Member contact information formatting for association sites

[Mark Brassey]

I am hoping that someone has experience with this issue. We are working on an association site with many members. We want the members to get the most search juice possible for their listing on the association site. As such, do I use a specific schema format? or is this just a place for effective back link implementation?

Thank you so much,
Mark

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Umm... the term search juice is slightly disconcerting here. In my experience the term "juice" implies they're looking for a quick "link building" boost trying to improve ranking. (Bad mindset for today's web)

A link from an association would typically be about authority, attracting visitors and possibly even locality depending on the type of association.

On the subject of schema - per Matt Cutts

“On one hand, I wouldn’t necessarily count on that….Just because you implement schema.org doesn’t mean you necessarily rank higher. But there are some corner cases like if you were to type in ‘lasagna,’ and then click over on the left-hand side and click on ‘recipes,’ that’s the sort of thing where using schema.org markup might help, because then you’re more likely to be showing up in that at all. So there are some cases where it can be helpful to use schema.org markup.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily count on that giving you any sort of ranking boost…I’m not going to take it off the table, but for example, it might make sense in some of those specific topic areas, but just because somebody implements schema.org markup, that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily and automatically a better site, so I wouldn’t count on that giving you a good ranking boost, although it can be a good idea to markup things in a rich structure just because, you know, then different people can slice and dice and find your site more easily if they are doing more digging.”

Does the use of schema.org markup create a ranking benefit? - YouTube

Usual Google-speak - we can't say it will, it certainly won't hurt.

As to *which* schema format - not an expert on Schema, perhaps someone else can offer a suggestion.

 

[Mark Brassey]

Margaret,

Thank you for catching my use of the term search juice. Dropped into 2008 speak. Thanks also for your response. I am working on more association sites and I have to think that there is a proper format for listing members. I will keep looking and if I learn anything will post it here.

Mark