What is Structured Data/Schema?
Schema which is also known as structured data is microdata that you can add to your website through HTML or script to improve the way your listings are represented on search engines. You have probably seen many examples of schema already without even knowing it. Whenever you perform a search on Google and a listing comes up that has extra elements that other listings do not this is because of schema. These elements can appear as star ratings, product prices, event dates and more.
Schema allows your website to provide additional information to users directly through their search results. Search engines will automatically index your content but schema tells a search engine what your content means. Through using schema search engines can better identify information that is important to their users and present that information to them in the search results. As an example if you have a number of highly reviewed products Google natively will index the product and display a listing for that product when it is searched for. When it shows up in the search engine rankings no one will know that it is highly reviewed. However if you were to add review schema to the product then its search engine listing would display a star rating along with the number of reviews it has.
Why is it Important for SEO?
Schema helps all kinds of content types rank better on search engines. There is specific schema markup for a wide range of content types including products, local businesses, restaurants, movies, articles, hotels, schools and much more. In fact there are hundreds of schema markup types. By adding specific schema markup to the type of content you are offering on your website, it will help it rank higher on search engines. In fact one study determined that websites with schema markup rank an average of four positions higher in the SERPs than those without schema markup.
According to Searchmetrics only 30% of all websites are actually utilizing schema markup. This means a large majority of websites are missing out on a huge rankings booster. If you’re website is currently not utilizing schema then you could be missing out on a large amount of web traffic.
How Do I Add Structured Data/Schema to my Website?
A major reason as to why many websites have not implemented schema is because it can be quite complicated. There are a few different methods of implementing schema and they very quite a bit. It can either be added to elements on your website using specific HTML tags or through JSON-LD script. Both methods of implementation require technical knowledge and an understanding of schema markup.
To research exactly just how much schema markup there is and each markup type you can visit schema.org. Schema.org is a great starting point to understanding just how schema markup works.
Once you have an understanding of how to implement schema onto your website, Google has a great rich results tool to test your schema markup. To use this tool and test your schema visit https://search.google.com/test/rich-results.
We are Here to Help
If schema seems overwhelming to you we have search engine optimization experts that are ready to help. We have SEO professionals who are well versed in schema and know how to implement it on any type of website. No matter your business type we can utilize schema to have your website ranking higher on search engines. For more information on how we can help your SEO with schema please contact us.
