: Why use Microdata or RDFa, and which one to use? I was checking my SEO score on few SEO sites and few of them told me that I don’t have Microdata or RDFa. I searched and found this:

@Shanna517

Why should I use them?


The syntaxes Microdata and RDFa allow you to add structured data to your documents.

Both use vocabularies for that purpose. You could create your own vocabulary, but it’s of course much more useful to use well-known vocabularies, because this allows more consumers to make use of your data.

And that’s the main reason for adding structured data: Allowing consumers (which could be search engine bots, clients, browser add-ons, CMS, etc.) to do something with your data. What this something could be depends on the consumer, of course.

A popular example is the vocabulary Schema.org. This project is sponsored by the search engine companies Google, Microsoft (i.e., Bing), Yahoo and Yandex, and they (as well as various other parties) use the data marked up with the Schema.org vocabulary for various purposes. Best known are their search result enhancements (e.g., "Rich Snippets" in case of Google Search).


And which one to use?


You can see their differences in the question you linked to, Microdata vs RFDa.

You might want to check which syntax(es) the consumers you are interested in support. If all of them support both, you can choose whichever is easier to implement, you like more, or whatever.

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@Kevin317

From schema.org:


This site provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that
webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major
search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google and Yahoo!
rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making
it easier for people to find the right web pages.

Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored
in databases. When this data is formatted into HTML, it becomes very
difficult to recover the original structured data. Many applications,
especially search engines, can benefit greatly from direct access to
this structured data. On-page markup enables search engines to
understand the information on web pages and provide richer search
results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant
information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and
applications that make use of the structure.

A shared markup vocabulary makes easier for webmasters to decide on a
markup schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts. So, in
the spirit of sitemaps.org, Bing, Google and Yahoo! have come together
to provide a shared collection of schemas that webmasters can use.


You should use the format specified at schema.org. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have all agreed to use the formats listed there.

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