Schema.org is a collaborative effort between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex. It’s a shared vocabulary that provides search engines with the necessary information they need so they can better understand your content. This enables them to provide visitors with more valuable search results.
What is Schema?
The Schema markup is a form of microdata or structured data vocabulary that helps search engines deliver richer results. This schema.org vocabulary enables search engines to see the relationships between entities, making it an important part of search engine optimization or SEO.
Search engines have a limited understanding of the content on web pages; creators help them gain a better understanding of a page’s content using additional HTML tags. These HTML tags can help connect particular pieces of information to specific things that users are looking up. They can indicate that a certain article describes a certain movie or person, for example.
By adding an additional set of HTML tags, or microdata, you’re helping search engines understand your content better, thus enabling them to display your page on search engine results pages (SERPs) in a more relevant manner.
By putting the right schema markup for a keyword, you’re telling search engines what your data means; schema.org provides users with better information relating to a search they’ve conducted. Search engines would then be able to give users more targeted results to queries through enhanced rich snippets, not just random results that have little or no relation to the query that they’ve sent.
Search engines that recognize Schema markups include Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
What Are the Common Schema Markup Types?
Schema is versatile and can be used for a variety of data types, including:
- Articles
- Local businesses
- Events
- Products
- Reviews
- Creative works
- Movies
- Restaurants
- Organizations
Aside from these markup types, there are hundreds of other data markup types.
With each type of information, there are properties that can be used to further describe these items.
To illustrate, if you use a markup under “creative work”, you can choose “book”, which can have properties such as “name” or title, “author”, or “isbn”, among others, that you can use to describe a particular item in more detail.
Is Schema Useful for SEO?
Schema.org is a great tool for SEO.
While it might not directly affect your search rankings, it can deliver more relevant results that can lead to a better user experience. When used with other best practices in SEO, this can also be viewed as an important ranking factor.
Schema markups are more likely to produce extensive rich snippets, which can give your page better visibility on SERPs compared to a page that only shows metadata.
Having improved visibility can translate to better click-through rates. By using a structured data markup, you’d be able to tailor the information on rich snippets, displaying the type of information that you want your users to see.
Schema.org can also boost organic click-through rates via the extensive rich snippets. These, in turn, make your page easier to index through targeted metadata.
How Is the Schema Markup Used?
To begin using the Schema.org markup, you first need to determine which common schema types are best suited for your niche or content.
While not all markup types are common, they can still be viewed as relevant to your website or content. Thus, it’s beneficial for you to markup as much content as you can. When marking up your content, keep in mind that you should only mark up the content that’s visible to your visitors.
Once you’ve determined the right schema, add it to your website’s code using schema generator tools, such as Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, a relatively easy-to-use online tool, and Microdata Generator, which is a simple tool that can be useful for local businesses.
You can test your markup using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. After testing your markup, gauge its impact using monitoring tools, like Page Reporter and StoryBuilder.
Having properly structured data can help make your site look better on SERPs. For example, if you’re running a cooking website, using structured reviews can show recipes with higher ratings on search results.
Schema.org is an indispensable tool that enables webmasters to better optimize their websites and to make them more visible on SERPs.
