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Structured Data : The Article Schema

Structured Data : The Article Schema featured image
30 Aug 2020
Nirlep Patel
Structured Data

In the previous post, I talked about the Schema.org markup used for coding structured data. In the following post and the other posts to come, I will talk about the different types of single structured data elements that form a part of the Schema.org family. I will describe the various types of structured data in detail and also talk about its implementation and its SEO related importance.

An interesting aspect with the schema.org markup family is that almost every schema.org markup has a parent and child. The Article schema markup is born from creative work and is used to structure the said data of websites and webpages. The following types of editorial And publisher sites use the Article schema for structuring data:

  1. Newspapers
  2. Magazines
  3. Blog Posts
  4. Fact Check
  5. Critic Reviews

Adding this structured data improves the appearance of your page on Google search results and can make it a Rich Result.

 The data is coded in two different ways depending upon the interface of the device which can be either

  1. Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) Structured Data 
  2. Non-AMP Structured Data.  

Properties Of ARTICLE Structured Data:

This tool has a different set of properties for AMP and Non-AMP pages which are required to be in on websites or web pages for it to get coded.

Properties of AMP pages:

These properties must be included for content to become a rich result:

  •  Author: Author of the Article (recipes, news items etc.), Blog post, Critic Reviews.
  • author.name: The Name of the Author
  • date and time: refers to the time and date of the article when it was first published. An important rule to be noted is that the date and time should remain unchanged unless the data is modified only then the time and date can be recent than the actual one.
  •  headline: The headline of the article should not exceed 110 characters and should match the first text in the first cover page of the story.
  • image: the URL of the image best representing the article or said creative work. The image should be a minimum of 1200 pixels wide and supported by google images. It should be indexable and crawlable. Every page must have at least one image, and the markup must be relevant to the content.
  • Publisher: The publisher of the article 
  • Publisher. logo: logo of the publisher (image).
  • Publisher.logo.URL: the URL of the logo
  • Publisher.name: The name of the publisher
  • Date.modified: the date and time when the article was most recently modified.
  • mainEntityOfPage: The authorized URL of the page, used to specify the main page in case if the content has multiple pages.

 Properties of Non-AMP pages:

These properties must be included for Google to have a better understanding of the content and webpage.

  • dateModified: the time and date the article was most recently modified.
  • datePublished: The date and time of the first published article, in ISO8601 format.
  • headline: the headline of the article which should not exceed 110 characters
  • Image: the image relevant to the content and the same guidelines as AMP Images.

How can I add article schema to my page?

  • For AMP Pages:
  1.  Follow the AMP Project Specifications listed by Google.
  2. Follow the Additional Page guidelines for Google to crawl your page.
  3. Add a structured data property to the various properties on the page.
  4.  Test your structure data using the Rich Results Test
  5.  If a page has duplicates, then place the same structured data on every page.
  • For Non-AMP Pages:
  1. Add a structured data property for the various properties on the page.
  2.  Follow the guidelines laid down by Google to ensure the crawling process.
  3. Test the structured data using the rich results test.

What guidelines should I follow?

For displaying structured data in the search results, the following guidelines are abided by :

  •  Webmasters Guidelines:

Google webmaster lays down certain guidelines like; Quality, General and Specific Guidelines for indexing content to make it search engine visible.

  • General Guidelines: Part 1 of this series mentions the General Guidelines in detail.
  • Logo Guidelines: 

For all AMP Pages and AMP Stories:

  1.  Google Images approved file format
  2.  NO use of animation.
  3. The graphic part of the logo should be visible on the background colour.

                 For AMP pages only:

 (AMP stories have different guidelines)

  1.  The logo should be rectangle and must be of 600xX600x.

What do I do if I face troubleshooting problems?

 The below-listed rules will help you with problems related to troubleshooting your data

  1. Your data might have a few errors, checking Google’s list of structured data errors can solve the issue.
  2. Crawling and Indexing issues are corrected by looking at the Webmaster FAQ that is a set of questions and answers relating to the said issues.
  3. If you still face trouble, then you can ask help by asking questions during the Webmaster Office Hours.

                         Or

  1. Pop a question in the Webmaster Forum.

PRO TIP: Using Structured Data does not guarantee your article to pop up in the search engine but only increases its chances!

I hope this post has helped you understand The Article structured data in detail. In the next part of the structured data series, I will talk about the other type of structured data: Book-Structured Data.