Wanting to create the next IMDB? Passionate about movies but at the same time cannot ignore the fact of being a Joomla developer, then why not develop a website (in Joomla of course) with the help of Movie Schemas, sounds good right? But the problem is not knowing what actually is a Movie Schema and what all you can do with it, how to use it, how it works, why it is useful, and all the other whys & hows related to it.
Through this article, I’ll be sharing all the information related to Movie Schemas and Schemas in general like an overview for those who have little knowledge about it. As to what they are and why they are needed. I will try to cover most of your doubts for all those developers out there who secretly are movie buffs too!
Just to give a brief about what Movie Schemas are, they basically mark up your movies list with structured data in a way that users can explore movies through Google search. Where you add the other details about the movie like title, director’s name, or the related images which will be explicit clues that tell Google what the meaning of that page is. So now a step-by-step guide on how to add these will be discussed further in the article.
What is a Schema Markup?
In simple words, schema markups are structured data which is a standard format for providing information about a page and classifying its content for example in the case of movies adding the title, director’s name, actors name, and other information like these help in classifying that page explicitly.
Google uses this data found on the web to understand the type of content on a page, as well as gather information in general. Google Search works quite hard to understand the content on a page but with our help of adding such markups, it makes the search understanding somewhat easier. Schemas are not just adding some kind of data on a blank page or a page that is not visible to the user, it is what is described on that page.
To know more about how you can use these schemas on your Joomla website and why they are important you can read my other article, Adding Schemas to your Joomla website.
What is a Movie Schema?
Like I explained above that movie schemas mark up the movie lists with schemas so users can explore them via Google Search. You can also add details about the movie that helps search engines in classifying the content of that page. Movie schemas are one of the types of Schema Markups especially for this type of content. There are various other schemas you can add on your Joomla website, a popular one being the FAQ Schema.
These markups basically help in improving the SEO of your website. It's the technical aspect of SEO that refers to website and server optimizations that help search engines to crawl and index the site more effectively. For a movie based Joomla website, a movie schema can enhance its ranking within Google search depending on how effective the structured data is. This type of schema shows a movie carousel type of view when there is a google search related to the movie, though the carousel view is only applicable to mobile devices. The only idea of adding these is to give meaning to the content being posted.
Benefits of adding Movie Schemas
Some of the benefits of adding a Movie schema for a movie based Joomla website is as follows:
- It helps in better indexing of your website.
- Improves the search engine crawling of your site.
- It gives Google or any other search engine a proper understanding of your website and its content.
- Helps you increase your website’s traffic.
- You also become eligible for adding rich snippets which enhances your website search even more.
- It can also help you in increasing your website’s CTR.
How to add Movie Schema to your Joomla website
Adding these schemas is like helping Google understand your website's content better. You are assisting the algorithm by using the markup languages which has been specifically devised for search engines.
But adding them is not easy, you are required to follow general structured guidelines which are for everyone irrespective of the content you post.
Google has clearly stated that always markup content that is displayed on the page to visitors. Doing otherwise you may end up with a Spammy Structured Markup Penalty. So to avoid the penalty and shorten our work, we will create custom fields so we can map the content with correct markup.
For Movie Schema, we need the following properties. So we will create custom fields according to these.
| Name | Description |
|---|
| Name |
The name of the movie. |
| Description |
The description of the movie. |
| Image |
An image that represents the movie. |
| Duration |
Set the duration of the movie in minutes. |
| Genre |
The genre of the movie |
| Creators |
The creators of the movie |
| Directors |
The directors of the movie |
| Actors |
The actors of the movie |
| Trailer URL |
A URL pointing to the actual video media file. This file should be in .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv, or other video file format |
| Release Date |
The date the movie was released. |
| Rating Value |
The rating value for the content. |
| Review Count |
How many reviews does this item have |
To markup the Joomla pages with Movie schema, you first need to install the Google Structured Data plugin. After installation you can fetch the schema in 2 ways, here we will see the example of Joomla Content that are Joomla Articles, so let's discuss both these ways.
Add Custom Fields
Before diving into the different ways of adding schema first we need to create some custom fields specifically for Movie type structured data, so we can map them to structure data property.
To create custom fields, navigate to Content > Fields. From here create new fields as per the requirements.
Install Google Structure Data Plugin
So, before you proceed, let me give a little brief about Google Structure Data Plugin from Tassos.gr. Google Structured Data plugin helps you to integrate schema markup to your Joomla websites. It can be combined with any third party extension like EasyBlog, Eshop, EventBooking, Hikashop, etc. You can download the plugin from here.
Once you have downloaded the plugin, you can simply install it from the Joomla extension installer.
Configure Joomla Content With Google Structure Data Plugin
Before adding the structure data make sure to enable the integration where you are adding the content type to so for that go to Configuration > Integration tab > Publish Joomla Content.
Now let’s start with the different ways of adding movie structured data.
Appling Movie Schema on all the Articles
Create a new Structured Item
Go to Components > Google Structured Data > Items. Create a New Item, write its title, select the content type as Movie & choose the integration as Joomla Content and Save it.
Map the Movie Schema properties
After saving the page you will see a new section of movie schema options appear where you need to map each property with the page data fields(custom fields) created earlier.
Publishing Rules
After field mapping, it's time to select the pages where you want to publish this structured content. You can either select the Articles or a Category of those articles only because Joomla Content integration implements this rule of publishing.
Add the Article values
After mapping the custom fields, navigate to Articles > open any article (of the published category) > Field tab add the values on each of the movie-related custom fields.
And you are done adding the Movie schema on all the articles of the selected Category for publishing.
Apply Movie Schema on a Single Article
Now the other process is adding the structured data within the articles itself. Some of the steps remain the same as mentioned above like enabling the integration of Joomla Content (Configuration > Integration tab > Publish Joomla Content) and creating the custom fields, under the Fields option (Content > Fields).
Create an Article
After that go Articles, create a new article or open an existing one where you want to add the schema and then go to the Fields tab and enter the values for each of the fields.
Map the Content Data
After adding these values, save the article and go to Google Structured Data tab within the same article and click on Add Structured Data, choose type as Movie and then map the properties to their respective fields within the popup.
Add you are done, save & close the article. You will now start seeing this article in the Item list of Google Structured Data.
How to Test the Movie Schema added
Once you have added the schema it's time to check whether it really works or not.
There are various tools through which you can check the validity & correctness of your schema some of them being Google search console, Yandex structure data validator, rich result test just to name a few.
But, we will use the Google Structured Data Testing Tool to verify our movie schema implementation. The tool offers your test through the live site URL or you can place the code snippet as well. And if the Schema is working fine, the results will be something like the screenshot below.
After all this now you are finally close to creating a Joomla website close to IMDB. Or maybe you never know more popular than that. Using movie schema will enhance your website’s reach to more customers or viewers and if that happens someday don’t forget to thank me later!
So use movie schemas to increase your reach, improve your website’s SEO, increase the CTR, and reach great heights in your business.
