Whether they’re home services, such as roofing, plumbing, contractor or lawn care, or professional services such as marketing, search engine optimization, or defense in a court of law, most companies offer some type of service. As such, it seems odd that Google’s structured data features do not include “Service”, but instead focus on product schema markup for rich results.

In this article we are going to show you how to create schema markup for Services, so that Google can explicitly understand what services are offered, to what area, and who is providing them.

Service is our co-founder, Mark van Berkel’s favourite schema class, now we’ll explain why.

Tips for Doing Service Schema Markup

By properly marking up your service with structured data, the information you define as entities on the page can be linked to a search engine’s knowledge graph. This provides relevance and context for your content so that your services can be better matched to a user’s search query. Services could include delivery services, print services, plumbing services, roofing services, and more!

Service is the broadest class to define a service offered by a business. The Professional Service class was commonly used in the past, but has since been deprecated by Schema.org in favour of the more general Service. As a result, we recommend using Service, or one of the more specific subclasses instead of Professional Service.

Within your schema markup, you can describe exactly what type of service you offer (additionalType), who is providing the service (provider), and the area where the Service is offered (areaServed). You can also define the output of the service (serviceOutput). For example, if you are optimizing a Mortgage broker site, the output of the Service is a mortgage. Or if the service is for a home builder, the output would be a custom-built home.

These properties give you control over defining the services sold by the business so that Google and other search engines can accurately understand them and route appropriate traffic to the right pages.

Our Favourite Properties

• Use the provider property to define who is offering the Service. This is usually the Organization or Local Business that the Service page is for.
• Use additionalType to define the service more explicitly. Use a Wikidata or Wikipedia link to define this. For example, you would link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumbing if you were optimizing a Plumbing service.
• Use areaServed to explicitly define where the Service is available. Use a Wikidata or Wikipedia link to define this.
• Use serviceOutput to define what the outcome of the service is.

List of Service Properties

Creating schema markup for services can be challenging as there are so few required properties to guide us. Instead, we will need to decide what is important about the service being offered, and use the available properties to call that out in the markup.

So which properties should we use? A good place to start is by searching for properties that contain the word “service” in their name or description. Below is a list of properties we recommend you use. Your list could vary depending on what features you want to call out and what information is displayed on the web page. If you don’t have the content for one of the properties on your page—such as an image—then consider adding it in the future.

• name: The name of the item.
• additionalType: An additional type for the item, typically used for adding more specific types from external vocabularies in microdata syntax. This is a relationship between something and a class that the thing is in. This is a great place to use Wikipedia.
• areaServed: The geographic area where a service or offered item is provided. This is a great place to use Wikipedia.
• availableChannel: A means of accessing the service which connects to a ServiceChannel data item. Creating a ServiceChannel allows you to leverage more touch point properties like servicePhone, servicePostalAddress, and serviceSmsNumber.
• brand: The brand(s) associated with a product or service, or the brand(s) maintained by an organization or business person.
• description: A description of the service.
• image: An image of the service. This can be a URL or a fully described ImageObject.
• logo: An associated logo. You may want to just leave this blank and refer to the Organization and its logo.
• offers: An offer to provide this item—for example, an offer to sell a product, rent the DVD of a movie, perform a service, or give away tickets to an event. Note that the associated Offer requires the availability and price of the item offered. If you’re worried about errors showing up in your markup, we recommend only using this property if you also have the required information on your web page.
• potentialAction: Indicates a potential Action, which describes an idealized action in which this thing would play an ‘object’ role. For example: “book a demo” or “request a quote”.
• provider: The service provider, service operator, or service performer. This is a great way to link to the primary organization offering the service.
• serviceOutput: The tangible thing generated by the service, e.g. a passport, permit, mortgage, etc.
• serviceType: Another opportunity to further describe the service being provided. This can either be implemented with text, or by linking to Wikipedia.
• subjectOf: Is there a CreativeWork (ie. Blog, Article, Video) that this service is the subject of? We recommend either using subjectOf to link your Service to the CreativeWork, or else linking the CreativeWork to the Service using the about property.
• termsOfService: Human-readable terms of service documentation in the form of either text or a URL.
• url: The URL of the page you are optimizing.

