured data fields from documentation, since they are unused by Google Search and Rich Result Test doesn’t flag warnings for them:
HowTo: description.”
Well, those were the changes that Google had made on the HowTo structured data.
What is a FAQ Page? And What Changed?
FAQ pages are web pages containing data in the form of a question and answer. FAQ pages can be properly marked up, and pages that have been properly marked up would be eligible to have rich results displayed on the search results page. Having rich treatment will help your site reach the right users on Search.
The “author” property is no longer required when you’re using the suggestedAnswer property, under the mainEntity property.
To name the author of the question was now the purpose of the removed author property.
This is what the structured data looked like before the changes:
“suggestedAnswer”: [
{
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Are you looking to cut your fingernails? Nail cutters are the best at this job”,
“dateCreated”: “2012-10-02T21:11Z”,
“upvoteCount”: 1337,
“url”: “https://example.com/question1#suggestedAnswer1”,
“author”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “AnotherUser”
}
This is what it looks like after the changes:
“suggestedAnswer”: [
{
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Are you looking to cut your fingernails? Nail cutters are the best at this job”,
“dateCreated”: “2012-10-02T21:11Z”,
“upvoteCount”: 1337,
“url”: “https://example.com/question1#suggestedAnswer1”,
}
Everything pertaining to the “author” property has now been removed.
Additionally, there are other properties that are a part of the main Entity property that has also been removed. These properties are:
- mainEntity.dateCreated
- mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.dateCreated
- mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.author
- mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.dateCreated
- mainEntity.author
What is a SpecialAnnouncements Structured Data? Are there any Updates?
Due to the rise of COVID-19, many organizations, governments, health organizations, schools, and others, are publishing urgent announcements that affect schedules and other aspects of everyday life. This includes the rescheduling of events, closure of certain facilities, and the availability of new medical facilities such as testing centers.
According to Schema.org, SpecialAnnouncements combines a simple date-stamped textual information update with contextualized Web links and other structured data. It represents an information update made by a locally-oriented organization, for example, schools, pharmacies, healthcare providers, community groups, police, and local government.
SpecialAnnouncements is still in the Beta stages, meaning that it’s still in the development stages, and the lovely people at Schema.org are the ones spearheading its development.
SpecialAnnouncements will not be the same as emergency warning technologies such as Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), although Schema.org stated that there might be some overlaps between them. Schema.org stated that the purpose of SpecialAnnouncement is not to create similar emergency warning technologies but rather to cover the kinds of everyday practical information being posted to existing websites during emergencies.
Additionally, Schema.org stated that the basic content of SpecialAnnouncement is going to be similar to a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or an Atom feed.
The following properties have been removed for SpecialAnnouncements are no longer required:
- provider
- audience
- serviceTSo, what are the things that we’ve learned today? Well, we’ve learned what HowTo, QAPage, and SpecialAnnouncement are. Let’s do a quick run-through of the things that changed on the aforementioned data structures.
- Let’s start things off with the HowTo. The update has made it so that the “description” property is no longer needed in the HowTo part; however, users can still use it in other properties of the HowTo data type.
- Next, we have the update on the QAPage data structure. The update has removed the need for the author property when using the suggestedAnswer property. Additionally, other properties such as mainEntity.dateCreated, mainEntity.suggestedAnswer.dateCreated, mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.author, mainEntity.acceptedAnswer.dateCreated, and mainEntity.author have also been removed from the structured data.
- Lastly, we have the SpecialAnnouncements data structure. Properties such as the provider, audience, serviceType, address, and category are no longer required when using the SpecialAnnouncement data structure.ype
- address
- category