{"id":12870,"date":"2020-07-28T10:54:03","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T08:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/blog\/en\/?p=12870"},"modified":"2020-08-10T09:49:54","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T07:49:54","slug":"schema-markup-to-boost-local-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordlift.io\/blog\/en\/schema-markup-to-boost-local-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Schema Markup to Boost Local SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Is it really worth it? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with the end. In the experiment I am sharing today we measured the impact of a specific improvement on the structured data of a website that references 500+ Local Business (more specifically the site promotes Lodging Business such as hotels and villas for rent). Before diving into the solution; let\u2019s have a look at the results that we obtained using a Causal Impact analysis<\/a>. If you are a marketing person or an SEO you constantly struggle to measure the impact of your actions in the most precise and irrefutable way; Casual Impact, a methodology originally introduced by Google, helps you exactly with this. It\u2019s a statistical analysis that builds a Bayesian structural time series model that helps you isolate the impact of a single change being made on a digital platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cumulative result achieved after the first week (click data exported from GSC).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In a week, after improving the existing markup, we could see a positive increase of +5.09% of clicks<\/strong> coming from Google Search – this improvement is statistically relevant<\/strong>, unlikely to be due to random fluctuations<\/strong> and the probability of obtaining this effect by chance is very small \ud83d\udd25\ud83d\udd25<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We did two major improvements to the markup of these local businesses: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Improve the quality of NAP<\/strong> (Name, Address and Phone number) by reconciling the entities with entities in Google My Business (viia Google Maps APIs) and by making sure we had the same data Google has or better;<\/li>
  2. Adding, for all the reconciled entities, the hasMap property<\/a><\/strong> with a direct link to the Google CID Number<\/strong> (Customer ID Number), this is an important identifier that  business owners and webmasters should know – it helps Google match entities found by crawling structured data with entities in GMB. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Problem Statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Google My Business is indeed the simplest and most effective way for a local business to enter the Google Knowledge Graph. If your site operates in the travel sector or provides users with immediate access to hundreds of local businesses, what should you do to market your pages using schema markup against a fierce competition made of the business themselves or large brands such as booking.com and tripadvisors.com?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How can you be more relevant<\/strong> for both travelers abroad searching for their dream holiday in another country and for locals trying to escape from large urban areas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Approach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    The approach, in most of our projects, is the same regardless of the vertical we work for: knowledge completion<\/strong> and entity reconciliation<\/strong>; these really <\/strong>are two essential building blocks of our SEO strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    By providing more precise information in the form of structured linked data we are helping search engines find the searchers we\u2019re looking for, at the best time of their customer journey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Another important aspect is that, while we\u2019re keen on automating SEO (and data curation in general), we understand the importance of the continuous feedback loop between humans and machines: domain experts need to be able to validate the output and to correct any inaccurate predictions that the machine might produce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There is no way out – tools like WordLift needs to facilitate the process and web scale it but they cannot replace human knowledge and human validation (not yet at least). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Agentive SEO = Human-in-the-Loop<\/em> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The Solution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    LocalBusiness markup works for different types of businesses from a retail shop to a luxury hotel or a shopping center and it comes with sub-types (here<\/a> is the full list of the different variants from the schema.org website). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    All the sub-types, when it comes to SEO and Google in particular, shall contain the following set of information: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Name, Address and Phone number<\/strong> (and here consistency plays a big role and we want to ensure that the same entity on Yelp shows the same data on Apple Maps, Google, Bing and all the other directories that clients might use)<\/li>
    2. Reference to the official website <\/strong>(this becomes particularly relevant if the publisher does not coincide with the business owner) <\/li>
    3. Reference to the Google My Business<\/strong> entity (the 5% lift – we have seen above is indeed related to this specific piece of information) using the hasMap<\/strong> property<\/li>
    4. Location data <\/strong>(and here, as you might image, we can do a lot more than just adding the address as a string of text)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      The JSON-LD behind a Local Business <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      Here is the gist<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n