Service Schema Markup Tutorial

Every schema class has a list of properties that can be used to further define its features. Schema App gives you access to all the Schema.org/Service properties. You can use our recommended list above as a starting point to call out the information listed on your Service’s web page. Schema App will load all of the properties available for Services according to Schema.org. Services don’t have any required properties since requirements are only applied to data items eligible for Google’s Rich Results.

To see our tools in action, check out our tutorial for how to add schema markup for Services using the Schema App Editor:

Multi-Typing Service and Product

In some instances, you should consider multi-typing your data item as both a Service and a Product. This allows you to leverage all the properties granted to both types. This also makes your data item eligible for the Product rich result in search.

Schema.org defines a Product as:

“Any offered product or service. For example: a pair of shoes; a concert ticket; the rental of a car; a haircut; or an episode of a TV show streamed online.”

So, it stands to reason that any service could also receive Product markup. However, it’s always best to use the schema.org type that defines your data item most specifically. You should consider multi-typing a data item as both a Product and a Service when:

• It could benefit from leveraging Service properties like provider, and areaServed
• It has an image, as required for the Product rich result
• It has the price, aggregateRating or review information required for the Product rich result

Schema Markup for Local Services

Google’s structured data documentation doesn’t include services, but it does include Local Business. You can use the provider property to define your organization or local business schema markup for enhanced Google features in search.

Call out where the services are provided using the areaServed property. Link this to a Wikidata entity for that place, as most Wikidate entries for places have coordinate location information.

Check out our Ultimate How-To Guide for Local Business Schema Markup for more information about how to mark up your local business organization.

Schema Markup for Software as a Service (SaaS)

Service schema markup is more complicated for representing SaaS because there aren’t specific Types to describe this in the schema.org vocabulary. For specific SaaS products, use SoftwareApplication, Product, or multitype as both depending on which definition best suits your needs, and which rich results you want the content to be eligible for.

If specific products aren’t provided, you can use service more generally, and use either sameAs or additionalType to link to a Wiki entity with a more specific definition. For example, IT service management or digital security.

The post How to Create Service Schema Markup for Businesses appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Learn more about Q&A page structured data in Google’s documentation here.

Q&A Schema Markup: A Timeline

December 2017 – Google released a question and answer rich result card

December 2018 – Google search results now include a “Top Answer” rich result

On December 3rd, 2018, Aaron Bradley pointed out that he saw the new Q&A Page rich result.

“There’s a new Google Rich result in town, “Q&A Page”, powered by #schema.org/QAPage, Question and Answer…”

Right away people started asking us how to achieve this new iteration of the question & answer rich result. But first, what does it look like? How will your snippets change by implementing this QAPage schema markup? Here is the example provided by Google:

Let’s take a second and discuss the type of content this rich result is built for. The documentation for Q&A Page is very clear that this is meant for pages that answer and discuss a single question. Therefore this is excellent for support pages and forum posts, or any page with a single question and multiple answers. This is not intended for a single page with a long list of FAQs. With that out of the way let’s get into how to achieve this stand out rich result!

Q&A Page Schema Markup Requirements

There are 3 schema classes that we will need to use to complete our Q&A Page markup. They are:

1. QAPage
2. Question
3. Answer

Each of these will be connected and nested underneath one another. An example looks like this:

