Do you have a forum on your website? Are you planning to start a forum? Remember to use schema to enhance your forum’s appearance in search results.
Google supports three schema types for forums hosted on your website. While these are optional, these can help Google identify forum content and include the website in Discussions and Forums features.
The three types of schema for forums are:
- DiscussionForumPosting
- QAPage
- ProfilePage
DiscussionForumPosting schema is intended for general discussions, with a post about a given topic and comments submitted in response. This is not meant for forum posts that start with a question and people submit answers (like a support forum). The author of the post, the date the post was published, and the post content are required. The post content can be text, image or video.
QAPage schema is intended when the posts start with a question and people submit answers. The short form of the question, the answer count, and at least one answer are required for this to show in search results. The answer can be the accepted answer or a suggested answer. Oddly, author and date are not required but can be added as optional fields.
ProfilePage schema is used for individual user profile pages. This can also be used outside of forums on an author bio page or an about page. The profile can be for an organization or a person. The name is required but it doesn’t have to be a real name. It can be a handle specified in the alternateName property. There are optional fields for things like date, description, image, and interaction counts.