In the ever-evolving world of online business, simply having a website is not enough. In order to gain a competitive edge and drive more traffic to your website, you need to ensure that it is optimized for search engines.
This is where Schema Markup comes into play.
By adding Schema markup to your website’s code, you can provide search engines with additional context and information about your content, which can help improve your website’s search engine rankings.
In this article, we’ll explore the importance of Schema markup for SEO and how it can boost your website’s search engine rankings.
What is Schema Markup?
Schema markup is a type of microdata that can be found on Schema.org. It is a language that can be added to webpages to create an enriched description, commonly known as a rich snippet, which appears in search results.
The added information provided by Schema markup can make your search result stand out from the crowd and provide more information to potential visitors. It helps search engines better understand the content on your website, which can lead to improved visibility and higher click-through rates.
In short, Schema markup is an essential component of modern SEO that can give your website a competitive edge.
Back in 2011, major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex came together to form Schema.org with the goal of creating a standardized framework for structured data markup.
Schema markup has become even more vital in today’s search engine landscape, especially with the advent of Hummingbird and RankBrain algorithms.
The quality of a search result depends on how well a search engine understands the context of a query, and Schema markup can provide the additional context needed to improve the accuracy and relevance of search results.
How Do We (Humans) and Google (Search Engine) Sees The Schema Data?
Schema data is interpreted differently by humans and search engines like Google. Humans can see Schema data in the form of rich snippets, which provide a quick summary of a webpage’s content, including images, ratings, and other information. This can help users to quickly determine if a webpage contains the information they are looking for without having to click through to the website.
While search engines like Google use Schema data to better understand and index webpage content. When Google crawls a webpage that has Schema markup, it can identify the different types of content and information presented on the page, such as product details, event information, or recipes. This improved understanding can help Google provide users with more relevant and informative search results.
Types of Schema Markup
There are several types of Schema markup that can be used to describe different types of content on a website.
There are 32 types of schema that Google can recognize and understand; these include:
- Article
- Book
- Breadcrumb
- Course
- Dataset
- Employer Aggregate Rating
- Event
- FAQ
- Fact Check
- How-to
- Job Posting
- Local Business
- Logo
- Movie
- Podcast
- Product
- Q&A Page
- Recipe
- Review
- SameAs
- Software Application
- Special Announcement
- TV Episode
- TV Series
- Video
- WebPage
- About Page
- Contact Page
- HomePage
- Checkout Page
- Collection Page
- Search Results Page
Each of these types of Schema markup provides specific information about the content on a webpage, helping search engines to better understand and index the content.
Can Schema Markup Boost Your Website’s Search Engine Rankings?
There is no conclusive proof that implementing Schema markup directly impacts a website’s ranking in organic search results.
Despite the lack of direct evidence linking Schema markup to improved search rankings, utilizing rich snippets generated by Schema can lead to better visibility of webpages in search engine results pages (SERPs). This increased visibility has been observed to result in higher click-through rates (CTRs) and potentially drive more traffic to the website.
A recent study by acmqueue revealed that only a small percentage of Google’s search results, specifically less than one-third, contain a rich snippet generated by Schema.org markup.
This indicates a significant opportunity for website owners who implement Schema markup on their pages to potentially increase their visibility in search engine results and stand out from the competition.
Adding Schema To Your Webpages
JSON-LD, microdata, and RDFa are three coding languages you can use to tell search engines exactly what is on your website.
JSON-LD
JSON-LD, which stands for JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data, is a type of schema markup code that is placed in the head section of a webpage to provide search engines with information about the content on the page.
It uses a syntax similar to JavaScript and is easy to read and write for both humans and machines. Google suggests using JSON-LD for Schema markup because it’s simpler to manage and modify.
The following is what it looks like:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Product",
"name": "Example Product",
"description": "This is an example product.",
"sku": "12345",
"brand": {
"@type": "Brand",
"name": "Example Brand"
}
}
</script>
In the example, the JSON-LD code describes a product using the schema.org vocabulary. The @context specifies the schema.org context, @type defines the type of object being described (in this case, a product), and the other properties provide additional information about the product, such as its name, description, SKU, and brand.
The JSON-LD code is wrapped in a script tag and placed in the head of the HTML document.
Microdata
Microdata is a type of schema markup that uses HTML tags to mark up specific pieces of information on a webpage. The tags are added to the existing HTML code and provide additional context to search engines about the content of the webpage.
The following is what it looks like:
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">
<h1 itemprop="headline">Article headline</h1>
<p itemprop="description">Article description.</p>
<span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
By <span itemprop="name">John Doe</span>.
</span>
<time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2023-05-04T00:00:00Z">May 4th, 2023</time>
</div>
In this example, the div element contains the microdata markup for an article. The itemscope attribute tells search engines that this element represents a schema.org item, in this case, an article. The itemtype attribute specifies the type of schema.org item, which is “http://schema.org/Article” for an article.
Each piece of information about the article, such as the headline, description, author, and date published, is marked up using the itemprop attribute. Search engines can use this information to display a rich snippet in search results.
RDFa
RDFa (Resource Description Framework in attributes) is another format of schema markup. It is used to embed structured data in HTML documents using HTML attributes.
Here’s an example of RDFa markup:
<p vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="Product">
<span property="name">iPhone X</span>
<img property="image" src="iphone-x.jpg" alt="iPhone X">
<span property="description">The latest iPhone from Apple.</span>
<span property="brand">Apple</span>
<span property="offers" typeof="Offer">
<span property="priceCurrency" content="USD">US$999.00</span>
<span property="price" content="999.00">999.00</span>
<span property="availability" content="https://schema.org/InStock">In stock</span>
</span>
</p>
In this example, the vocab attribute is used to declare the vocabulary or schema being used, in this case, Schema.org. The typeof attribute is used to indicate the type of the item being described, which is a “Product” in this case. The various property attributes are used to describe the properties of the product, such as its name, image, description, brand, and price.
Like JSON-LD and microdata, RDFa markup helps search engines to better understand the content of a webpage and display rich results in search engine results pages.
Conclusion
By now, any concerns you might have had about using Schema or Structured Data on your webpages should be resolved.
Despite the initial appearance of complexity, Schema implementation is relatively simple, and it is highly recommended to incorporate it into your website for better performance.
While it may require some initial effort, the long-term benefits of Schema markup are undeniable and will be worth the investment.
So, don’t hesitate to adopt this best practice and see the positive impact it can have on your search engine visibility and user engagement.
