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We are a leading SaaS provider in an important sector that ultimately helps to speed up innovation in agriculture. Our team is growing and we’re looking for two full stack engineers.
* Position (1) Senior Full Stack Engineer with solid computer science knowledge and appreciation for elegant architecture and software patterns.
* Position (2) Full Stack Engineer with at least 2 years experience in commercial software delivery.
Both roles require the following skills: Typescript, HTML/CSS, React, Python, SQL.
Knowledge of Django, Knockout and Google Cloud Platform would be advantageous.
It’s an opportunity to join the company at an interesting time of growth, where you can take on responsibilities and have a rewarding position in a developer oriented company.
Everyone wants to log in to Google Search Console to find their website is error-free and running perfectly. This is rarely the case, unfortunately.
The good news is schema validation error notifications offer important information you can use to fix your site.
Good SEO is about consistently taking care of the small details, and that’s exactly what Google Search Console errors allow you to do. What exactly are schema validation errors though, and how do you fix them?
In this guide we will go over schema validation errors in more detail; specifically, the most common one, called “either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregate rating” should be specified.”
What Are Schema Validation Errors?
Schema validation errors are mistakes in the formatting of your Schema data, making it difficult for Google to understand that data.
Schema is the structured data that helps the search engines understand what your page is about. By interpreting the schema of your page, the search engines can show rich results, like the ones below.
While the traditional search engine listing might just be a link and meta description, rich results show a wide variety of information designed to improve the user experience.
The right schema markup can result in an increased CTR, but your rich results might not show up correctly if you have schema validation errors.
Many website builders or plugins such as Yoast SEO help take care of schema for you, but sometimes, you might still see schema validation errors in your Google Search Console (GSC).
If you’re not using Google Search Console to keep track of your progress with your website, then you’re missing out. It’s full of so many important insights into how your site acquires traffic and the errors that are holding back your SEO, so it’s something you should be checking in with regularly.
When you log in to GSC, a common error you might see is a schema validation error. These errors simply refer to issues with the way you have structured your data, causing Google to have problems interpreting it.
This isn’t likely to directly affect your rankings too much, but as we know, rich results help click-through rates, and this is a big part of SEO. Schema.org allows for a huge amount of information about your product to be included in your code, and all of this helps search engines better understand what you’re offering.
A search engine results page (SERP) is a competitive place, and it’s important to use all of its features to stand out from the crowd. You don’t have many opportunities to earn someone’s click, so you want your schema to be in order so you can use the extra features to grab people’s attention.
Here are some of the most common schema markups you might use:
organization: provides important details about the organization
person: provides important details about a person
local business: information about a local business such as an address, contact details, opening times
product and offer: specifications of a product and offers
articles: for blog posts and news
video: helps Google to index the video content on your site
event: gives people information about upcoming events
review: shows reviews about a product or business
rating: shows an aggregated rating for a product or business
If this information isn’t formatted correctly, or Google doesn’t see the information it thinks it should be seeing, it will show a schema validation error.
Three Schemas You Need to Avoid the “Either “Offers”, “Review”, or “aggregateRating” Should be Specified” Error
This is one of the most common schema markup errors and it can be a little complex to fix (you’ll actually need three schemas). Don’t stress, though, I am going to walk you through it.
Google encourages product pages to make use of all product markups because it increases CTR and results in more sales.
However, some pages don’t contain the right schema markup, leading to schema validation errors in your GSC.
Three errors you will commonly see are for “offers,” “review,” and “aggregate rating,” which show up in a “either”offers “,”review “, or “aggregateRating” should be specified” warning.
To fix this error, you’ll need to use these three schemas.
Offers
If you’ve got some great offers on your products, then you want to tell everyone. When you run ads, your offers are often one of the most prominent aspects, so it makes sense to aim for the same thing with your organic listings.
Sales promotions work, so be creative with your offers and make sure people are aware of them. Cost might not be everything, but it’s certainly important when it comes to selling your products, and this is an area where schema can be incredibly helpful.
Social proof has always been important in marketing. As long as people have been selling things, there have always been people recommending them to their family and friends, and this has a huge effect.
Today, the internet has supercharged the idea of social proof.
