Design
Web Design
SEO
Structured Data & Schema Markup for Webmasters
4.5 (229 ratings)
Course Ratings are calculated from individual students’ ratings and a variety of other signals, like age of rating and reliability, to ensure that they reflect course quality fairly and accurately.
1,216 students enrolled

Structured Data & Schema Markup for Webmasters

Beginners guide to rich snippets, structured data, and increased click-through rates from the major search engines.
4.5 (229 ratings)
Course Ratings are calculated from individual students’ ratings and a variety of other signals, like age of rating and reliability, to ensure that they reflect course quality fairly and accurately.
1,216 students enrolled
Created by Andrew Williams
Last updated 3/2020
English
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Structured Data & Schema Markup for Webmasters
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This course includes
  • 3.5 hours on-demand video
  • 2 articles
  • 2 downloadable resources
  • Full lifetime access
  • Access on mobile and TV
  • Certificate of Completion
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What you'll learn
  • You'll understand what rich snippets are and how to create & add the code to your pages so that Google can show them for pages.
  • You'll understand what structured data is and how best to implement it on your own website.
  • You'll be able to create a wide variety of schema markup from scratch if you want to.
  • You'll know how to implement schema using Google Tag Manager.
  • You'll be able to install and configure a Wordpress plugin to implement structured data on your website.
Requirements
  • You should have a website.
  • No knowledge is required, as everything will be taught.
Description

Have you ever been searching on Google and wondered why some listings where enhanced with thumbnail images, star ratings, search boxes and more, while others were plain old title, URL, &  description.

What is it about those enhanced listings that make them special?

The answer to that is something called Structured Data. 

Those sites that have "rich" entries in the results pages have implemented structured data on their web pages.

And, listen up.  The search engines have made it very clear that "rich results" are the future of search. 

From a website owner's perspective, it makes absolute sense to include structured data so that you can get these "rich snippets".  Those pages that have implemented this have higher click-through rates because the visitors eye is drawn to those listing that have star ratings, thumbnail images, or other embellishments. 

So what is structured data?

Put simply, structured data is information that has been created in a way that Google and other search engines understand it.  More importantly, this information is created specifically for the search engines.  And Google actually approves of this!   You see, search engines are generally good at understanding the overall content of a web page, but web masters can add extra information just to make sure nothing is missed.  

For example, you may have a video on a web page that you want to draw Google's attention to.  By adding structured data (that only search engines can see) about the video including: title, duration, description, etc, the search giant will better understand the importance of that video, and may even feature it next to your listing as a video thumbnail.

Structured data can be implemented in a number of different ways.  Heck, your web pages may already contain some structured data, especially if you use Wordpress.  But learning how to fine control your structured data to guide Google into better listings is an art that all website owners need to learn, especially going forward.  This will become more and more important and those pages that don't implement this will be left behind.  If you don't believe me, do a Google search for a highly visual topic like "chocolate brownie recipe" and try to spot a page that has not implemented structured data. 

The idea of implementing structured data on your site may fill you with dread, especially if you've never done any coding before.  However, don't panic.  This course takes you from complete beginner to accomplished structured data technician (cool job title) and teaches you everything you need to know.   I don't assume any prior knowledge.

This course will teach you:

  • What structured data is.

  • How Google uses structured data.

  • Who benefits from structured data, and why you need to implement it.

  • The options you have for adding structured data, and the method that Google wants us to use.

  • Where to go to find out what structured data you can include....

  • ... and how to create the code with minimum (or zero) programming skills.

  • The importance of checking in with Google before implementing structured data on your site.

  • The free tools you can use to help build and test your structured data.

  • How to create a wide range of structured data "types" that you could include on your site.

  • The methods you can use to insert the structured data into your website.

  • How to use Google's free Tag Manager to insert the structured data into your pages, and the advantages of this system.

  • The relationship between tags, triggers and variables in making your structured data flexible enough to be used on multiple pages on your site.

  • All about the Wordpress plugin I use  to implement structured data and how this approach means zero programming skills.  If you can point and click, you can implement structured data on your site.

  • About the Google Search Console tools that can help troubleshoot structured data on your site, and the one Google Console tool you should not use to create your structured data.

Everyone that owns a website will benefit from implementing structured data.  This course is for everyone that owns a website and does not know where to start.

Who this course is for:
  • If you own a website.
  • If you want greater visibility in the search engine results pages.
  • If you want higher click-through rates from the search engines.
  • If you want to see your site with rich snippets in the search results pages.
Featured review
Emad Sharaki
Emad Sharaki ( 95 courses, 5 reviews )
a year ago
I think it's beneficial for everyone working in the SEO field. You will get a piece of technical information that you need on your work. Finally, I recommend that course to everyone in marketing especially the SEO Thanks.
Course content
Expand all 39 lectures 03:40:53
+ – Structured Data?
5 lectures 24:19

This video introduces your instructor for this course, and what you can expect to learn by taking this course on Structured data.

Introduction
Preview 03:10

Google can use Structured Data in creative ways to enhance your search engine listing.  But what is Structured Data?   This video answers that question.

What is structured data
Preview 04:05

This lecture looks at a number of Google searches which highlight some of the types of structured data you can include in your web pages.

