Schema Markup is a type of code that can be placed on your website in order to help search engine bots understand the contents of a certain page. In turn, this allows them to present users with more informative results for their query in the form of rich snippets. This is the result of collaboration between the major search engines in an effort to provide a better user experience and more detailed information in SERP.
How Does Schema Markup Work?
In essence, schema markup uses semantic vocabulary to tell crawlers what a certain piece of content or information on the page is. In other words, it structures the data on your website by defining item properties.
For example, most eCommerce product pages contain different types of information about the product. So let’s say the product in question is a pair of boots. The page can contain data such as the price, stock, review rating, shipping time, available sizes, discount, etc.
These are all numerical values and the search engines recognize them as such. However, no matter how smart they are, they can’t understand what those numbers actually mean without structured data vocabulary.
This is where structured data markup comes in. By assigning an item property to each number from the example, you can “tell” the search engine what they mean, and how the information should be presented to the user.
Schema Markup and Rich Snippets
Schema markup is focused on user experience – it was developed to help websites provide more detailed and informative responses to queries. From the search engine’s perspective, this is done by displaying rich snippets.
A rich snippet can contain plenty of information that the users would otherwise need to visit your website in order to see. If we go back to our boots example, this essentially means that if the page displays as a rich snippet in Google search results, the user would have all the mentioned information right before them. This can go a long way for you in terms of click-through rate.
Although there is no guarantee that your webpage will show up as a rich snippet in results, the prospect itself should be enough to warrant the optimization.
Of course, this doesn’t only apply to eCommerce stores – data markup can be used for virtually any type of website to structure different types of data, whether numerical, alphabetical, or visual with countless markup types.
How to Implement Schema Markup?
Fortunately, you don’t need too much coding knowledge. Google’s structured data markup helper offers a step-by-step guide on implementing data markup on your website. Simply follow the instructions provided and select the types of markup you want to use.
Summing Up
In summary, implementing schema markup structures the information on your website by defining what different bits of data refer to. This allows search engines to recognize information that can be valuable to their users and return it to them in response to a query. Make sure to use this to your advantage in an effort to stand out in Google search results.
Although the sheer number of different schema types may make it seem like a lot of work, you would be well advised to structure all the data you can making use of the different types of schema markups. From blog posts, product and service pages, to review and company profile pages – the more the better.