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Today I’m sharing an article from Daniel K Cheung about Schema called Semantic SEO explained: Why connected schema is the missing piece in your SEO strategy.
…the following screenshot shows a webpage having 34 individual schema types described with structured data markup.
The problem in the above example is that all 34 schema types are disconnected from one another.
That is, the schema markup is telling search engines that the URL is all these 34 things – which is incorrect.
Instead, the correct way to describe the URL is the following: This is a webpage with the following URL, headline, and URI.
It has a number of answers to frequently asked questions where the information has been verified by a person who also happens to be the owner of the company.
There are a number of images and videos embedded on the page.
The webpage was published on this date and was recently updated on this date.
This URL is part of a website with this name, accessed at this URL, with this URI.
The website is published by an organization with this name, founded by a person and this is their LinkedIn profile URL as proof.
The above tells how each individual schema type relates with each other and this helps the search understand what it is rendering from the HTML.
But the main point of this article is how valuable connected schema is. This next part really drove the point home for me:
The first advantage of connected schema is that you can describe a schema type once and then call upon it using its unique identifier.
For example, my about page is where my Person schema sits.
My Person schema has the following properties:
my name
image (i.e., my profile photo)
what I know, linked to a WikiData entry re: SEO
where I graduated
my current job title, and
where I work.
My Person schema has been converted into an URI with the @id – https://www.danielkcheung.com.au/about/#person. And this is the secret sauce behind connected schema.
With this, I can tell Google I am the author of any webpage on my website by referencing my Person schema’s URI:
My Take:
Holy shit that’s super interesting.
If you can’t tell by my child-like wonderment at what is probably a very basic use-case for schema… it’s not something I’m good at or have a lot of experience with.
It doesn’t feel like a really brave take to say that as the web fills up with generic, predictable, perfectly-written AI generated content, proving authorship and real expertise and humanity is going to be a differentiator that carries big value. That’s why I’m going to set up a 24-7 livestream of my life I’m going to learn more about connected schema and actually use it on my sites so Google and THE WHOLE WORLD knows that when some stupid piece of content like Ten Things Avatar: The Way of Water Can Teach Us About SEO appears on my site, it’s actually written by me, Sean Markey, hack SEO writer.
That authenticity is going to matter.
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Shitpost of the Day:
Don’t take things too seriously, enjoy a daily shitpost in addition to your daily SEO.
Thanks for ducking reading!
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That’s it for today’s newsletter. Check out some of my current favorite resources/tools:
Resources And Recommendations
Content At Scale (AI content engine):
🦾 one of the best AI content generators, they’ve built a few additional layers of NLP on top of the direct AI output to create pretty solid push-button articles (though I’d still recommend an editing pass or three). Get 20% more credit by signing up through this (aff) link.
Smash Digital (link building):
🔗 I used to work at Smash—and still write a monthly SEO column for them, so I know first hand the high quality links they can build. For serious businesses only, check them out here (and tell them I sent you).
A Weekly(ish) Longform SEO Newsletter:
📖 It’s me, I’m the weekly-ish writer. Check out my newsletter, Rank Theory, for "emerging theories, illuminating experiments, and occasional shitposting."
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Thanks for reading!
Until Monday…
Sean Markey sem@seanmarkey.com
PS — LMK what you thought of this quick SEO email. Good? Bad? Amazecakes? I’m sorry I said “amazecakes.” I’d love to hear from you (and thanks to the many of you who reached out with nice things to say!).
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