We have immediate access to the thoughts and experiences of people all over the world who have bought the product we’re looking at. Modern consumers want to see this, and it has a big impact on their purchasing decisions.
If reviews are a big part of the buying decision, then they’re also going to help earn you clicks, but they can only do this if you’ve got the correct schema.
Rating
We’re all accustomed to seeing star ratings for all the products we buy. It’s so ubiquitous that we’d think something was up if a product didn’t show a rating.
Ratings are like reviews, just even more convenient. They give you an immediate snapshot of people’s experiences with a certain product. This is highly beneficial for businesses that can display a good level of social proof, and naturally, they want to make the most of it wherever they can.
If you’ve got a great rating score for your product, then you want to showcase it, and where better than on Google using the rating schema?
How to Fix the Schema Validation Error “Either “Offers”, “Review”, or “aggregateRating” Should be Specified”
If you click on your “Either “Offers”, “Review”, or “aggregateRating” Should be Specified” warnings in Google Search Console, it will show you the pages they’re affecting.
For most people using WooCommerce (who seem to be the main people affected by this), you’ll find the warning isn’t actually for product pages, it’s for category pages.
This is because WooCommerce automatically sets your product pages up with the following schema: Name, Description, URL, SKU, Availability, Image, Offers, AggregateRating, Price, Review, and more.
Thus, the problem isn’t with product pages. Instead, they’re normally on archived products and category pages. This is because WooCommerce has included some of the product schema on these pages, but Google says archive and categories pages shouldn’t have this markup.
Again, this isn’t something to be unduly worried about and it’s not going to destroy your rankings.
It is worth fixing, though. Since the error is caused by WooCommerce adding schema to a page that isn’t a dedicated product page, the answer is to remove the product schema markup for those pages.
The way to do it is by adding a snippet of code to your theme’s function.php file.
When you mention code, things start to sound very technical, but it’s not too complicated. Of course, if you’re not comfortable making changes on your site’s back-end, then you can always get a developer to do this for you:
head to your dashboard in WordPress
hover over “appearance” in the left sidebar and select “theme editor”
select “functions.php” from the “theme files box on the right
scroll to the bottom of the text box
insert the following code:
/**
* Remove the generated product schema markup from Product Category and Shop pages.
*/
function wc_remove_product_schema_product_archive() {
This piece of code should fix the schema errors on your category and archive pages and remove the warning from your GSC. It might take a little bit of time for the Search Console to recognize the changes, so don’t worry if the warnings don’t disappear immediately.
Other Schema Validation Errors
Schema is like a language that allows you to speak with search engines. Sometimes, there are errors in our communication and the message doesn’t get passed on.
There are lots of different things you can communicate through your schema, so occasionally, there may be slight errors.
Google Search Console helps give you a good picture of how your website is performing on schema, but it also offers other tools to help you spot issues. The rich results test gives you a good visual breakdown of how your page looks in Google’s eyes, and when used in conjunction with GSC can give you a much clearer picture.
Here are some of the errors you are likely to see, what they mean, and how to fix them.
Missing Field Price
If you see a missing field price error in your GSC, you may have entered the price in the wrong format. It needs to be entered as xx.xx without the dollar sign. For example, if your product is $42.99, then it needs to be entered as 42.99.
Rating Is Missing Best and/or Worst Values
If you include an aggregate rating in your schema, then you need to enter the highest rating and lowest rating possible. Most of the time, this means one star is the lowest possible value and five stars is the highest value.
Value in Property “ratingCount” Must Be Positive
This number represents the number of ratings a product has so it cannot be negative. Your product page might not have any ratings, and in this case, the value will be zero, but it can never be negative.
Conclusion
Schema is an important part of how your website communicates with the search engines, so it needs to be correct—otherwise you’re wasting time. If your Google Search Console is showing schema validation errors, it doesn’t mean your website is about to tank in the rankings, but it is important to fix.
A common error many people see is the “Either “Offers”, “Review”, or “aggregateRating” Should be Specified” error, and this can be an easy fix.
When you successfully use schema, it can boost your site, improve your CTR, and ultimately bring more traffic to your site. It might only take a few small tweaks to fix your schema validation errors, so it’s well worth the effort.
But it’s not just YouTube—Instagram’s video content consumption has shot up by 80%, and Facebook users consume one million hours of video content every day.
