Structured Data And AMP Is An Absolute Marketing Strategy For 2018

Many of us have heard the term Structured Data associated with schema.org or sometimes called markups. The purpose is to help Google understand what the content on a webpage is about. For 2018 this is going to be a very important part of the organic SEO game. Structured Data and AMP is an absolute marketing strategy for 2018.

Perhaps a picture is worth a 1000 words. Do a Google search on “Thought Catalog” and look at all the cool additional boxes of information that come up. This is one example of how you can use a blog site.

Now search on “Food Network” and you get the idea.

Why is this important ?

For one thing you take up a lot of real estate on SERP so less room for competitors. You also provide a lot of information without someone having to navigate through your website (really good for mobile)

But perhaps the most important reason, Google will love you more. At the end of the day, if you properly use Structured Data, not even at the level of these elaborate examples, you’ll see some of your other content ranking better.

For local businesses you can establish your hours, your prices, contact information, etc. The name of the game is visibility

Now to the second big item for 2018, its AMP.

If you’re not familiar with AMP then do a search for a news story on your smart phone and you’ll see a little lightening bolt next to the title of a topic. This is an AMP page. We’ll you say, I’m not a news media outlet. There is a lot more..

When you create a webpage or a blog post a second version of the page needs to be created as AMP. If you use WordPress or Joomla, there are plugins available that will automatically create the AMP version of the page. BUT the page may not carry a lot of the attributes of the original page so you may need the help of a developer.

So whats the big advantage of AMP ?

AMP pages are  lightening fast on mobile and once again Google will love you more but there are a lot of cool tricks that can be done with Structured Data and AMP pages. As an example, you can have an image display with your search results. You can have sub menu options appear right in the search results.

But lets say you have an event or an announcement that is time sensitive, with Structured Data and AMP you can submit the page manually to Google and the page will rank instantly !!  (not waiting for a couple of days to be crawled) Think of the possibilities ?

AND because you can get better ranking on mobile, you will see a much higher CTR on AMP pages. My clients who experienced 3% on average, now say they see as much as 20% CTR on certain AMP pages. So bottom line, more potential customers.

That’s a lot of cool stuff BUT there is limited, and perhaps even more importantly, not really accurate information on how to get the most out of AMP and Structured Data. So be sure when working with AMP the developer can show you specific references of work they have done with AMP and Structured Data.

I can tell you the clients that I am working with and utilize it are finding it to be a game changer.

Blue Island Digital, Orlando is #1 in marketing strategies to the dating and relationship industries. For information on how we can help you reach your marketing potential, please contact us for a free consultation and analysis of your business.