Structured Data Markup - a need for 'Markdown' in Zen Cart

[shags38]

Google Structured Data Tester continually throws errors when marking up 'articles' in EZ pages when links are included in the 'article body' ..... because of the commas ( " ) used in <a href="http://domain">anchor</a> which also includes those used for image source when images are included. The use of commas in JSON-LD markup suggests a 'tag'

Markdown used for links [anchor](link address) would eliminate this issue because commas are not used- how can Markdown be incorporated in Zen Cart?

cheers,
Mike

[swguy]

When you say "commas" do you actually mean "double quotes?" Because otherwise I am completely confused by what you are saying.

[shags38]

When you say "commas" do you actually mean "double quotes?" Because otherwise I am completely confused by what you are saying.

Sorry about that chief .... yes "double quotes".

[swguy]

ok so next question: why is the structured data tester looking at your article body? It should be looking at the JSON data within the open and closing script tags.

[shags38]

ok so next question: why is the structured data tester looking at your article body? It should be looking at the JSON data within the open and closing script tags.

It is looking at the JSON data between opening and closing tags - "articleBody": is a tag or member within the script opening and closing tags and it is within the opening and closing quotation marks for this member that it is finding quotation marks for links/image locations ..........

So these are E-Z pages .... articles that I have written on the site. The structured data plugin I am using (Super Data by Melanie Prough) only marks up products - I want my articles marked up in an effort to have them qualify for rich snippets in SERP's and in general be prominent in Google.

The Google Markup Helper, nominating 'article' does not include all the necessary tags (have no idea why not) - so I add the generated html to the page and the pages end up in Google Search console as 'Unparsable structured data' and in the report show a number of errors and warnings ("headline", "date modified" and a couple of other tags 'missing and required'.

So I add the required tags manually having looked up the JSON-LD data requirements. This eliminates all the errors except this one;

Parsing error: Missing '}' or object member name

Through research of a number of forums and trial and error I found that by deleting any URL links within the article body the above error disappeared and the test passed with flying colors. The assumption is that the bot sees a quotation between the opening and closing marks that is not related to a 'tag' (member name) so it throws the error.

So the result is that the 'marked up' JSON-LD data for the article does not include any links or images which seems counterproductive. Now my understanding of the purpose of structured data markup is that it gives Google a 'good idea of what is contained on the page' in a concise set of data to reduce crawling time .... and that its other purpose is to use that data for 'rich snippets' ..... both are important for SEO but it is the latter that is most important for maximizing potential exposure.

*note: the same error appears on product pages if you mark them up manually (something I did on a few products for 'reviews' before the latest version of Super Data took care of that - no reason to do that now) - the reason for mentioning this is that it is probable that Melanie in her development of her plugin has obviated the problem in that for products that I have that have links in the descriptions I am not getting any parsing errors.

cheers,
Mike

[shags38]

here is the script I use - when completed it tests fine (as 'article') ;

<!-- JSON-LD markup generated by Google Structured Data Markup Helper. -->
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context" : "http://schema.org",
"@type" : "Article",
"mainEntityOfPage":{
"@type":"WebPage"
},
"name" : " ",
"author" : {
"@type" : "Person",
"name" : "Mike"
},
"datePublished" : " ",
"dateModified" : " ",
"headline" : " ",
"image" : " ",
"articleSection" : " ",
"articleBody" : " ",
"publisher" : {
"@type" : "Organization",
"name" : "site name",
"logo": {
"@type": "ImageObject",
"url": "sitename/includes/templates/westminster_new/images/logo.png"
}
}
}
</script>