<html>
  <head>
    <title>How many ounces are there in a pound?</title>
    <script type="application/ld+json">
    {
      "@context": "https://schema.org",
      "@type": "QAPage",
      "mainEntity": {
        "@type": "Question",
        "name": "How many ounces are there in a pound?",
        "text": "I have taken up a new interest in baking and keep running across directions in ounces and pounds. I have to translate between them and was wondering how many ounces are in a pound?",
        "answerCount": 3,
        "upvoteCount": 26,
        "dateCreated": "2016-07-23T21:11Z",
        "author": {
          "@type": "Person",
          "name": "New Baking User"
        },
        "acceptedAnswer": {
          "@type": "Answer",
          "text": "1 pound (lb) is equal to 16 ounces (oz).",
          "dateCreated": "2016-11-02T21:11Z",
          "upvoteCount": 1337,
          "url": "https://example.com/question1#acceptedAnswer",
          "author": {
            "@type": "Person",
            "name": "SomeUser"
          }
        },
        "suggestedAnswer": [
          {
            "@type": "Answer",
            "text": "Are you looking for ounces or fluid ounces? If you are looking for fluid ounces there are 15.34 fluid ounces in a pound of water.",
            "dateCreated": "2016-11-02T21:11Z",
            "upvoteCount": 42,
            "url": "https://example.com/question1#suggestedAnswer1",
            "author": {
              "@type": "Person",
              "name": "AnotherUser"
            }
          }, {
            "@type": "Answer",
            "text": " I can't remember exactly, but I think 18 ounces in a lb. You might want to double check that.",
            "dateCreated": "2016-11-06T21:11Z",
            "upvoteCount": 0,
            "url": "https://example.com/question1#suggestedAnswer2",
            "author": {
              "@type": "Person",
              "name": "ConfusedUser"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
  </body>
</html>

Let’s have a look at each class, they’re required properties as called out in the Documentation, and what values these properties should be defined by:

QAPage Schema Class for Q&A Markup

https://schema.org/QAPage

Question Schema Class for Q&A Markup

https://schema.org/Question

Question Schema Markup Properties Explained

• text – The actual text of the question itself.
• name – Choose an identifier to name the data item. Using the actual question is a good idea, just to keep things simple.
• Url – The URL for where the question lives on the page.
• suggestedAnswer – This property is expecting you to create an Answer data item. Best to use suggestedAnswer when there are many possible answers. The documentation indicates they don’t have to be relevant or accurate answers. Think of answers on a question/answer web page like Yahoo Answers.
• acceptedAnswer – This property is expecting you to create an Answer data item. It is best to use acceptedAnswer for the best answer to a question. This can be the only answer or it could be one among many other answers. It just needs to be the best answer.  If the question is in a forum, then use the one with the most positive votes. If it is a list of answers, choose the best from the list.
• publisher – This property is expecting an Organization or Person data item. Usually, it is the organization that owns the domain the question/answer content is found on.  Note, that all types of organization markup can be used here, such as LocalBusiness, MedicalOrganization, etc.
• about – This property is expecting a Thing data item, which describes what the questions are about. If you’re creating markup for a business FAQ page, then they would be about your business.  Use a Wikipedia lookup if the question is about a topic described there. If it is about a service or product you offer, reference the service/product page.
• isPartOf – This property is expecting a CreativeWork data item and it is our opportunity to tie all our questions together. The property isPartOf indicates that the question is part of some other creative work. In most cases, you will want to use the QAPage class type.
• description – This property describes the question. If the question has a group heading then this may be an appropriate place to call out what that heading is.
• upvoteCount – If this question has an upvote count then this would be the property to indicate that. This property is expecting an Integer data item

Answer Schema Class for Q&A Markup

https://schema.org/Answer

Accepted Answer & Answer Schema Markup Properties Explained

Note, that the accepted answer above is a link. That’s because we are linking to a new data item, or entity, that details out the Answer.  The schema.org class type Answer is very similar properties to Question.  It has the same two required properties, text and name. There are no recommended properties for Answer, but we will still want to use many of the same properties that we did for Question. Again, not all the properties are necessary. Use them when they are applicable.

• text – The actual text of the answer itself.
• name – Choose an identifier to name the data item. Using the actual answer text is a good idea, just to keep things simple.
• Url – The URL for where the answer lives on the page.
• about – This property is expecting a Thing data item, which describes what the answers are about. If you’re creating markup for a business FAQ page, then they would be about your business. Use a Wikipedia lookup if the question is about a topic described there. If it is about a service or product you offer, reference the service/product page.
• publisher – This property is expecting an Organization or Person data item. Usually it is the organization that owns the domain the content is found on, like an FAQ answer. Sometimes it is a person who is writing on your page, like a response in a forum or a guest blogger.
• isPartOf – This property is expecting a CreativeWork data item and it is our opportunity to tie all our answers together. The property isPartOf indicates that the answer is part of some other creative work. In most cases you will want to use the QAPage class type.
• description – This property describes the answer. If the answer is from a group that has a heading then this may be an appropriate place to call out what that heading is.
• upvoteCount – If this answer has an upvote count then this would be the place to indicate that. This property is expecting an Integer data item.

