Clint has been an advocate of advanced schema implementation beyond just looking for rich snippets for quite some time. With the advancing technology of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it’s only logical that schema would be a valuable tool to boost the relevancy of a page.
In his schema course, he taught how to build schemas from scratch and turn them into templates for future use. In particular, he chose schemas that are most beneficial to businesses, like the Local Business Schema.
He taught that one primary opportunity in the schema is the areas where webmasters can use free text entries for those particular zones in the JSON-LD.
This test will look at if Google is using them as ranking zones after a page is indexed. This
information will help us better understand where supplemental rankings can be obtained by
leveraging these zones.
It will also tell us definitively if Google is reading these zones and taking them into account
individually for ranking purposes versus using the whole schema as an information tool.
Test Downloads
Transcription below:
Clint: This was for me. It's a Service Area Schema. We've did some other tests. What was it August that we did those other tests? I published those.
We're going back to looking at if sections of the schema are being used specifically for rankings, ie "If I have something in schema that is not on page will it rank for Google for that something that I have in schema" here's the example code that I wrote. And then the areas where you can populate text, this is huge. That's typically where you can manipulate this stuff inside of any advanced schema that you're writing.
You can see here showing the tests that was passed, and it's got no issues. And then I broke down just so and look, I get the page index for the primary term with the page was there. So if you're in the indexing, for a keyword or ranking for a keyword equals indexing, and your pages are indexed, if it's not ranking for the keyword, well, you know, I disagree. Okay.
So anyway, all of those areas that I tested, none of them are ranking zones. I cannot put content in any of these zones, and then have it ranked for that page, if it's not in the content, which is kind of in line with what Googlers are saying about, you know, schema. Don't put anything in your schema, it's not in your page. You can do it still, it's just not going to rank for that thing that you put in there.
This is all really about helping the bot, show what Google is to expect on that page, and how to analyze it. And I go over that in my Rockstars presentation that's coming up. Even more, and kind of map that out for you.
Dori: That's a good thing to put to bed. So I bet there's arguments in the forums about that. So now, you know.
Clint: I think the biggest complaint against advance schema, the way that I teach people to write it, is that all your keyword stuffing, well, you're not keyword stuffing if Google's not using those for ranking purposes. Ergo you can't be keyword stuffing. Google's not using it that way. So how can you be breaking a rule that is not being accessible by anyone. I mean, if Google's not using these sections, for ranking purposes, then I'm not keyword stuffing.
Dori: Right