[Resolved] GeneratePress Elementor and schema markup

[George]

I am in the process of designing a graphic heavy website with some relatively complex layouts. I am also using Elementor Pro and as a test decided to start using Elementor Pro with just their basic Hello theme as a backbone since all elements would come from Elementor. It seemed to be working quite well but later on I realised that the basic Hello theme doesn’t support any schema markup. So my plan is to use GeneratePress as a theme so I can make use of the schema markup. Since every element is going to come from Elementor (header, footer, pages, blog, archives) I was wondering how to plan the whole design process. I was thinking to create Elementor templates and hook them into the various GP areas. But I am not sure how “deep” I need to go. For example, there is a schema markup for a “header” but there is also a schema markup for the navigation. Do I need to hook the header and the navigation separately into the different hook areas so I can retain their schema markup? Is there a list of schema markups available so I can have a look and make a decision on how to hook the various elements? Or any suggestion how I should go about it?

[Tom]

Hey George,

I believe if you build those elements in Elementor, they’ll replace the GP elements anyways, so you’ll lose the schema. You’d need the ability to add schema data to the Elementor elements.

Let me know if that makes sense or not 🙂

[George]

Hmmm. It’s actually worse that I thought! So basically there is no way to replace the elements and hook them after the schema part. I know the Elementor team have moved this functionality for the 2.2.0 update but I don’t trust their ETA anymore, this has been going on for a year now. So as far as I understand, the Elementor elements need to support this natively or possibly with a use of a function like this that a user has created on Github? How do people get around this?

[David]

I think most people that are concerned about Schema will use the GP theme elements.
A little bit of CSS to complete the styling would be simpler and more efficient then finding ways to inject the schema markup into Elementor elements. I am vary wary of custom development within elementor as breaking changes seem to be quite frequent.

[George]

I hear you David. I will play around and see what I can do, it’s just so much faster with Elementor some times! Also I plan to start using some animations that don’t seem to be so easy with GP(I guess, it’s doable, I just need to research more). So just to clarify. Schema affects the way search results are displayed on the search engines meaning that both ways would display results but with Schema it would presents results according to their schema type(eg, recipes, posts, reviews, etc). Is that a valid statement? Or not using schema entails a danger of a page not being indeexed at all?

[David]

The absence of Schema won’t stop the page being indexed. You just wont have the additional information or influence over your SERP output, and would not have as a good SEO impact.

Simple CSS animation is pretty straight forward and does provide greater control. Such as slide and fade in elements you can control the exact distance. Always willing to help with some code if needed.

[George]

Ok I get you David. Just a question: I am building my own agency website. It will only have the usual landing pages(home, about, services, work, blog and contact). How would not using schema on those pages affect the results? Since they are just normal pages, I don’t think I would benefit for any presentationl SERP output, if you know what I mean. Again, I am not planning on ditching schema at all, I was just wondering if certain websites would benefit more than others?

[David]

It probably won’t make one iota of difference then.
I just advised another user that hooking directly inside an element with schema would keep the GP schema markup. Whether the benefits of it trail down to the content elementor creates i am unsure…..

I am trying my damnedest to not be over biased towards GP theme elements lol. But they are great 😉

[George]

I know they are and I have no intention of abandoning them! It’s good to have some knowledge of what it’s about though. Ok now I am slightly confused because Tom told me earlier that hooking an element would replace the schema(see his post).

[David]

What Tom meant was if you use the Elementor Header Footer templates then that will replace the GP elements. Not if you were to hook a template inside of it.

[George]

Ok then, it must be a misunderstanding from Tom’s part because if you read my first post, I explain that because of this thing happening my plan was actually to hook templates into the areas.

So my plan is to use GeneratePress as a theme so I can make use of the schema markup

So assuming this would be possible, how would I go about doing that? For instance, the header has schema markup for header and nav. If I was to hook a header template in there I would lose the nav schema. Does that make sense?

[David]

haha you know what i am not sure there is a inside_header, theres one for the mobile header. Sorry.
but the elementor nav wouldn’t have any schema. So Tom, as usual, is right…….

[George]

Ok I found something that you maybe haven’t discovered yet. I created an Elementor header(site image left, menu on the right) and tried to hook it to before_header, after_header or header hook. In all situations, the GP header was also present and I had to disable the GP header from that page to keep the Elementor one. Of course that means loosing the schema. Then I tried a plugin called Header Footer Elementor and hooked a header Elementor template that I created through the plugin’s custom post type and assigned it as a site header. In this case, the GP header schema was preserved! Maybe an improvement to the GP hooks could be made so that we can hook information and replace the hook content instead of the content being added to the existing one or/and us having to deactivate the existing one, so we can retain the schema markup. It would help a lot with the page builders, I reckon.

[Tom]

You could hook your content into the Before Header Content hook. Then just disable the GP elements from inside (site title/tagline/logo etc..).

That way the container will be preserved.

[George]

Yeah, it works like that, it’s definitely not “clean” though. I am not comfortable having site name and tagline empty either. Elementor header elements also use that information for their header element. What I did: Created an Elementor header template(site logo and menu), assigned it’s shortcode to the before_header_content hook for the whole site. Went to Customizer, disabled navigation, removed site title and tagline(I was working on a test install so logo wasn’t there to begin with) and set header paddings to 0. It certainly feels “hacky” to me.

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