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Terrò un Workshop a Milano, nell’ambito di SMXL, sull’uso dei dati strutturati per la SEO e per la creazione di contenuti.

Il format è simile a quello dell’anno scorso, aggiornato per riflettere l’evoluzione delle tecnologie ma soprattutto per condividere la mia esperienza.

Il Workshop al Tbex North America

Una ottima affluenza e notevole interesse per la materia anche negli Stati Uniti. Al contempo ho notato una certa apprensione e avversità per l’argomento perché molti lo ritenevano argomento per tecnici e troppo complicato/complesso da imparare e gestire…

Il Feedback dei partecipanti

Sono rimasti soddisfatti. Ci sono anche le recensioni dei partecipanti della scorsa edizione sempre a SMXL Milano – anche loro hanno lasciato recensioni positive sul workshop e sulla loro esperienza con me in aula.

Non è troppo complicato…

Come si legge dal feedback, la cosa che più è piaciuta è stata la semplicità con cui riesco ad insegnare concetti oggettivamente difficili per chi non ha mai affrontato prima l’argomento.

Sarà così anche per te se vorrai partecipare al prossimo workshop di Milano.

Non è argomento da programmatori

Molti hanno la percezione che dati strutturati sia una cosa impossibile da imparare perché argomento da specialisti. Si ritiene che per operare siano necessarie competenze informatiche e che si debba saper programmare. Questo deriva dal fatto che finora l’argomento è stato trattato in un ambito molto ristretto: ma è arrivato il momento di conoscerlo e capirne il funzionamento. Per operare con i dati strutturati non bisogna essere dei programmatori o avere una formazione tecnica. Chiunque con un po di buona volontà e sana curiosità ci riesce.

È il futuro della SEO

Questa tecnologia si sta affermando come la nuova frontiera della SEO. Come ho illustrato ai partecipanti di Billings, i dati strutturati sono uno strumento potentissimo per spiegare ai motori di ricerca i contenuti delle pagine web. Possiamo pensare ai dati strutturati come all’evoluzione dei meta tags che conosciamo tutti:

Structured Data is Meta Tags on Steroids

– Sante J Achille (Tbex North America, Sept. 2019)

Da Keywords a Entities

Nel workshop illustro il nuovo modo di esplicitare il significato di un contenuto, mediante associazione a delle entità: varie entità, opportunamente connesse tra loro, offrono ai motori di ricerca l’opportunità di creare l’associazione tra la ricerca dell’utente ed il contenuto. È un nuovo approccio che sta trasformando l’indicizzazione ed è facile da implementare.

I Benefici

I vantaggi sono diversi e vengono descritti nel workshop attraverso degli esempi pratici. Vedremo dati di siti scaricati dalla Google Search console PRIMA e DOPO l’implementazione di dati strutturati per capire i vantaggi concreti della tecnologia.

Una Guida Operativa Fondamentale

Il workshop indica la strada da percorrere per dominare le SERP avvalendosi anche di dati strutturati. È molto difficile orientarsi tra le notizie (spesso poco attendibili) offerte dal web. Io lo so perché ho dovuto investire tantissimo tempo in ricerca e studio. Con quattro ore, questo workshop ti metterà nelle condizioni di capire ed operare evitando mesi e mesi di ricerche e letture, spesso difficili a causa del linguaggio utilizzato.

Imparare a Scrivere Dati Strutturati

Il Web oggi ha circa il 15% di siti con dati strutturati – di questi il 90% è tecnicamente corretto ma privo di qualsiasi significato semantico.

– Sante J. Achille

I dati strutturati servono per digitalizzare il contenuto, avvicinandolo ad un linguaggio che è più facile da capire da un motore di ricerca. Se i dati strutturati non sono sviluppati in modo da realizzare un piccolo modello descrittivo dei contenuti, non c’è alcun vantaggio nell’implementarli, anzi potrebbe addirittura danneggiare la visibilità del sito.

Questo aspetto fondamentale è ampiamente illustrato e spiegato in dettaglio nel workshop.

