Google Schema for COVID-19 and More Free Features!

March 31, 2020Updated on March 30, 2023 JS Morisset Schema, SEO, WPSSO Core, WPSSO JSON

On March 17th 2020, in response to COVID-19 self-isolation trends, Google published new Schema Event properties for virtual, postponed, and cancelled events.

The latest Premium version of WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup provides several customization options for these new Schema Event properties in the Document SSO metabox.

This past month, the Free / Standard versions of WPSSO Core and its WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup add-on have also received several new features — most notably, almost all customization options in the Document SSO metabox are now available in the Free / Standard version of WPSSO Core (except those options that require an integration feature in the Premium version to implement, like the video service APIs), and the Free / Standard version of WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup now includes all 495 supported Schema types!

LinkedIn Now Prefers oEmbed Data Instead of Open Graph

September 22, 2019Updated on March 30, 2023 JS Morisset oEmbed, Open Graph, WPSSO Core

When you share a URL on a social site like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., that social site crawls the webpage in background to read the meta tags and structured data markup (aka Open Graph meta tags, Twitter Card meta tags, Schema JSON-LD, Schema microdata, etc.).

Social sites like LinkedIn generally require an image, a title, and a description to display a share. A few social sites like Pinterest and Twitter can also display additional information for products, recipes, mobile apps, videos, and more.

Until recently, the LinkedIn crawler read only Open Graph meta tags to get the webpage image, title, and description, but recently they’ve started reading oEmbed data as well, and if oEmbed data is available, LinkedIn prefers those values over the Open Graph values.

Schema Article AMP 1:1, 4:3, and 16:9 images for Google

September 17, 2019Updated on March 30, 2023 JS Morisset Schema, WPSSO Core, WPSSO JSON

The latest release of WPSSO Core v6.3.0 and the WPSSO JSON v2.9.0 add-on include new image sizes in Schema Article AMP markup for Google.

A few months ago, Google quietly updated their AMP structured data guidelines to suggest that:

For best results, provide multiple high-resolution images with the following aspect ratios: 16×9, 4×3, and 1×1.
Quote from Google’s AMP with structured data

Since WPSSO Core and its add-ons already use a variety of image sizes for different markup standards (ie. Open Graph, Twitter Cards, Schema, etc.), it was fairly easy to add support for Google’s new Article AMP image sizes. You can find the new images sizes, along with all other WPSSO image sizes, under the WordPress Settings > SSO Image Sizes settings page.

[Solution] Better Schema Markup for WooCommerce

April 14, 2019Updated on March 30, 2023 JS Morisset WooCommerce, WPSSO Core, WPSSO JSON

Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool or Google’s Search Console for website owners may report the following errors for the default Schema markup offered by WooCommerce:

The aggregateRating field is recommended.
The brand field is recommended.
The review field is recommended.
This Product is missing a global identifier (e.g. isbn, mpn or gtin8).
No global identifier provided (e.g. gtin mpn isbn).
Missing field “businessDays”.
Missing field “cutoffTime”.
Missing field “deliveryTime”.

I’ve written a step-by-step guide for WooCommerce users that explains these issues and offers an easy solution.

[Solution] Google Reports Missing “Product Identifier” for WooCommerce Products

March 10, 2019Updated on March 30, 2023 JS Morisset Rich Cards, Schema, SEO, WooCommerce, WPSSO Core, WPSSO JSON

WooCommerce manages information on product Availability (aka Stock), Prices, SKU, etc., but additional WooCommerce product attributes must be created to provide more product information for Google.

The WPSSO Core Pro plugin (and its WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup Pro add-on), for example, include a variety of WooCommerce product attribute values in its Schema markup, including the product Brand, Color, Condition, EAN, GTIN-8, GTIN-12, GTIN-13, GTIN-14, ISBN, Material, MPN (aka Manufacturer Part Number), Size, and Gender.

Why WordPress Image Sizes for Social Sharing and SEO?

March 3, 2019Updated on March 30, 2023 JS Morisset Open Graph, Rich Cards, Schema, SEO, Twitter Cards, WPSSO Core

All social and SEO plugins – except one that I know of – use the full size image URL from the WordPress media library when adding image meta tags to the webpage (ie. og:image, twitter:image, etc.), and/or adding images to Schema JSON-LD markup for the webpage. This can be problematic for several reasons…

The image resolution may be too small.
The image resolution may be too large and the file size too big.
The aspect ratio (width or height) may exceed a maximum value.
The image displayed on the social / search site is center cropped.

Free Plugins for Organization / Local SEO Markup

June 12, 2018Updated on March 30, 2023 JS Morisset JSON-LD, Schema, SEO, WPSSO Core

Google reads a variety of structured data from webpages, including e-commerce Product details, Recipes, Reviews, etc. — along with three standard Schema types from a website’s homepage: WebSite, Organization, and Person.

In this post we’ll focus on the Organization markup — using Google’s preferred LD+JSON structured data format — which Yoast SEO, WPSSO Core, and most SEO plugins add to a WordPress site’s homepage.

Google uses the Organization markup to enrich its Knowledge Graph information for the website’s Organization (aka Business, Corporation, etc.).

See Google My Business, Your business information in the knowledge panel, and Improve your local ranking on Google for more information on Google’s Knowledge Graph and local business markup.

See Google’s About Search Features and Structured Data General Guidelines for more information about the current Schema types recognized by Google.

WPSSO Core (and its complementary add-ons) can be used by themselves, or in combination with Yoast SEO and other popular SEO plugins — WPSSO Core will warn of any conflicting plugin settings and the Pro version of WPSSO Core includes integration modules to read post / term meta from all the popular SEO plugins. The following examples were created using the Free versions of Yoast SEO, WPSSO Core, and its Free complementary add-ons.

4 Big Improvements in WPSSO Core in the Last 2 Weeks

May 10, 2018Updated on March 30, 2023 JS Morisset WPSSO Core, WPSSO JSON

It’s been a very productive two weeks of coding for both the WPSSO Core plugin, and it’s WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup add-on.

On April 26th – just two weeks ago – WPSSO Core v4.0.0 was released, which included support for the new Gutenberg editor. Since then, WPSSO Core v4.1.0, v4.2.0, and v4.3.0 were also released (the last one just today), along with WPSSO JSON v1.25.0 and v1.26.0.

In case you missed all the update notices and posts about those versions, the following is a quick summary of the big changes and improvements in both WPSSO Core and its JSON-LD add-on. And at the end of this post, you can also find a summary of our release schedule philosophy, and why we chose to release four big improvements, in four different versions, in just two weeks. ;-)