The Death of SEO as We Knew It
There once was a time when scammy SEO (aka Search Engine Optimization) “professionals” would try to rank sites higher by doing all sorts of nasty things – using a flood of webpage “keywords,” duplicating content across various website pages and then linking each page to one another, etc. Unfortunately, those people still exist. Luckily for us though, Google, Bing and Yahoo have taken various steps to annihilate the effectiveness of their attempts to force a site to rank higher.
One of the main things these three search engine giants have done is create an extension to pre-existing webpage code called Schema.org microformats. The “code extension,” better known in technical circles as markup, exists so these three search engine giants would have an easier time deciphering the content on the webpage.
Bad or inexperienced SEO professionals, prior to the release of this markup, would soak as many keywords into a page that the content no longer sounded like it was meant for a human to read. In fact, it probably wasn’t. The awkward sounding copy was designed that way so a search engine would find it. Before Schema.org microformats, it was easy for a bad SEO professional to promote to their clients how many times their website was visited from search query on google while ignoring how many of those google-derived visitors up-and-left after a second or two on the page.
One of the benefits of these microformats is that the awkward, keyword-infused copy never has to occur. Instead, you can think of two separate kinds of copy existing simultaneously on a webpage – one for the search engine and the other for the person who arrives on the webpage. The time for webpage marketing to humans has finally come.
There are search-engine specific boosts that come from Schema.org microformats. For instance, Google supports a handful of microformat types – such as products, events, people and site navigation, to name a few – and displays webpages using the markup differently in search results. Having your site stand out in search results may lead to more page views.
And more page views = more business.
To learn more about how Schema.org microformats can help boost your website and your business, just give us a call at 1-888-867-9633 or contact us below.