Immediatamente Operativi

Alla fine del workshop potrai scriver il primo file di dati strutturati. Certamente non sarai un guru, ma sarai nelle condizioni di poter attivare un processo ed un percorso di ottimizzare i tuoi contenuti utilizzando dati strutturati. Dopo il workshop sarai nelle condizioni di poter muovere i primi passi, avendo chiari obiettivi ed attività per il loro raggiungimento.

Il programma con link per l’adesione è disponibile qui. Per altre info contattami direttamente con questo form:

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Presentation transcript

Life is a miracle one we take for granted every single day.

And you realize how true that statement is only when you tackle and theorize some of the things we do constantly. For example, how we communicate.

Let’s take a look at a few images – photos are fundamental and instrumental in storytelling aren’t they? Now look at these photos, Isn’t the first photo very moving?

And doesn’t this one send a chills down your spine? Doesn’t it feel like punching stomach? That’s my office after a 6.2 Richter scale earthquake shook L’Aquila, the city where I live, down to its foundations 10 years ago.

And what about this photo? Doesn’t give you mixed feelings? Disgust for the type of animal yet compassion for that small being dying of thirst. That photo was taken in the city square abandoned for months after April 6.

The city is recovering winning against bureaucracy that’s my home.

And what about these dudes? This photo was taken around 1930. Take a close look at the small guy on the left look at the grin on his face, you can see the hardship and misery of those days written all over the faces of those youngsters from the beginning of the last century.

How can we describe all that with an ALT tag? Impossible!

We have to do that with computers – the problem we have is that computers are great number crunches but don’t understand words.

So, this is the big picture, now let’s look at the underlying principles.

If you think about the images we just saw, let me ask you what is the biggest problem we face in explaining text or describing an image: The answer is Context! Without context, things can become ambiguous and this will trigger uncertainty.

Context is king!

Now, look at this image, is it a seal a horse or a donkey? It will depend on the context of the story or the article. Florence is the name of a place or other person – it will depend on the context.

In the example of how Google can get confused: every word read by the computer is a world of its own.

With this in mind, go to the Google Search Console and analyze the queries, and you might be surprised with what you see. Use this tool to analyze your content.

So, the key issue here is to make a computer understand what we are talking about: removing ambiguity with dampen uncertainty – context is key and we need to provide it to the computer.

And this is where the magic happens – the user will express a need and the search engines will in tur reply, offering the user what they believe is the most relevant answer.

And if we are good at explaining what we are about, our chances of being chosen and featured in the SERPs will significantly increase.

So how does all this happen?

Now we will see structured data in action and the real benefits of its use. So, we not talking about the eye candy we are going to go beyond what you see and what you hear many talk about when referring to Structured Data.

This is the example of a small yacht servicing company based in Sardinia, you can see how the number of queries has significantly increased not only in quantity but also in quality. You will also notice how Google has featured this website with queries such as the definition of yacht or the definition of yacht detailing.

In this example you can see how this website is ranking for very competitive search term in the sports domain (European Soccer) and uses/Relies on structured data to achieve this result.

This slide is related to ambiguity: you can see how the overall click through rate has significantly increased from 1% to 5% after the implementation of structured data on an industrial food processing website. Similar results have been achieved for a legal practice in Sacramento California.

This is schema.org, it is a vocabulary. This vocabulary is used to define entities. Each item has a number of properties we can use to describe it.

In this example we can see a practical implementation of in-line schema. Simply put, schema.org associates things to words.

So, in our case, we use the type Movie to indicate we’re talking about the motion picture Avatar: movie has many properties, we can use them to describe and provide context. By doing so we eliminate ambiguity and reduce uncertainty.

In this slide, you can see how to implement information about the person, director of the motion picture Avatar.

In this slide you can see the full in-line implementation of the code.

Now, scale all this information and associate the process to a hotel. For example: I can provide a complete set of structured data about the location, amenities, number of rooms, type, …

Strings (=words) have become things.

Now you have a better understanding of the potential of structured data and you can imagine how much information you can provide for an image, going far beyond the reach of an ALT TAG.

