Increase your visibility on Google by using schema markup, and discover how you can improve your SEO and attract more clicks by displaying relevant data directly in the search results.
Danni Jessen
Schema Markup is quickly becoming one of the most important aspects of SEO optimisation for your website.
Schema Markup is a piece of code that you add to your website, and there are many different types, each serving its own purpose. However, they all share the same main goal: to provide search engines with more detailed information about the content on your website.
Schema Markup helps Google to accurately read and index your landing pages, and enables the display of enhanced search results, such as rich snippets, on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
In this blog post, I will cover the following topics:
In short, Schema Markup is a piece of code that you add to your website, used to provide search engines with more in-depth information about your blog post, your product, or your business. Schema Markup helps search engines, such as Google, to better understand your website and thereby index it more effectively.
There are three different formats or “languages” you can use when adding schema to your website: Microdata, RDF-A, and JSON-LD.
Microdata consists of attributes that can be added directly to HTML5 elements. This means it is code that must be implemented within your current website code.
<p itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Person”>
Hi, I’m
<span itemprop=”name”>Alice</span>. </p>
RDF-A is essentially similar to Microdata. The main difference compared to Microdata is that while Microdata is exclusive to HTML5, RDF-A can be used with other languages.
<p vocab=”http://schema.org/” typeof=”Person”>
Hi, I’m <span property=”name”>Alice</span>.
</p>
JSON-LD is the format we recommend you use, and it is also the most widely adopted method for adding schema markup to your pages. JSON-LD is the industry standard for schema markup, and it is also the format recommended by Google. JSON-LD is fundamentally different from the other two, as it is a script, not a direct addition to existing code.
<p>
Hi, I’m Alice.
</p>
<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “http://schema.org“,
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Alice”
}
</script>
You can read more about these types of schema markup in this article from Google.
Search engines are becoming increasingly intelligent, and can understand most of the content they read. However, they still do not think like humans (yet), so there are still things they do not fully grasp. That is why it is sometimes necessary to spell things out for search engines. This is where schema markup becomes relevant – and sometimes essential.
Schema markup opens up a wealth of opportunities in search engines like Google, and can help expand your search results with various rich snippets. Rich snippets are enhanced information displayed alongside search results, which can highlight individual results for users. Google does not support every type of rich snippet, but it does support the majority.
Examples of rich snippets include:
Depending on the type of rich snippet you have set up, this opens up a host of opportunities for displaying your content directly in the search results.
Some of the rich snippets mentioned above can look like this:
Aggregate Rating allows Google to display reviews from your users directly in your search results, as shown in the example below.
A featured snippet displays an extract from your landing page which Google believes best answers the user’s query in a detailed way. For example, it might look like the image below, where a user has searched for “fallen metatarsal”.
These two examples are just a small selection of the rich snippets that Google can display using schema markup.
There are four simple steps to follow if you want to implement schema markup on your website. Of course, your specific needs will vary depending on the type of website you have. However, generally speaking, you can follow these steps:
If you follow these four simple steps, you are well on your way to having a fully schema-markup-optimised website.
As with many things, it is important to assess your needs before you get started. This is also true when implementing schema markup.
For example, if you run an online shop, you will need to implement different types of schema markup, such as Organisation and Product.
Homepage – Organisation
Product pages – Product
To get an overview of all your landing pages, you can use a sitemap, or use a tool such as Screaming Frog to crawl your website. You do not need to create schema markup for every single page, but instead, create a template that can be easily implemented across your site.
As mentioned earlier, there are three different languages you can use to implement schema markup:
We recommend that you use JSON-LD, as this is Google’s preferred option.
You might think you need to be an expert coder to build a schema markup template, but it is actually not that difficult. Google has kindly provided a tool that helps guide you through the process and ensures you can quickly and easily build the right structure for your template.
You can find and use Google’s tool here.
As with anything else, it is important to test your pages before you publish them. This also applies when you are implementing schema markup. Google has also created a tool that tells you whether your schema is implemented correctly.
This tool provides two types of error messages:
If you receive the latter message, you will need to identify and fix the error before proceeding.
Depending on your website’s purpose, schema markup is a must-have for SEO. The easier it is for search engines like Google to understand the content on your site, the more likely your pages are to rank higher in search results. There are a few considerations to make before implementing schema markup, but overall, it is not as difficult as it might sound.
If you have any questions or would like help implementing schema markup on your website, you are very welcome to contact us.
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