Search Engine Optimization Schema.org

On my to do list is to learn about Schema.org and it's microdata schema. According to an article in the February 2012 issue of Website Magazine, in June 2011, the major search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Bing, created Schema.org as a unified way of consistently using structured data all across the web. The schema allows webmasters to add microdata to HTML tags. For example, if you have a header in your website that says People, you can add a tag to the HTML to tell exactly what People means, such as humans or a magazine type. Within each broad category, you can define more details. For example, for a movie, you can define properties such as director name, producer and production company.
This is a really great feature for search engine users as it helps give more accurate search engine results. For example, if you are looking for a recipe using black eyed peas, you will probably also get a bunch of results relevant to the band called Black Eyed Peas. If you are doing a search for information on the band Black Eyed Peas, you might also get results relevant to the food black eyed peas. If websites use microdata to give specific details on what exactly the words Black Eyed Peas refer to, a band or food, search engines can use that information when they crawl the website, and then use that detailed information to present the websites that more closely match what you are searching for.
Schema.org is not good for webmasters, if they don't use it, since their search engine rankings might actually be lowered. Websites using schema.org's microdata will be easier to classify and more likely to find their target audience.
Schema.org's microdata uses four main attribute tags. The first is itemscope. It is used on a "div" element to identify that the div's children elements will contain information about "something".
The second attribute is itemprop. It defines the item's value attributes. Each itemprop tag contains specific information about "something", such as name, price, description, availability, etc.
The third attribute is itemtype. This sets a url to where schema.org defines the attributes for the "something" you are giving information about, such as itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" or itemtype ="http://schema.org/Movie".
The fourth main attribute is the itemid tag. This sets a unique identifier for a given item.
It sounds to me like schema.org's metadata is going to be a necessary search engine optimization technique for all websites to use, if they are trying to achieve a top search engine result ranking. I know I will be working on adding it to my magazine back issues website.
If you hire professionals to optimize your website, such as Inbound interactive, Calgary SEO experts, make sure they have schema.org's microdata in their bag of tricks to get your website listed at the top of search engine results.