All these platforms—along with most other social media sites—are ones consumers go to regularly. So as online sellers, these should become your go-to places for running promoted video content. In one study, US online shoppers said they expect to see at least three videos connected to each product when making an online purchase.
But how do you use promoted videos from paid campaigns that translate to tangible results for your e-commerce store?
Create Your Promoted Video E-Commerce Goals
Goals of promoted videos for e-commerce businesses mostly come down to these three:
Increasing brand awareness: -This essentially means if you make and sell, say, scarves, people looking to buy scarves know about you. Promoted videos are a great tool for building brand awareness as people are increasingly discovering new products through videos. In a YouTube survey, more than 90% of shoppers said they’d found new products and brands on the platform.
Boosting consideration: You want to know if people looking for scarves and checking you out are actually considering buying from you. When done right, promoted videos can push your “aware” audience base to the consideration stage. More than 50% of shoppers say online videos have “helped them decide which specific brand or product to buy.”
Generating more sales: YouTube’s “which product to buy” video watch time doubles each year. Promoted videos can give shoppers the push they need to choose your product.
Translate Your Promoted Video Goals Into KPIs
Take your goals for promoted videos and choose KPIs that reflect them.
Bigger e-commerce brands often use KPIs like ad recall, message association, and purchase intent, among others.
However, if you’re just starting out or are in your early stages of growth, these KPIs won’t make so much sense for you. Instead, you should map your goals to the more “real” KPIs, like upper funnel metrics like views and impressions, middle funnel metrics like watch time and view-throughs, and bottom-funnel metrics like click-throughs, signups, and sales. (Here’s a primer on e-commerce attribution modeling that can help you with this.)
Different video platforms have different ways of calculating these metrics. For instance, watch time of three-seconds counts as a view on Instagram (where video content maxes out at 60 seconds), whereas for YouTube, a view happens when someone watches the video content for at least 30 seconds.
Tap Into Your Users’ Moments of Need
Now that you’ve taken care of the “business side” of using promoted videos for your e-commerce business, it’s time to look into the “people side.”
One way to go about this is to tap into the idea of “moments of need” that drive video search and consumption. These are the things consumers want at this exact second.
The four key micro-moments of needs you must factor in when planning video content for paid promotions are:
I-want-to-watch
I-want-to-do
I-want-to-know
I-want-to-buy
These micro-moments represent opportunities for engagement, and videos fit seamlessly into them.
For example, if you sell skincare products, you could run a sponsored video on YouTube that targets users in your target market who also Googled “skincare products,” capitalizing on an I-want-to-buy moment. Google’s research has found advertisers who use YouTube video ads and Google search ads report 3% higher conversion rates and a 4% lower search cost/acquisition.
Or you could target broader audience segments and educate them about their top relevant concerns (ingredients, benefits, etc.). This is geared toward the I-want-to-know moments.
When you brainstorm ideas for videos using moments of need, don’t only think in terms of pitching your products. Some of these moments aren’t moments of buying but opportunities to connect with your users via meaningful video content.
The idea is to meet your users with relevant video content wherever they are in their buying journey with you—unaware, considering, or ready-to-buy.
Identify What Drives Your Users to Different Video Platforms
Each video platform has a unique video consumption pattern driven by the viewers’ intents.
For example, Pinterest users appear to have an appetite for “inspirational” video content, with searches for this content increasing 31 percent. “Inspirational,” in this context, means things like how-to guides and backstories of companies and products, making this platform great for “I-want-to-know” and “I-want-to-do” moments.
For YouTube, on the other hand, thetop four content categories are comedy, music, entertainment/pop culture, and “how to.” And, 68% of their users take this information and make purchase decisions—so, you can find all sorts of opportunities to use “moments” on this site to make your sales.
It’s also worth exploring how a user engages with the platform you’re using to promote your videos. Pinterest, for instance, serves as a wishlist for many users, as people save images and videos from all over to their personal pages. Meanwhile, a customer who uses YouTube may watch videos to learn how to use a product they want.
Instagrammers’ “moments” can fall into any category, but they want to use the information right now. When you create videos for Instagram, they need to be fast, informative, and provide easy purchasing information.
