Schema through Yoast

[Jo Shaer]

Hi Guys
Just adding schema through GTM to a contact page. We noticed that the Yoast plugin automatically adds organisation schema to every page.
Web dev says he can block the Yoast schema. But that will remove the organisation schema that has been crawled by Google's bots so she is used to seeing.
Would removing the Yoast organisation schema cause any short or long term SEO impact?
We do plan to add page-specific Schema to the main pages over the next few weeks

 

[Rich Owings]

I doubt that it will have any impact, although others may have a different opinion. However...

• Adding schema via GTM is not recommended: Google: Don’t Rely on Google Tag Manager for Structured Data
• Your web dev may have to tweak things upon new releases of Yoast

 

[Jo Shaer]

Hi @Rich Owings
My web dev found a work around for the problems mentioned above here
Google Structured Data Testing Tool Not Working With Google Tag Manager

(The link to the workaround is in one of the comments. It refers to a tweet by someone called Simo Ahava who describes himself as "Google Developer Expert for Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager": https://twitter.com/SimoAhava/status/1001397355403468802)

 

[j_holtslander]

Adding schema via GTM is not recommended

Ugh.

A while back Google's Structured Data Testing Tool stopped seeing Structured Data that was inserted via Google Tag Manager.

This caused a minor little uproar on Twitter when Google's John Mueller tweeted a response of "I wouldn't rely on a tool like GTM to add Structured Data". One blog immediately twisted this into wrote that Google itself has now declared that GTM should not be used for inserting Structured Data. Which is ridiculous.

A new, reliable way to insert Structured Data via Google Tag Manager was found by Simo Ahava and this method allows for the testing tool to detect the Structured Data 100% fine.

Tag Manager is the superior method to implement at scale and can dynamically change the Structured Data based on the content of the page! (eg: 1 single snippet for the schema for 10,000 blog posts, that can all be updated in under 30 sec.) See this article and this older Moz article for more information on how to do that.

<!-- GOOGLE TAG MANAGER VERSION -->
<!-- Credit: https://twitter.com/SimoAhava/status/1001397355403468802 -->
<!-- Source: https://github.com/JayHoltslander/Structured-Data-JSON-LD -->
<script>
(function() {
   var jsonData =

// PASTE THE JSON THAT YOU WANT TO USE, HERE.
// Only paste what's within the <script> block.
// Your pasted content should start with a "{" and end with a "}"

; var el = document.createElement('script');
el.type = 'application/ld+json';
el.innerHTML = JSON.stringify(jsonData);
document.head.appendChild(el);
})();
</script>

 

[Jo Shaer]

Hi @j_holtslander Yes, that's Simo's article is the one my web dev found too. We have just started to implement it.

 

[Rich Owings]

Well that's what I get for listening to John Mueller!

 

[Jo Shaer]

LOL @Rich Owings But if you hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have nagged my web dev for the fix!

 

[j_holtslander]

Well that's what I get for listening to John Mueller!

He is an authority for sure but he speaks broadly and somewhat vaguely. This causes people to fill in the gaps for him or put words in his mouth for some reason. In the news the other day there was yet another article saying that Google has once again declared that SD should not be inserted via GTM that was based off his words online. But they omitted a key quote in the article that was from John where he said "you can use GTM to add SD to pages"

John Mueller is always cited as the guy who is saying it shouldn't be done, but he's also a guy who knows that it can be done successfully. When people try to clarify why John often sounds like he's saying it shouldn't be done, they get very little in the way of an explanation or clarification.