Webinars are a good way to close leads while sharing knowledge. In today’s world where everything must be virtual they provide a good way to interact with your customers. With the Event schema you can engage more customers or leads by enriching your presence on the SERP result. In this article, we will provide you details of how to customize the Event for Webinars and other online events.
What is the Event Schema?
The Event Schema is markup that makes the event details easier to be discovered through search results. Once added your events will be displayed in a rich snippet allowing you to expose the company logo, description of the event, and other event details.
This will allow you to improve the interaction with the user and increase exposure to your events. Everbrite saw a 100% increase year on year after they introduced Event Schema for their events.
The event schema can be used for a wide range of events ranging from Business events to Hackathons. The Event schema covers both off-line events like Concerts or Sports as well as online events like Webinars. The schema also caters for events which have an online and a physical location.
It is important to note that the Event Schema is not open to all countries and regions. Check the Google Event Schema page to check if your country of interest is covered by this schema.
Event Schema Structure
The Event schema has the following components.
The following entries are required.
- location. The event location
- Name. The name of the location.
- Address. The address of the location.
- startDate. The start date and time (in the local time zone) of the event.
The following entries are optional.
- description. Textual description of the event
- organizer. The company organizing the event.
- performer. The name of the performer
- images. Visual representation of the event.
- endDate. The end date and time (int the local time zone) of the event
- eventAttendanceMode. This entry is important to describe the mode of the event. Online or Offline.
- offers. Define the pricing of the event.
- offeravailabilty. Define is the offer is for a pre order, in stock or sold out.
How to use the Event Schema for Webinars
Webinars are events that have an online component. The eventAttendanceMode has to be set to type OnlineEventAttendanceMode and the location type has to be set to VirtualLocation type. You will need to specify the URL where the webinar will be hosted.
“eventAttendanceMode”:”https://schema.org/OnlineEventAttendanceMode”,
“location”:
{
“@type”: “VirtualLocation”,
“url”: “https://www.urlofwebinar.com/”
},
Usage Guidelines
The event description, name, and date must be accurate. You cannot use event schema to promote business opening hours or to promote offers for events. The use of coupons and tokens are all discouraged. If these guidelines are not followed the events on your pages will not be published on SERP results and you may be handed with a penalty.
Simon Bonello is Co-founder of Gain Changer. His main area of focus is Business Process Automation, Software Technical Architecture and Technical SEO
