Schema piece - HowTo

Describes a HowTo guide, which contains a series of steps.

Triggers

Should be added as a top-level node in the graph, when the content of a page contains a HowTo block.

Required properties

A valid HowTo must have the following properties.

  • @id: The unmodified canonical URL of the page, appended by #/schema/howto/{{ID}}, where {{ID}} is a unique identifier.
  • mainEntityOfPage: Referencing the WebPage by ID.
  • name: A string describing the guide.
  • step: An array of howToStep objects, with the following properties:
  • @id: The unmodified canonical URL of the page, appended by #/schema/howtostep/{{ID}}, where {{ID}} is a unique identifier.
  • url: A link to a fragment identifier (an 'ID anchor') of the individual howToStep (e.g., https://www.example.com/example-page/#howtostep-5 ).
  • Either a name or text property (see Conditional scenarios).

Failure scenarios

If any of the required fields of the HowTo or of a step are missing or invalid, the node should not be output.

If a node is not output, any entities which would otherwise have declared a relationship with it should remove those references.

Optional properties

The following should be added whenever available and valid:

  • totalTime: The total time required to complete the instructions, in ISO 8601 duration format.
  • description: Introduction or description content relating to the HowTo guide.
  • inLanguage: The language code for the guide; e.g., en-GB.

Conditional properties

When the page contains a valid Article

  • Alter the mainEntityOfPage property to reference the Article by ID, (instead of the WebPage).

When the HowToStep has one or more images

  • image: An imageObject (or an array of imageObject(s)), referenced by ID.

When the howToStep has a name and description

  • name: A summary of / title for the step.
  • itemListElement: An array of HowToDirection objects with a text property, for each paragraph in the description.

When the howToStep has a name, but no text in its description

  • text: A summary of / title for the step.

When the howToStep has a description, but no name

  • itemListElement: An array of HowToDirection objects with a text property, for each paragraph in the description.

Examples

Minimum criteria

{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@graph": [
{
"@type": "HowTo",
"@id": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#/schema/howto/abc123",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@id": "https://www.example.com/example-page/"
},
"name": "HowTo example",
"step": [
{
"@type": "HowToStep",
"@id": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#/schema/howtostep/abc123",
"name": "Example step 1",
"url": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#how-to-step-1",
"itemListElement": [
{
"@type": "HowToDirection",
"text": "The step description."
}
]
},
{
"@type": "HowToStep",
"text": "Example step 2 (no description)",
"url": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#how-to-step-2"
}
]
}
]
}

Extended criteria

{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@graph": [
{
"@type": "HowTo",
"@id": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#/schema/howto/abc123",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@id": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#/schema/article/abc123"
},
"name": "HowTo example",
"description": "HowTo description",
"inLanguage": "en-US",
"totalTime": "P2DT0H0M",
"step": [
{
"@type": "HowToStep",
"@id": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#/schema/howtostep/abc123",
"name": "Example step 1",
"url": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#how-to-step-1",
"image": {
"@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/image/abc123"
},
"itemListElement": [
{
"@type": "HowToDirection",
"text": "The step description."
}
]
},
{
"@type": "HowToStep",
"@id": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#/schema/howtostep/def456",
"text": "Example step 2 (no description)",
"url": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#how-to-step-2",
"image": {
"@id": "https://www.example.com/#/schema/image/def456"
}
},
{
"@type": "HowToStep",
"@id": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#/schema/howtostep/ghi789",
"name": "Example step 3",
"url": "https://www.example.com/example-page/#how-to-step-3",
"itemListElement": [
{
"@type": "HowToDirection",
"text": "The first paragrah in the step description."
},
{
"@type": "HowToDirection",
"text": "The second paragrah in the step description."
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
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