Novel Coronavirus, 2019- the deadly one.
Isolations, danger, lockdowns, strict actions, daily updates on deaths and the sad reality that the pandemic is spreading. Stay home to stay healthy is the only one advice which is given by everyone these days to their friends, colleagues, relatives and loved ones. The huge number of death cases every day and is increasing day by day. The government is trying to cope up with this disastrous situation by adopting different strategies.
Schema.org one of the newest advancements
Schema.org founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex can be defined as a collaborative community activity with a mission to maintain, create and promote schemas for structured data on the web pages, on the internet, in email messages and so on. It is often called as Schema. It is a kind of semantic vocabulary of tags (or microdata) to be added to your HTML. This will improve the way search engines read and represent your page in SERPs. This vocabulary can be used with RDFa, Microdata, and JSON-LD which are the languages of code that can be added to HTML to embed metadata on a web document.
Resource Descriptive Framework in Attributes
RDFa is form of code that can be added to any HTML, XHTML, and XML-based document.RDFa’s attributes include:
- about– to specify the resource the metadata is about
- src, href, and resource– to specify a partner resource
- content– to override the content of the element when using the property attribute
- datatype– to specify the datatype of text specified for use with the property attribute
- typeof– to specify the RDF type of the subject or the partner resource
- reland rev – to specify a relationship and reverse relationship with another resource
Microdata implementation is similar to RDFa, and its attributes include the following:
- itemscope– to create the item and indicate that the rest of the element contains information about it
- itemtype– to describe the item and properties with a valid URL of a vocabulary (for example, “https://schema.org”)
- itemprop– to indicate that the containing tag has the value of a specified item property (ex, itemprop=”name”)
- itemid– to indicate a unique identifier of the item
- itemref– to reference properties of an element that are not contained in the itemscope. This provides a list of element ids with more properties elsewhere in the document
Javascript Object Notation for Linked Objects – JSON-LD
JSON-LD stands for Javascript Object Notation for Linked Objects. This style of annotation can implement schema by pasting directly in the <head> or <body> tag of a web document. The notation uses “@context” and “@type” attributes to specify the vocabulary (schema.org). Because it can be placed right into the <head> tag, JSON-LD is considered the easiest way to implement schema for beginners.
Why is Schema.org so important?
The general purpose of structuring your data is to discuss better with web crawlers like Google. At the point when Google understands entities on a more profound level, it serves better outcomes for the searchers. These vocabularies cover entities, connections among entities and actions, and can without much of a stretch be reached out through a well-documented extension model. More than 10 million websites use Schema.org to markup their site pages and email messages. Famous applications from Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, Yandex and others as of now utilize these vocabularies to influence rich, extensible encounters.
Schema markups are commonly used to indicate:
- Articles
- Events
- Products
- People
- Organizations
- Local Businesses
- Reviews
- Recipes
- Medical conditions
After adding these markups to your site, they allow search engine to understand what your site is about. The search engine is then able to showcase this information via Rich Snippets
What is COVID-19 Schema?
On 16th March 2020, Schema.org added coronavirus-related structured data types in version 7.0 due to the massive COVID- 19 outbreak. “CovidTestingFacility” is the significant structured data type introduced in this update. It represents both temporary and established testing facilities opened to handle the Coronavirus pandemic.
What are the benefits of adding the Schema now?
In an increasingly competitive market, we should always be on the lookout for opportunities to optimize our sites if we want to maintain a solid position in search rankings.This schema type has been introduced recently. Search engines are still working on the usage of these snippets for the benefit of the public. Due to the severity of the pandemic, it’s for sure that they will give more importance to the website with these snippets.
WP COVID-19 Schema Plugin specifically for schools and hospitals websites released by Sweans Technologies
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing many special announcements including not just the closure of facilities and rescheduling of events but also new availability of medical facilities such as testing centers. They have released a new Schema plugin which will create a schema in the WordPress websites of schools and hospitals to serve the specific purpose of announcements.
Essential Features:
- Covid Test Facility announcement: If a hospital starts the COVID-19 testing facility, it can be announced to the public using this schema.
- School closure announcement because of Coronavirus pandemic: If the school gets closed because of the COVID-19, this announcement can be done easily using the schema.
Schema plugin release is a step taken by Sweans Technologies to support hospitals and schools in this Corona Pandemic. Proper utilization of this plugin will be helpful to keep public informed through special announcements. The WordPress plugin can be downloaded free of cost for any schools and hospitals globally.
