What is Schema Markup?
Schema Markup plays an important role in gaining traffic. Schema markup tells the browser or search engines what your website contains and has to offer.
Adding schema markup to your HTML improves the way your page display in SERPs by enhancing the rich snippets that are displayed under the page title.
Schema Markup is a type of ‘rich snippet’, an HTML markup that adds additional details to the text under the URL in search results.
Rich snippets tell search engines directly who you are, where you are, what you do and give more refined information about your product/services.
HTML tags are hidden codes within a webpage that define how a web browser must format and display the content. Search engines have a limited understanding of what is really being discussed on pages.
You can help search engines to better understand your content display in a more useful, and relevant way. Schema markup is a set of tags that allows you to do this.
Schema markup makes it easier for search engine crawlers read your website and display the information. It’s a collection of specific tags that can be added to HTML to markup webpages for the major search engines.
It was invented to provide better and more detailed search results for users. Search engines rely on this markup to improve the display in SERPs.
You can give mechanical validation to your data by adding tags to different types of data on your webpage.
The purpose is to prove the way for search engines to better determine whether your content is relevant to the user’s search queries or not.
It specifies the exact type of data you have on your website. It’ll ease the process of comparison with other pages that have similar data and help rank you higher.
Structured Data – Structured data refers to data which is identifiable because it’s organized in a structure.
Structured data is a data pairing between a name and an input value that is inserted into your content to help search engines categorize and index content based on their semantic vocabulary.
Structured data is a universal language of its own that can be understood by any structured data format. It’s mainly used to help search engines interpret the purpose and context of a webpage.
Microdata – Microdata (like RDF and Microformats) is a form of semantic markup designed to describe elements on a webpage like a review, person, event, etc.
Microdata is a structured data format that works with HTML5 which is preferred by Google. It’s combined with HTML which allows you to mark up your page with vocabulary most search engines understand.
HTML5 – HTML is a short form for HyperText Markup Language. HTML language was created to regulate the code for displaying content on the Internet.
The microdata markup in HTML5 gives search engines a clear message about what type of data or content is indexing.
Snippet – It’s a small piece or brief extract as in snippets of information. The search engine result is a bunch of snippets like title, URL, and description.
Rich snippets are designed to enhance the information that Google collects from a website by providing additional data and offer users more details.
Search listings with prices, reviews and product images can be a focus for more clicks than text-only listings. These additional details are rich snippets.
The more clicks will lead to more purchase because the buyer arrives at the target website already well informed about the product and pricing.
Schema.org –
In 2011, Google worked with Yahoo, and Bing to create schemas that could be included by website owners and can be understood by all the major search engines.
Schema.org is a set of vocabulary terms which are used to describe website structure and data. It provides a collection of shared vocabularies for website owners to markup their webpages to be recognized by search engines.
These shared vocabularies are paired with microdata to include metadata with HTML of a webpage to understand by search engines.
Search engines will know regardless of the use of any specific format to generate your schema markup because there’s the common language used in all of them.
How Schema Markup Works –
Schema.org is the project’s website. The search engine will pull data from it and generates what is called a rich snippet of information for the search engine results page.
Schema markup is meant to enhance content blocks for search engines to categorize and display as rich media. Schema markup is technically HTML wrapping of predefined tagging with contextual associations.
There are a lot of benefits to schema markup, but they’re not direct benefits for users and aren’t directly visible at all. Schema markup tells search engines what your data is and what it means.
It tells Google that a particular bit of data written by a specific author covering a specific topic in the format of a blog post.
Schema is normal web metadata that tells search engines and tells users a general summary of the content of the page.
Schema markup allows you to categorize content and show up widely in searches related to that content. Structured data is the extra information that you can see next to a website and Meta description.
e.g. If you’re searching for a restaurant, you’ll also see additional information like hours, pricing, and reviews stars as well as a restaurant name.
Types of Content Schema Markup Support –
There are thousands of schema markup types available. It’s proven that businesses that used schema markup for their websites have a better ranking status in SERPs.
Schema markup offers many types of content which is an important part of the CMS implementation project.
There are a few common types of available content:-
# Articles – Schema markup for articles gives more possibility to show up in the news section in Google searches. Make important information such as title, images, and publishing date.