Before you pick a platform, dig into its demographics and research data. This information can help you set expectations for your promoted videos.
Optimize Your Video Content For Paid Campaigns
When it comes to creating video content you’ll pay to promote, the only rules are the ones mandated by the video platforms. These rules are about the formats supported and the approval policies, plus a few best practices.
Content-wise, there’s no one right way to do video. You need to know your company, your audience, and what works for similar brands.
For one brand, simply using stock photos, text, and music could do the trick.
Another brand might do better if they use video showing a product in action.
While there’s no one single way to create videos that work, some video types more consistently deliver results when promoted:
Product explainer videos: Sometimes simple product explainer videos—videos showing products in action—work as excellent content for promoting.
Storytelling/Sneak peeks/Behind-the-scenes videos: For some platforms, like Instagram, video content that tells a story, gives viewers a preview of new products, or shows them how things were created or who the workers are can generate great ROI.
How-tos: How-to videos directly address the “i-want-to-do” moments and often offer opportunities for showing products in action.
Unboxing and haul videos: Depending on your product(s), unboxing, or haul videos, too, can work well in paid campaigns. These are videos showing customers opening their new purchases and talking about their initial responses to the items.
Shop with me: In a two-year period, the watch time for “shop with me” videos increased tenfold on mobile alone, making this yet another video content type that can work well when promoted. These are videos where influencers literally share their shopping experiences with viewers.
Videos answering the “W” questions: Video consumers often have “W” questions— “what to buy?” “where to buy,” and “when to buy?” This may also include, “who should I buy this for?” Depending on your paid video campaigns’ goals, these questions can make good jumping-off points for promoted videos.
The above ideas for promoted video content may often overlap with the video content you’d produce for typical partnerships—but not always. It’s common for brands to create content specifically for partnerships and use it in addition to their other ads.
Alongside these promoted ads and partnerships, UGC (user-generated content) and testimonials can act as good ideas for promoted video content.
No matter what video type you choose, you need a video creative brief to prepare for your campaign. Below, Nic Burrows from Google shares a simple yet effective creative brief you can use to create compelling videos.
His template forces you to think about and research every aspect involved with creating useful, action-inspiring videos:
You can download your copy here (no opt-in needed).
To learn how to make your video content pop, Ben Jones and his team from Google review 1,000 video ad creatives each month and share how brands can improve. Check it out here:
Experiment With Your Promoted Videos
Like your other marketing assets, experiment with your promoted videos to know which ones drive the most revenue.
You can test pretty much everything, from your video’s length and opening sequence to the background music and interactive elements.
You’ll be surprised to realize significant savings with even simple experiments, so don’t shy away from trying all sorts of different things.
For example, when the coffee and bakery brand Dunkin’ experimented by creating an Instagram video ad with poll stickers and another version without them. By comparing these two concepts, they discovered a 20% lower cost per video view for those with stickers.
Avoid testing too many ideas in a single experiment because you likely won’t be able to tell why the winning version succeeded.
Document your findings to save on the next campaign. Additionally, your discoveries can fuel your follow-up experiments.
Analyze and Improve Your Promoted Videos
As with any other marketing channel, you may improve your ROI with your store’s promoted videos if you analyze their performance.
Just remember to look a little deeper than the top-of-the-funnel metrics like views and shares to uncover the “real” performance. No matter how impressive those numbers may be, they don’t necessarily translate to sales and profits.
So keep an eye on your sales volumes and value.
Also, when you use promoted videos on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, you can get instant feedback from your users via their comments, likes, dislikes, and shares.
Listen to the feedback they give and use any insights to optimize your videos.
Conclusion
When trying promoted videos for generating more sales, you should try a variety of platforms one by one.
That way, you’ll be able to identify which platforms produce the best ROI for your promoted video campaigns without needing to invest in complex attribution modeling.
Also, don’t think you need the most high-definition production equipment or the best creative agencies to produce the video content for promoting your products. Audiences crave for authentic content the most—so focus on that.
Remember, you’re competing against your own benchmarks, as there are no industry standards here.
Dive in, try different things, listen to your viewers, and—perhaps—have a little fun along the way.
Have you tried promoting videos on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or any other platforms? Share your experience in the comments!
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