Using Google structured Data for SEO benefit

[IsaCleanse]

Hi there

I run www.isacleanse.com.au and I've set up some Structured data using Google Webmaster Tools which says it will be picked up during the next Google update (has been set up over 4 weeks ago), however I dont seem to see any of the structured data for the products/reviews/ratings etc coming through in search results.

Question at hand: Is there additional things I need to do in the code of the website or should this be sufficient? (see attached screenshot)

szpFUpX

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Sandi

According to Google's FAQ section:

"Once you've marked up your site's content, Google will discover it the next time we crawl your site (although it may take some time for rich snippets to appear in search results, if we do choose to display rich snippets for your site). If you're marking up your content for rich snippets, you can let us know. Google won't be able to individually reply to your message, but we may use the information you supply to improve our detection and display of marked-up content." I would also take a look at the Google Structured Data Testing Tool and make sure that everything is being found properly through there as well.

It looks to be a "be patient and wait" game. One thing I would do though, because Schema markup has the potential to assist in better visibility, is start tracking impressions / clicks / average rankings for pages you put markup on. Benchmark your performance over time and see if you are seeing better metrics.

You can also connect your Search Console to Google Analytics and create shortcut reports for these metrics so it's a quick click when you want to access the reports. Just a thought.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[Everett]

Just because you mark up the page doesn't mean Google will update their SERPs to show enhanced listings for that page. They will often ignore markup on sites that they deem to be low quality, or which do not have enough brand recognition and/or authority yet. They may also choose not to show it if they think the reviews are fake or censored to show only the good ones.

Here are some reasons why Google may decide not to show rich snippets in SERPs after you have used the Data Highlighter (which I'm assuming is what you used since I don't see any actual Schema markup in the code): https://developers.google.com/structured-data/policies?rd=1

[PatrickDelehanty]

Everett's comment here is super important - make sure you read it and the resource he has passed along.

[IsaCleanse]

Thanks Everett.. you are spot on, I used the Data Highlighter in Google Webmaster tools. Is using SChema markup a better way of doing this or do they essentially do the same thing?

[IsaCleanse]

Back to this one... would having a lot of products with marked up data (via webmaster tools and not on page) hurt SEO rankings? I have not got any warning/notice etc in Google Webmaster tools about it.

Search term 'buy isagenix' on Google Australia

Product listing page not in top 50
http://www.isacleanse.com.au/buy-isagenix

15th Result on Google Australia for 'buy isagenix' is a different page on my website:
http://www.isacleanse.com.au/isagenix-perth/

Any suggestions welcome

[Everett]

I don't think the quantity of products with marked up data would cause you to rank any lower, all other factors being equal.

There are lots of things on your site that could be contributing to this. For example, what is the difference between these two pages, each of which has its own self-referencing rel canonical tag?

http://www.isacleanse.com.au/buy-isagenix/isagenix-presidents-pak/

http://www.isacleanse.com.au/isagenix-products/presidents-pak/

What is the purpose of the /buy-isagenix/ directory other than keyword stuffing the URL?

Are you aware of the duplicate content out there on your product descriptions from all of the other sites selling the same things? http://tinyurl.com/povmkr9

Why are you taken to another website when you click "Buy" which asks you to click "Buy" all over again? These are the types of things that would make an affiliate site rank lower in search engines than an actual eCommerce site.

[IsaCleanse]

I was using some A/B Testing with different pages hence the 2 differnt URLs, forgot about the /isagenix-products/ as that hasnt been used for a while

'Buy Isagenix' is a prefix that the developer made for the products which is a 'post type' that has this slug name... is this better to have removed?

[Everett]

Hello Sandi,

That was just one example. I came across several others in which there were multiple versions of the same page with self-referencing rel canonical tags. I would fix that as soon as possible by removing and redirecting one of the versions or choosing a single canonical.

I think a directory called /buy-isagenix/ is a little bit spammy, but not so much that I would worry about doing a bunch of redirects at this point. You can probably just leave it as-is.

Make sure you have 100% uniquely written content on all of your pages, including the product pages, to avoid these situations: http://tinyurl.com/povmkr9 .

Hopefully fixing the duplicate content problems from the non-canonical URLs and the manufacturer-supplied copy will help your rankings a bit.