Is HowTo structured data right for your kind of content?

Let’s take a look at the rules for implementing how-to structured data. The content guidelines below are taken from the Google developers page and broken one by one to make it more understandable to average readers.

1. Absolutely No Advertising in HowTos: Don’t use HowTo structured data for advertising purposes on your website. This gives Google the reason to rank your content lowest as a penalty.
2. No un-wholesome Contents: How-to rich results may not be displayed if the content is obscene, profane, sexually explicit, or graphically violent; or if it promotes dangerous or illegal activities or has hateful or harassing language.
3. No double HowTo on a page : All HowTo content must be visible to the user on the source page. The how-to should be the main focus of the source page. Don’t include more than one HowTo for a certain page.
4. Task Related Materials and Tools could be included: Add structured data to all materials and tools necessary to complete the task.
5. Each HowTo Step must include the entire contents of the source step.
6. Summary and introduction should not be included in the how-to mark up. Don’t mark up non-step data such as a summary or introduction section as a step.
7. Do not use images that does not reflect your HowTo: If the steps are best represented visually, ensure the images in these steps are marked up for each HowTo step. Only mark up the instructional step images that are specific for each step and don’t use the same image in multiple steps for the same how-to. Use the same images that correspond to the content on your page. Don’t use images that don’t reflect the how-to content, or use different images to optimize the rich-result.
8. The use of Final image: If the end result can be accurately described by an image, ensure this image is present on the page, and your HowTo markup includes it using the image property. This image may be the same as the one marked up for the last step.
9. Do not use HowTo structured data for recipes. You recipes content should use the Recipe structured data instead. Articles and general advice content that is not a specific set of instructions are not appropriate for HowTo markup.

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