Local SEO Checklist with 13 Semantic Markup Tips

[Linda Buquet]

I missed a great post on New Year's Eve by Chris Silver Smith over at SearchEngineLand.
Just discovered it so wanted to share.

13 Semantic Markup Tips For 2013: A Local SEO Checklist

While special markup likely may not directly improve your rankings in search, it does apparently increase clickthrough rate or ?CTR,? as consumers are more drawn to your site?s listings. The increase is reportedly 15% on average, and potentially higher!

If you think most Microformats/RDFa/Micro Data/Schemas don?t apply to your local business website ? think again! While only a few of these may impact your listing in the local 7-pack or in Google Maps, your site can also attract customers via the regular, keyword search results pages; and, regular listings can and do appear on the same results pages as the 7-pack!

So, check to see if you?ve added the following semantic markups to your local website (if applicable). Improving your traffic, even on search results which are not directly related to something you sell, can help benefit all the rest of your website as your overall popularity becomes augmented.

I use Microformats in the Local SEO Template I provide with my Local SEO Training program (as well as several other local hooks) so am very familiar with hCard and Schema, however his comments about breadcrumbs were interesting as that is not something I've looked into much yet. If I read it right I think he's suggesting that breadcrumbs can help you get sitelinks. If so, then it's well worth investing time into since it makes your listing bigger, helps you stand out from the rest and gives users more reasons to click.

One comment on a comment...

Mark Hughes wrote:
Really useful article, Chris - thanks for sharing. Just one question regarding the latitude / longitude inclusion on your page. Hypothetically speaking, I might want the semantic benefit of having that information on the page. However, my marketing manager and web designer don't want the actual values to be visible to the user. It's not normal practice to display latitude and longitude on the page (as they have basically zero value to any normal human user) so would it be considered bad practice to 'hide' this content from the human user (i.e. set it to -1000px off the page)?

David Veldt responded saying not a good idea, Google does not like hidden content.

He's correct she does not like hidden content, HOWEVER schema automatically HIDES the lat/long, so you don't have to hide it. It will be in the page for Google to read but will not show up visually so customers would wonder what that weird string of numbers is. (hCard does too by the way.) If you've taken any of my training, you know how big I am on geocoordinates and all the places I recommend using them AND why.

Your thoughts on any of the markup tips?

 

[Travis Van Slooten]

This is a goldmine of information. Thanks for catching this!

Travis Van Slooten