How Google uses structured data
09:43

Google's knowledge graph is an ambitious project to collect information about important entities so that it can be drawn upon to build creative "knowledge graph cards" in the SERPs.  This video introduces the knowledge graph.

Google knowledge graph
05:20

This video provides a quick overview of who actually benefits from implementing structured data.

Who Benefits from using Structured Data
02:01
+ – Your Structured Data Options
4 lectures 40:09

There are different ways you can add structured data to a website.  In this video, I'll tell you what the options are.  In this course, we are only going to cover one way.  It's the way that Google recommends we go about adding structured data, and will work for all search engines.

Options for Adding Structured Data
05:25

We will be using Schema.org as our taxonomy of schema because this site is the one that was created and endorsed by the top search engines.  This video explores the site, what to expect on the site, and the hierarchical nature of "things".

Schema.org
16:31

We will be creating the markup to be included in our web pages using JSON-LD, so this lecture looks a little more closely at the structure and syntax of this programming language.

JSON-LD
11:16

Google wants you to use structured data responsibly and any attempt to abuse the system will be met with a manual penalty.  This video shows you where you can go to get specific guidelines when creating structured data for your web pages.

A Second Opinion from Google
06:57
+ – Creating Markup
5 lectures 29:13

Before we start, you might like to bookmark the URLs of the tools you'll be using a lot.  To make this easier, I've created a file for you.

Bookmark the URLs
Preview 02:58

Before you start adding structured data to your website, do you want to check if some already exists?

Before you Begin
Preview 02:11

In this video we will take a piece of content on my own site and decide what type of content it is.  To help us choose, I always recommend looking at the options on Schema.org, but then use Google's guidelines and markup helper to decide.

Deciding on Type
04:42

This video takes a look at Google's structured data markup helper tool to markup an article.

Creating the Markup I
11:20

Google's markup helper does not have a definitive list of types, so often, you might need to grab some example code and edit it (or use a different tool).  This video looks at the manual process.

Creating the Markup II
08:02
+ – Schema Tools & Examples
10 lectures 01:01:14
Please Read
00:16

In this video we'll create the structured data for an Organization using one of the free tools available.

Organization
05:15

Let's use the a JSON-LS generator to create the markup for a product.

Product
10:00

In this example we create the structured data for an event.  This is a little different because we often need to add "tour dates" so that the rich snippet shows multiple events.

Event
05:16

Google has added some schema  support for courses.  However, a lot of the schema on the schema.org website is still pending, so has not been fully accepted by Google.  This video explains the situation and what you can do now.

Course
03:10

This example takes a look at the schema available for your Local Business

Local Business
10:44

In this example, we look at the schema for a review, and modify some code from the schema website to better suite our needs.

Review
12:54

This example looks at the markup for a software application.

Software Application
07:35

This example looks at the markup for adding breadcrumbs to your rich snippet.

Breadcrumbs
03:55

This example shows how to add the markup for a sitelinks searchbox directly in your rich snippet.

SiteLinks SearchBox
02:09
+ – Adding Schema To Web Pages with Tag Manager
8 lectures 33:05

This video looks at the ways you can get structured data into your web pages.

Inserting JSON-LD
06:06

This is just the briefest of introductions to Google Tag Manager.

Tag Manager Introduction
01:34

This video walks you through creating an account in Google Tag Manager.

Create an Account
02:04

In this video we'll look at the ways in which you can insert the Tag manager code into the pages on your website.

Insert Code into site
03:55

Tag manager works by a system of tags and triggers.   This video explains how that system works in relation to our JSON-LD structured data.

Tags and triggers
02:20

In this video, we'll add some structured data to a tag, set the trigger and test that it all works OK.

Adding JSON-LD into Tag Manager
06:48

The previous video added structured data to all pages on the website.  What if you only want it appearing on certain pages?  That's easy enough with triggers.

Trigger On Certain Pages
04:01

In this video we will briefly introduce the idea of variables inside our tags so that the same tag can be used across multiple pages.

Introduction to variables
06:17
+ – Adding Schema to Web Pages with a Plugin
4 lectures 25:42

This video introduces the best Schema plugin I have found.  It is the one I personally use, so I'll show you the initial setup.  In the next couple of videos we'll look at creating schema with the plugin.

Schema Pro Initial Setup
07:35

In this video we'll add Article schema and apply it to all posts on the website. 

Adding Schema
08:06

This video shows you how to use the Schema Pro plugin to assign schema to specific sections, posts, or pages, of your website.

Assigning Schema
03:10

Let me show you a few more examples of Schema set up with the Schema Pro plugin.  I'll use a couple of my other websites to illustrate the important points.

Other Schema Examples
06:51
+ – Search Console
2 lectures 06:45

Google search console can show us information about the structured data on our website, including any errors that need fixing.  This lecture introduces that.

Structured Data In Search Console
04:12

Google's Data Highlighting tool is not recommended as the structured data produced by this tool is only visible to Google.  However, this video shows you how the tool works.

Data Highlighter
02:33
+ – Resources
1 lecture 00:26

This document provides a list of the resources used in this course.

BONUS: Resources mentioned in this course
00:26