The importance of tables and the best WP table for that?

[bernard]

I'm on a "kitchen sink" @Ryuzaki quest with one my sites that has been dropping bad in the last year.

One of those things I'm looking for is to live up to Google's product review criteria.

In this case:

• Provide quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance?

and

• Explain what sets a product apart from its competitors?

There's of course many ways to do that, video probably being the best, but outside that, a neat comparison table that is readable to both humans and robots.

The last is point I think matters here. Tables are good for robots, tables structure data in ways robots and computers understand very well: Object -> Attributes, Row -> Column, Table -> Category, Sort Table -> Optimize Choice.

That's why I'm including a table with test results in all future posts where it makes sense.

There are also other reasons for why structuring content around a table makes sense. It forces you to gain a quantitative understanding of the topic. You'll understand your products better when you put them all into a table. Then write from there. A lot more work sure.

Now, the difficult part is not so much presenting this data to robots, but to humans, particularly making an old school table look good, including on several different screens. It's easy enough on my wide screen, but tables are not good for mobile, that's why we ditched them in web design.

I'm currently using WP Ninja Tables which is pretty good, because it allows for various imports, including Google Sheets. WP Ninja Tables has a feature to collapse rows into their own vertical items on mobile, which I think is the best idea. It's like reading a baseball card or something.

Still, I am not sure if this is ideal, because with Mobile First, you'd want a classic table for that Google Bot.

What are your thoughts on tables in Wordpress and affiliate reviews?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Still, I am not sure if this is ideal, because with Mobile First, you'd want a classic table for that Google Bot.

Turning rows into columns and all that should be being done with CSS, in which case the HTML <table> tag and sub-tags will remain intact. It should only change visually and not effect the bots and algorithm from understanding them.

What I ended up doing was giving tables a minimum width, and once that width and less is reached on mobile, a horizontal scroll bar appears (only for the table). Not great for users but got the job done without breaking responsivity for bots.

 

[bernard]

Thanks @Ryuzaki, what's your opinion on my idea that tables are a ranking factor?

 

[Ryuzaki]

@bernard, I think “enhanced HTML content” are like “rich on-page” and good quality indicators. Probably not negligible signals but very small.

 

[4potato]

I have seen many amazon affiliate sites with tables that look poor on mobile, usually horizontal scrolling and product images too small, things in table which don't belong (star ratings for instance).

What about using Wordpress blocks instead, where each block is a component, and you use one component per product. Blocks can look MUCH nicer on mobile. ie: cool mobile cards - https://codepen.io/JorgeAguilar/pen/QWEbmNx
https://codepen.io/agzeri/pen/BYwZvL
https://css-tricks.com/how-to-make-a-media-query-less-card-component/

You can make simple cards/blocks tools like, CoBlocks, WPSpectra, Kadence Blocks, Stackable many others.. even Gutenberg itself you can create custom blocks with simple tools like rows, columns, min and max sizes, but I'd stick with a block building plugin like the ones listed.

I think you sit down with a pen and paper and think of the best way to display information about one product in a block on mobile.

I wouldn't worry about Google bot extracting info from tables, most structured info on the internet is in divs and displayed with grid + flexbox or CSS rules. Tables are meant for content you would keep in a spreadsheet. Once you get into images and so on, you're much better off creating Cards and ordering them with CSS.

 

[Darth]

Check featured snippets in your niche. If they are all tables or all lists, then that's a hint what you should try.

 

[bernard]

One reason for including a table in my posts is that I want to use it as a structured way to research a topic.

When I'm forced to think about what to put in a table, such as features, it also makes it much easier to write the content, because you have that product table fresh in mind.

Where I think it gets better is when you use a table to do independent research, like the Income School guys used to preach.

I'm doing a local service kind of thing now and I'm collecting prices and what's included in the service into a table for 30 local providers. By using this table data, I can write several new blogposts "cheapest in x city" because it's just a question of sorting and filtering that table.

I'm pretty sure that independent and uniquely researched and presented data is a big ranking boost, but we'll see. I've included tables with data that is not anywhere else in a couple of posts and sites now. I want to test if this is a comparative advantage for me.