3. From Blobs to Structured Data SEO in the Age of Entities Jonathon Colman, @jcolman@jcolman In-House SEO for REI www.REI.com INFO 498: Content Strategy (week #7)

4. What is content?  If you boil away all the formatting, what’s left?  Just text?  If so, then why isn’t full text search good enough to find what you’re looking for?  What could work better than that?  Any what can we do to content to support its findability?

5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsA4FnwrR7E

6. https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Bus- That-Couldnt-Slow-Down/114241625259749 Huh? Wikipedia is a source?

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Bus_Tha t_Couldn%27t_Slow_Down&redirect=no Oh, it’s via a synonym redirect to…

8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_(1994_film) Joss Whedon was a co-writer? WTF?!

9. What is a document?  How can you tell what a document is about?  How can you tell one document from another?  What sort of signals do documents give us that help us derive their meaning?  Do you know them when you see them?

10. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum. This is a Blob.

11. Lorem ipsum: A Study in Dolor Sit Amet Author: Melissa Weaver Date: February 18, 2012 Language: Latin, English Publisher: UW Husky Press Keywords: consectetuer, adipiscing, elit, sed, diam Abstract: Nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Chapter 1: Hendrerit in Vulputate Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum... This uses Entities.

12. The Problem with Blobs  Unstructured content is useful, but only to a point  It’s hard to scan, skim, and easily make sense of – both for humans and robots  It’s hard to search against, particularly in a crowded collection with lots of competing content containing similar information  What should a search engine pay attention to in order to help the user?

13. HTML metadata  Metadata is “data about data”, right?  In HTML, we can express metadata like:  The Problem With Blobs   Unfortunately, that’s not going to be good enough. But why not? Let’s see…

14. 2.2M results! Where are the movies?

15. How can we do better? Real metadata – in this case, “microdata”.

16. What is Schema.org?  Microdata standard agreed upon by Google, Bing, and Yahoo  Uses relatively simple on-page code to turn blobs of content into structured data  Once structured, this content become interoperable in other systems – you can display that data wherever the standards are accepted  Here’s an example…

17. This can increase clicks by +30%.

18. Controlled entities help searchers  Documents can be documents, authors can be authors, products can be products, and prices can be prices.  Each of these entities has a definition in Schema.org and markup that you can use to define a blob as being actual data.  So if Homer doesn’t know the name of the movie “Speed”, he can still find it with searches for its subject, the actors, the year it came out, the director, etc.

19. Exercise: Use the “Article” schema  Go to http://schema.org/Articlehttp://schema.org/Article  Look at the entities and the code sample at the bottom  Pick appropriate content from the IAI Library, such as http://iainstitute.org/en/learn/research/a _simplified_model_for_facet_analysis.php http://iainstitute.org/en/learn/research/a _simplified_model_for_facet_analysis.php  “View Source” and try marking it up with Schema.org microdata

20. Partial potential results A Simplified Model for Facet Analysis Dr. Louise Spiteri http://dal.academia.edu/LouiseSpiteri Faculty of Management School of Library and Information Studies Dalhousie University Halifax Nova Scotia NS B3H 3J5 Canada Voice: (902) 494-2473 Fax: (902) 494-2451

21. How to test Use Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/r ichsnippets http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/r ichsnippets

22. Sample test output  For this example blog post: http://homebiss.blogspot.com/2011/11/markup- blogger-schemaorg-examples.html http://homebiss.blogspot.com/2011/11/markup- blogger-schemaorg-examples.html  The Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool shows this output, which includes some use of Schema.org: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnip pets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhomebiss.blogspot.com% 2F2011%2F11%2Fmarkup-blogger-schemaorg- examples.html&view= http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnip pets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhomebiss.blogspot.com% 2F2011%2F11%2Fmarkup-blogger-schemaorg- examples.html&view=

23. What did we just learn?  Schema.org is frakkin’ verbose.  Entities can cascade poly-hierarchically  There are many “right” approaches  Not all entities need to be expressed  Not all entities provide value  Still, it’s hard to know when to stop  In your case, you’re done when the quarter’s over.

24. Common Schema.org entities  Thing > Person ThingPerson  Thing > Organization ThingOrganization  Thing > CreativeWork > Article ThingCreativeWorkArticle See also: Blog, BlogPosting, NewsArticle, ScholarlyArticleBlogBlogPostingNewsArticleScholarlyArticle  Thing > CreativeWork > MediaObject ThingCreativeWorkMediaObject See also: AudioObject, ImageObject, VideoObjectAudioObjectImageObjectVideoObject  Thing > Place ThingPlace  See full list at http://schema.org/docs/full.html http://schema.org/docs/full.html

25. Constraints to consider  Helping more people find more things is great, right?  But in the Real World™:  Assume that there’s a cost to do this  Assume that there’s a cost for maintenance  Assume that the standards will change  Assume that there are other priorities  Assume that conflicts, dependencies exist

26. Takeaways  Jon likes horror movies and The Simpsons  Blobs aren’t evil, just misunderstood!  Structured data entities help define blobs  Structured data entities make blobs easier to understand, learn from, index, and find  Metadata, microdata, and other methods can be used to create these entities  SEO standards (such as Schema.org) are emerging to support entities in popular search engines.

27. Many thanks! Jonathon Colman In-House SEO for REIREI Home:about.me/jcolmanabout.me/jcolman Twitter:@jcolman@jcolman Pssssst! So you wanna learn more about SEO? See http://www.seomoz.org/begin ners-guide-to-seo http://www.seomoz.org/begin ners-guide-to-seo