There’s been a lot of buzz leading up to the launch of Schema.org. The first thing that makes Schema.org a big deal is that it is agreed upon and standardized. The second thing that makes Schema.org a big deal is the essence of what it does. Schema.org provides a standard protocol to add more details to HTML pages, details that search engines can read.
Here’s standard HTML markup code. The h1 tag, on line 1., is a style format, which stands for heading 1. This is the standard way web pages are written. The problem is that a search engine cannot identify what text is related to what ‘attribute’. Microdata is a set of tags, introduced with HTML5, that allows you to relate text with ‘attributes’, or ‘item properties’.
Original HTML:
1. Beachwalk Beachwear & Giftware
2. A superb collection of fine gifts and clothing to accent your stay in Mexico Beach.
3. 3102 Highway 98
4. Mexico Beach, FL
5. Phone: 850-648-4200
With Microdata:
1. itemscopeitemtype=“http://schema.org/LocalBusiness”>
2. itemprop=“name”>Beachwalk Beachwear & Giftware
3. itemprop=“description”> A superb collection of fine gifts and clothing
4. to accent your stay in Mexico Beach.
5. itemprop=“address”itemscopeitemtype=“http://schema.org/PostalAddress”>
6. itemprop=“streetAddress”>3102 Highway 98
7. itemprop=“addressLocality”>Mexico Beach,
8. itemprop=“addressRegion”>FL
9.
10. Phone: itemprop=“telephone”>850-648-4200
11.
WARNING: The following paragraph is extremely nerdy. I am going to dissect the Microdata code above.
We start by identifying what language we’re speaking, and what we’re talking about, these attributes are referred to as itemscope and itemtype. Line 1says whatever is contained in this is this type of data. We start by referencing “http://schema.org/LocalBusiness”. In line two, you’ll notice the same h1 tag, which controls the text format for the humans. You will then see span, which indicates whatever you’re tagging lasts from where “opens to “” , where it closes. You’ll notice we’re switching languages, but still describing a LocalBusiness, thus the first does not close. We open a new , and define the item, which is “address”. Next we define our scope and type, now referencing this type of attribution Schema, “http://schema.org/PostalAddress”.On lines 6, 7 and 8, we’re identifying our text as a property, our type of properties were defined on line 5. On line 9 we’re closing our
, telling the search engine that we’re no longer talking about PostalAddress, but since we only closed one
