Structured Data and Your SEO: Build a Better Marketing Scheme Using Schema Markup
SEO is so important for businesses these days. If you want to be found by your target customers, you must ensure you have a good presence in the search engines, but this is becoming increasingly difficult to do as the competition keeps on increasing.
One way to get ahead of the rest is to speak the language of the search engines: Schema.org markup.
This can have some serious benefits for your SEO. But what is it and how does it work? Here’s what you need to know.
A Brief Intro to Structured Data
Structured data is basically the formatting of information into a specific format that is understood by everyone. When structured data is used in websites, search engines can easily see what the website is about, meaning they can provide better results to searchers.
What Is Schema Markup?
Schema.org is a type of markup for structured data. It was developed by the main search engine providers including Microsoft and Google, and its aim was to create a structured data markup that is understandable by all search engines
It consists of code that you can add to any webpage, and this code defines elements like the images, reviews, dates, and more, telling the search engines what they mean.
Types of Schema Markup
There are different types of markup using Schema, including: RDFa, microdata, and JSON-LD. These all have different benefits, and it is up to you and your web developer which one you choose. We won’t go into them here, but you can see how to mark up your pages with each of them using this detailed SearchEngineWatch guide.
Why You Should Use It
Essentially, using Schema markup provides your website with a big advantage over other sites that do not use it. It is therefore perhaps surprising that so few websites use it.
Schema allows you to mark up elements on a page including names, pictures, and more with code to tell the search engines exactly what the elements are. There are different types of structured data markup that you can use, and there is a long list of things you can mark up using Schema. While there are still things you cannot mark up, the list is expanded all the time.
Schema provides more specific context about the details of your web page. For example, if you are writing about Batman, are you writing about the movie or the comic book? With Schema, you can let the search engines know.
If you have no structured data, the website becomes information without any context. You need to provide context so that the search engines can find the relevant elements like rich data and rich snippets to provide more information on the results page.
Benefits for Your SEO Campaign
Schema markup allows Google to display rich snippets in its results. These can display lots of information, such as images, recipes, opening hours, etc, and all of this is possible through structured data markup.
This makes the results more attractive, and it makes them stand out more. The bonus for you is a great CTR, which leads to more targeted traffic and more sales.
If you hire an SEO agency like seoclickmedia.com, they will look for ways to give you an edge over the competition, and schema markup is one way to do this because the results can be impressive.
Just imagine searching for a recipe and finding a result that shows calories, preparation time, image, rating, etc. The chance are you would click on this over the other results.
In the competitive SEO environment, any small difference can give you a massive advantage over the competition.
Other Types of Markup
Besides Schema markup, there are other types of markup including Twitter Cards, Facebookâs Open Graph Protocol, and Rich Pins from Pinterest. All of these can have a big impact on your online presence increasing your presence on social media.
Twitter Cards determine how your website shows up when someone tweets about it. Additional data is added like photos and videos, and you can optimize size of the tweet and get more clicks. You can also use them to add extra details about your site beyond the 140 characters.
Open Graph Protocol is Facebook’s version, and this allows you to control how content is displayed when someone shares your site on Facebook. You can get more space to provide details of your site, providing a better experience.
Take Advantage of Schema Markup to Boost Your SEO
Schema markup can be an effective way to stand out from your competition in the search engines, so it is well worth considering for any business that wants to get an advantage.
With SEO being so competitive these days, schema markup is a relatively simple way to give your brand greater visibility in the search engines, so talk to your SEO agency or web developer about implementing it on your web pages and take advantage of the benefits.
Author
Isaac Norman works with a digital marketing company as one of their content specialists. Always keen to learn, especially since the tech world is forever changing, Isaac writes articles to keep business owners in the loop too.
