I like the idea but to be fully compliant with a "how to" structure you need to have every step documented. I think this would annoy people more than be beneficial. I see it as the ideal solution to walk someone through but realistically most people are lazy and wouldn't put it in the right format or would put everything as one step rather than individual steps. As such, I think "article" regretfully is the best choice for now.

It might be worth having two types of formats. The article format where it is like a blog and then the step-by-step approach with the "how to" functionality.

Hi John,

Perfect let the author decide how to set the Data type. Seems to be at the moment Google doesn't pick up all SmarterTracks Structured Article data type which requires properties for author, author.name, etc  I ran through the Google Structured Data Markup Helper see below.

Just wanted to say thank you its great to have the data type in there but hoping you can make some refinements to make the most of it to get SmarterTrack content ranked higher, now Google seems to be using this more.