What is the correct use of schema.org SiteNavigationElement?

Question

In SEO terms...

Is it best to put the scheme on the parent containing all the links?

Answer 1

According to Search Engine Land, it's supposed to look like this:

<ul itemscope itemtype="http://www.schema.org/SiteNavigationElement">
    <li itemprop="name">
        <a itemprop="url" href="#">Link 1</a>
    </li>
    <li itemprop="name">
        <a itemprop="url" href="#">Link 2</a>
    </li>
    <li itemprop="name">
        <a itemprop="url" href="#">Travel Resources</a>
    </li>
</ul>

Answer 2

<nav role="navigation">

    <ul role="menubar" aria-activedescendant="">

        <li role="presentation" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/SiteNavigationElement">
            <a href="" role="menuitem" tabindex="-1" itemprop="url">
                <span itemprop="name">Link 1</span>
            </a>
        </li>   

    </ul>

</nav>

Answer 3

Having considered all the above, I came to the following conclusion:

<nav itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/SiteNavigationElement">
  <ul>
   <li itemprop="hasPart">
     <a href="/" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="name">Home</span></a>
   </li>
</nav>

Thus, each <li> is part of the SiteNavigationElement that has the url and name. I think this is the best option.

But do search engines need such redundant markup? They already know that href in <a href=""> is the url, and inside the tag <a>name</a> is the name. What do you think about it?

Answer 4

schema.org/SiteNavigationElement extends WebPageElement and can be used to mark-up links, which would often make good contextual links. You can use this schema for your page menu.

<nav role="navigation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/SiteNavigationElement">
<ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://yoursite.com/" title="Link to Home" itemprop="url">
            <span itemprop="name">Home</span>
        </a>
    </li>
    <li>
        <a href="https://yoursite.com/sample-page" title="Link to sample page" itemprop="url">
            <span itemprop="name">sample page</span>
        </a>
    </li>
</ul>