Just a few days ago, Google, in the Google search state of the union (Google I/O 2019) announced new opportunities for image optimization. Now Google are asking for structure data in a JSON-LD format.

This is an example of what structured data looks like for a video.

Take-aways:

1. Stop chasing longtail keywords – the future is in entities
2. “Smart” content will attract high quality/very relevant traffic to your website
3. No pain no gain! This isn’t rocket science, you don’t need to be a coder, but you must master the art of creating small semantic models for your website

Interested in knowing more? Have an In-house team you would like to train? Contact me to discuss your need and find a solution to your problems today.

Sante J. Achille
Search Marketing Consultant & Services
Email: sante@achille.name
Web: https://achille.name/  

It was a great pleasure to speak about SEO and structured data for travel and tourism at TBEX – I held a workshop for those who are interested in mastering advanced on-site semantic modelling and actively use structured data, going beyond rich snippets…

TBEX is the largest conference and networking event for travel bloggers, online travel journalists, new media content creators, travel brands and industry professionals. Each year, TBEX partners with fantastic host destinations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific to bring the travel industry’s most creative minds together to learn, network and do business.

I met amazing people!

A wonderful event with so many interesting people and speakers attending – 4 days of networking, learning and understanding the fascinating world of hard core travelers.

Structured Data for SEO Workshop

I will hold a workshop on the use of structured data and structured data modelling with real life examples coming from the travel and tourism industry. Here are some anticipations on topics covered at the workshop…

4 ways structured data will help your SEO

More and more people are talking about structured data and how it can help boost your organic online presence. It’s true and it’s a fact Google has pointed out.

Yet much remains to be said about this computer science/information engineering discipline.

Like all disciplines, they become useful when they leave the lab and hit industry.

Here are 4 good reasons to master this technology sooner than later.

1. make your content understandable

We should offer search engines content they can understand. This may sound strange to you but try and think like a search engine for a moment: you are spidering billions of web pages across the digital universe and land on a page where you were sent by a link. Every page is a unique combination of text, images, video or audio files. Understanding what is being said is not a trivial task. Picture yourself at a party networking with people and you happen to be attracted by a conversation entertaining a group of people – it can be difficult to understand what is being said, who are the underlying subjects … then you’ll eventually catch on if you stay long enough and listen… beginning to understand the problem?? If someone were to refer to “Bob” chances are you won’t know exactly who Bob is!

Provide the Search engines with content they can understand

At Schema.org this is summarized as follows:

“Your web pages have an underlying meaning that people understand when they read the web pages. But search engines have a limited understanding of what is being discussed on those pages. By adding additional tags to the HTML of your web pages—tags that say, “Hey search engine, this information describes this specific movie, or place, or person, or video”—you can help search engines and other applications better understand your content and display it in a useful, relevant way…”

Structured data reduces ambiguity and uncertainty. With structured data we provide search engines with “context” to interpret our blogposts and articles. Context is a fundamental aspect of any conversation, transcript from a video, article or blogpost.

2. Increase your keywords

Because search engines can understand exactly what you are writing about with structured data, they can associate your content to a growing number of requests (or queries), even if they are not in the article – with structured data you will leapfrog your online presence and go from keywords to entities.

During the workshop we’ll look at this case history in the travel & tourism sector:

Benefits of Structured Data: Increase in Search Queries

This website suffered from severe under optimization and was ranking very poorly. Initially, the Google Search Console reported an extremely small number of keywords. With SEO, queries increased to a new high they had never experienced before. These results encouraged management to fund a structured data activity. Within 2 months of deployment, structured data benefits kicked in and the number of queries nearly doubled.
With structured data we no longer need to worry about long tail keywords: we move from keywords to entities or, as you may have heard, from strings to things.

3. Increase website performance

Providing search engines with understandable content, not only increases the number of keywords your website will be featured in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) but will also change the quality of your presence.

It’s a simple and intuitive concept: if search engines understand exactly what your page is about they can associate it to ANY query that matches, providing the ultimate user experience!