How to Create Q&A Schema Markup

To start let’s have a look at the schema.org class type: Question. The only required properties for questions are text and name. There are 5 recommended properties: URL, suggested answer, accepted answer, publisher, and about.  About is a great property, because you can use a Wikipedia reference to define the topic explicitly.

Finally, there are 3 useful other properties that I will highlight: is part of, description, and upvote count. Please note that you do not have to use every property listed in Schema App (we show all the properties possible in the schema.org vocabulary for the Question class).

Step One: Add the required properties for QAPage structured data

Add the required schema.org properties for QAPage structured data markup using our reference above. We recommend our own tools, the Schema App Editor and Schema App Highlighter, but there are many different options out there.

Step Two: Review your markup to ensure it follows Google’s Structured Data Guidelines

Check that your markup follows Google’s structured data guidelines

Step Three: Deploy your Schema Markup to the relevant pages

Deploy your markup. Google recommends using JSON-LD, which is also our favorite format for deployment!

Step Four: Validate your Schema Markup to make sure it is working

Test that your schema markup is working using Google’s Rich Results Testing Tool and the Schema Markup Validator, which has officially replaced Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. Read more about this change in our news post here.

In order to understand how to create the markup in practice,  watch this short video, where Martha van Berkel steps you through Question and Answer Schema Markup in Schema App.

Learn how to create Q&A schema markup using the Schema App Editor with our how-to tutorial here.

Tools Test QAPage Schema Markup

Schema Markup Validator

The Schema Markup Validator (SMV) was modeled after and has officially replaced Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool (SDTT). Many SEOs still prefer the SDTT, as the SMV only validates your schema.org syntax and does not show your eligibility for rich results.

Rich Results Testing Tool

Google’s Rich Results Testing Tool helps you to see which rich results can be generated by the structured data it contains.

Benefits of QAPage Structured Data

The benefits of structured data extend beyond achieving Questions and Answer rich results in search. You’re taking control of the data on your web pages, instead of hoping search engines will be intuitive enough to understand the content on your site and show the best information in search. Through schema markup, you can define objects in your content as distinct entities with their own properties and relationships to other entities. Once defined, you can connect these entities to a search engine’s knowledge graph, streamlining Google’s ability to contextualize your content.

QAPage structured data is great for forums or online message boards where users can ask a question, and the community can submit their answers to that question. Q&A schema is not intended for pages that have multiple questions and answers—that’s what FAQPage schema markup is for! Q&A structured data also goes very well with speakable schema markup, as these types of answers feed well into voice search with smart devices.

Frequently Asked Questions about QAPage Schema Markup

How do I use Question and Answer (Q&A) schema markup?

This type of schema markup should be applied only on page that have one question as the main focus of that page, as opposed to a page with multiple questions and their respective answers. Make sure you include the URL that links directly to each individual answer to improve the user experience of your Q&A structured data markup!

QAPage vs FAQPage Schema Markup?

If users are not able to submit answers to the question being asked on the page, then FAQPage schema markup should be used. Learn more about frequently asked questions (FAQPage) schema markup here.

Q&A schema is a relatively new schema type, and an interesting one. It’s used for pages that contain an question and a way for multiple users to submit answers to that question. Obviously, this type of content doesn’t fit for every website, but it is a great opportunity to engage with users right on the search engine results page. This is another example of how rich result opportunities can inform your content strategy. If questions and answers seem like a good fit for your online business goals, or a new opportunity to engage with users in search, don’t hesitate to get in touch! We can help you get started.

We help you go beyond the fundamentals of search engine optimization, leveraging structured data to showcase your unique value in search. In a rapidly changing SEO environment, we introduce agility to your digital team, saving you time and resources for managing other aspects of your business portfolio. We deliver to your online business goals using our structured data expertise and advanced technology.

The post Creating Question & Answer (QAPage) Schema Markup appeared first on Schema App Solutions.