Adding structured data (also known as schema markup and microdata) is a concrete action you can take to increase the chance of event discoverability.
Google recommends structured data as a way to make it easier for people to find your events whether they will be online, in person or mixed.
Web crawlers that visit sites with structured data have a much easier time understanding the relationships between the different bits of information on the webpage and the overall meaning of the content – and search engines, recommendation systems and AI use structured data in more engaging, richer results that match the intent of a searcher. For example, Google uses structured data for richer search results like interactive event listings.
Here is a short video we made a couple years ago to demonstrate what it’s like to use voice search for an NAC event before and after adding structured data.
I’m in. How do I add structured data to my event pages?
Make sure you follow the guidelines set out by Google and be sure to use the right schema.org event vocabulary (listed here). Know which kind of website you have so you take the right approach from the start:
- If you have a CMS and do not want to edit the HTML code, you can use Google’s Data Highlighter.
- With a WordPress site, you can use Google’s Data Highlighter or a structured data plug-in: Yoast or SchemaPro are two good ones.
- If you are adding structured data by editing your HTML, Google offers step-by-step instructions here.