# Video – A video-rich results appear in certain types of searches where a demonstration is helpful like video thumbnail image and Time.
# Recipes – You can count on recipe rich results to show up for food searches. Recipe schema markup allows you to provide valuable information to get more clicks such as cooking time, calories, and ingredients.
# Events – Events results provide basic details about upcoming events such as name, date, time, and place.
# Place/Restaurant/Local Businesses – It’ll show opening hours, links to departments, and other possible actions such as making a reservation, business address, contact information, etc.
# Product/Offer – It shows product price, availability, review ratings, brands, and availability.
# Review/Rating – It can show-up for products, businesses, or creative products such as books, and movies. Reviews/rating results could return to search with more frequency.
Benefits of Schema Markup –
Schema markup is the most under-utilized tool for SEO. The rich schema markup and snippets attract a substantial amount of qualified online traffic and generating increased revenue.
There are a few reasons to use structured data to improve the visibility of your website:-
# Enhances SEO – It helps the search engine crawlers to understand the content on your pages when you use schema markup for categorizing phrases and words in the website’s HTML.
It helps your website in the organic search results with a good position in SERPs that can beat paid search marketing.
Schema markup helps search engines interpret the data on your website with more accuracy in an organized and structured way. It allows search engines to develop the content of your website and webpages.
# Increases Online Presence – Schema markup uses the rich snippets that help increase the online presence of your website in the SERPs.
It helps to improve the CTR and drive quality traffic to your website. It has the potential to enhance CTR from the search results from anywhere. Rich snippets make a listing more attractive and increase click-through-rate (CTR).
# Improve Local SEO – Schema markup is an excellent feature to enhance the local business presence in Google My Business.
It supports your local business with the best search engine features to boost local SEO and provide positive benefits to increase overall business standards. Marking your webpages will allow your business to show up in search engines.
Google My Business and Bing places support local business with insightful interfaces that allow updating company information. These tools help your business manage your information to appear in search engines.
# Generate Rich Snippets – Google will show snippets in the search results with the website content for relevant keywords when your website has schema markup.
These snippets are rich snippets used to make a webpage look visually better in a search result and to increase the chance to click your link.
The use of additional types of schema, and you’ll have more opportunities to appear in search. Schema markup leads to the generation of rich snippets in SERPs.
# Improve Website Ranking – Webpages with schema markup rank four places higher than non-schema markup webpages.
Websites related to movies, offers/deals, and TV series are more likely to implement schema markup.
Webpages with schema markup display business information in SERPs such as contact numbers, logos, social media accounts, and blogs, etc.
It provides greater information to search engines to improve their understanding of the website’s content. Websites using schema markup is likely to rank higher in search results.
How to Add Scheme Markup to a Website –
# Development Team – Your dedicated developer can make edits to the source of your website’s pages which includes the page templates. Hard-coding schema is the best way to apply it.
You could use JavaScript and integrate it with the JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data).
JSON-LD allows to include all the rich snippet information in a small piece of JavaScript code, and include anywhere on the website.
It doesn’t interfere with any existing code on the website and you can freely amend your website layout.
JSON-LD is a popular format for many reasons. Google can read JSON-LD content injected from JavaScript code and embedded widgets.
# Google’s Data Highlighter – You can use this tool from Google Search Console for any verified website. You can simply select your page, highlight your data type, and tag elements on the page with their appropriate label.
# Plugin – A Plugin is one of the easiest ways to add schema markup to the WordPress website. Using a plugin to configure your schema markup is the easiest option for most users.
There are a number of WordPress plugins to create rich Meta descriptions and formatting. These plugins allow users to select what each page and post is about for a more structured search engine appearance.
Once installed, and activated the plugin. You can add schema.org or markup to posts and pages. It’ll appear at the bottom of your editing screen.
It’ll not change any live website information unless you decide to implement schema on those pages or posts. You can go into review inside of the WP page/post editor and then find the area.
You should fill out the info and save your post. You now have schema markup on that page. It’s easy and will allow you to eventually rank better for your review.
Conclusion – The use of schema markup will help search engines better understand your page to clearly identify the content. Search engines can read your page and the information will pass-on to searcher within the snippet. A large number of rich snippets increases the click-through-rate to increase the overall traffic to your website. Schema markup also leads to your page ranking high in SERPs.