With Structured data search engines have a much better understanding of our pages and can deliver relevant/on target traffic, meaning higher conversion rates, engagement, number of pages per session… a win-win situation where search engines:

• understand what your page is about;
• understand the request of the user;
• deliver relevant content, up to the users’ expectations who ultimately converts, consumes more content and is likely to return again in the future.

4. Prepares for voice search

The majority of US homes will have a smart speaker next year according to analysts. In a recent study David Watkins, Director at Strategy Analytics, commented:

“As we approach the point where smart speakers become commonplace, marketers no longer have any choice but to incorporate this technology into their communications strategies. Voice interaction will become way of life for the majority of the population in many major countries, and this represents new opportunities for brands and businesses to create improved customer relationships.”

Structured data is the underlying technology you need to implement on your website in order to meet the appointment with a new generation of digital marketing based on Artificial Intelligence.

I’ll be sharing scripts and techniques to hack your Google Search Console data and, above all, provide you with a completely new view on how to optimize your website and leapfrog into the future of search.

Join us at TBEX in Sept. Use SPEAKER20 when you register for a 20% discount

A workshop that will leapfrog your website into the future

This SEO workshop on structured data is one of the most advanced hands-on programs available today. In this structured data and semantic modelling for travel & tourism sites you will learn:

The underlying principles

You’ll understand the underlying theoretical principles, avoiding complex and articulated engineering concepts. You’re a professional who needs to master the technology and understand the approach in order to implement.

How to implement structured data

The workshop provides practical guidelines that will show you how to get things done. You’ll learn methods and basic principles by examining real life examples from the travel and tourism industry. This is not computer programming. Structured data is like meta tags on steroids. The workshop is rich in examples and applications for you to use once home and back at the office. From day 1 when you’re back at the office, you’ll be able to write your own structured data and markup images, videos and content.

How to create a knowledge graph for your website

One of the most powerful things this workshop will teach you is to model your content and create knowledge graphs. Thanks to this powerful technology, you can now build a knowledge graph for your websites. The workshop will provide you with advanced yet intuitive knowledge based on years of experience and offer insights, tips and an overall view that would take you months if not years to achieve on your own.

How Write “understandable” copy

Anyone with SEO knowledge knows how important writing copy is. With this workshop writing copy will reach a new unexplored level of beauty and sophistication. As part of the workshop you will receive not only training but also indications on how to make this extremely fast and cost effective.

Writing a blogpost will never be the same once you’ve taken this workshop

See you in Billings!

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What is TTRA?

The association unites the travel and tourism research community – university academics, professional practitioners, and users of research – so they can network, collaborate, and ideate in person and across borders.

What is my Paper about?

Semantic Web Technologies for Travel and Tourism

You can download the abstract that will be published with the proceedings of the Event

I’m really looking forward to meeting so many academia authorities on travel and tourism – it will be a wonderful opportunity to network, exchange points of view and hopefully all this will spark a cross disciplinary brainstorm as one of the reviewers stated in evaluating my paper – this is exactly what I’m looking for – see you in Bournemouth next month!

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Dal 2016 al 2019 ho sviluppato l’agenda, scelto relatori e fatto tutto quel che si deve fare per mandare avanti un evento internazionale come SMXL con oltre 60 relatori tra italiani ed esteri.

È stato un lavoro molto impegnativo e ricco di sfide, soddisfazioni e non ultimo emozioni.

Ho avuto molti compagni di squadra come Simona, Ilaria, Luca, e sopratutto Paolo – senza il loro contributo SMXL non sarebbe stato possibile. A voi e a Business Internazionale tutta va la mia gratitudine per il lavoro svolto in questi anni: io sono salito sul palco ma loro hanno lavorato senza sosta dietro le quinte per rendere possibile l’evento.

Lascio spazio ad altri che porteranno idee nuove ed entusiasmo ad un evento che deve rimanere il punto di riferimento del marketing digitale in Italia, con l’ambizione di diventare un appuntamento Europeo.

Sono certo che faranno un ottimo lavoro.

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