HTML Vocabularies: Because Everything is a Thing, and Things are Related to Other Things.

Let’s talk about the structure of your HTML markup. I recently read an article from Search Engine Land that only 0.3% of websites are using structured markup. If you don’t know, and by that 0.3%, many don’t, a collaboration exists between Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google (yeah, believe it or not), and Russian search engine Yandex to adhere to a standard vocabulary within HTML to help search engines better understand and index content to provide search results that are most pertinent and related to your search phrase.

For Google, its Knowledge Graph gathers data based on this vocabulary and creates connections between things. For example, in Google when you search on “Rush the band,” you’ll see pertinent results on the right side of the SERP providing information about band members, albums recorded, and the ability to listen to some of their songs (which, I highly recommend). You’ll also see a list other bands that other people have searched for creating relationships. Clicking on any item gets even more specific about that result. So it provides a great list of factual data for things and things related to those things that are pertinent about your search. So how is this accomplished?

Schema.org serves as a dictionary for this language providing microdata syntax; that is, attribute-value pairs that live within your HTML tags (e.g., div or span) to describe each piece of content.  For example, a dictionary has been created that provides vocabulary common to higher education (universities and colleges).  You can view it at the schema.org website.

So head on over and start reading about your industry’s markup vocabulary because changes to your markup will benefit you, your users, and your SERP.

Some helpful tools:

Google's Structured Data Markup Helper

Google's Webmaster Tools: See Data Highligher under Search Apperance

Google's Structured Data Testing Tool