Businesses are striving hard to scale up their online presence in today’s competitive market! Maximising the organic reach of the website has become a challenge for everyone – small businesses, entrepreneurs, enterprises, and more.
As a business owner, you constantly have to look for ways that can boost your site’s organic traffic and visibility. Now that you have SEO-optimized engaging content and responsive design, what more you can add to scale up? This is where website schema markup can play a crucial role by providing structured data and enhancing the website. This guide offers a comprehensive study of all you need to know about schema markup updates.
What is Schema Markup?
In the easiest terms, schema markup is a code that is added to the code of your website. It assists the search engine to understand the site’s purpose and the content that results in higher organic search.
It’s like structuring content and putting up a related label – be it a product, service or a consulting website offering related information. As the buzzword in today’s SEO industry, Schema.org makes it simpler for webmasters to provide accurate info about their post, website or pages.
Schema markup is commonly attributed using one of the three languages:
- Resource Descriptive Framework in Attributes
- JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Objects
- Microdata
Search for a laptop service canter near you and you get a list of reviews, stars, and operating hours, this is how a schema markup language works! Once added to your website, schema markup creates a detailed overview of the page, known as ‘rich snippet’. The schema markup rich snippet appears on the SERPs which gives an enhanced visual impression.
Types of Schema Markup
Here’s the tricky deal! Ensuring the schema type matches the primary element of your page is the key as there are thousands of them! There are a few quite popular schema types that you are familiar with! While product markup is ideal for e-commerce sites, FAQ schema is ideal for answering popular queries on the search page. We have event schema for the real estate and ‘local business’ schema that are specific for local businesses.
The schema markup uses a wide range of vocabularies that enables countless customizations that defines the website’s purpose. Some of the most popular schema markup types are listed below:
- Recipes
- Reviews
- Movies
- Unique blog & article posts
- Events
- Creative works
- Business information
- Services & Products that you provide
Finding the best-suited schema type that aligns and describes your business is the key! Still, if you are unable to find the best match, keep checking schema.org as the list keeps growing.
How does schema markup help & why it’s important?
Did you know that Schema.org is a collaboration among Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and Yandex? This shared vocabulary is applicable to global search engines to offer more valuable search results.
Although schema markup is not the only factor that enhances SEO, it is definitely an important ranking factor. Known for creating extensive rich snippets, it gives better page visibility as compared to pages that contain only metadata. Additionally, it also boosts organic click-through rates through the extensive rich snippets. So, if your page highlights what you have promised, it lowers down the bounce rate.
India’ digital journey has been tremendous! In 2020 alone, 744 million users accessed the internet from their smartphones! This stat is rising with each passing day and the year 2022 will be no different. As ranking on the 1st page of Google search is becoming a necessity, schema markup becomes more important than before! As we come to the end of this year, exploring the top SEO optimization trends in 2022 starts now.
Difference between Schema.org, Structured Data, & Rich Snippets
Till now, we have often used these three words but what exactly do these words refer to? While all these words are interlinked, there is a thin line of difference by the virtue of their functionality. Let’s highlight the key difference:
Structured Data: Presenting clear, organized data so that search engines find it easy to match it with related searches by a user.
Schema.org: A type of structured data that is recognized by Google and other prominent search engines. One another structured data that we have often heard is Open graph that is exclusive for social media platforms.
Rich Snippets: These are fancy widgets that Google uses to showcase your website data as per searches. The noticeable difference is the structured format makes it easier for users to find their best match.
How to add schema markup to your website?
There are 3 distinct ways of adding schema markup to your website:
WordPress Plugin: If you are using the world’s most popular CMS platforms, you can find several dedicated plugins to select from! One of the best and most popular is Schema App Structured Data.
Using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper: If you are not accustomed toa WordPress, a structured data markup helper assists webmasters to add up schema markup without any trouble.
Manually written code: If you are a developer and have a solid coding background, this option is just right for you!
Conclusion
If you have read till here, now you have a better idea about various strategies to enhance the visibility and organic reach of your website. If you haven’t used schema markup to date, this is the right time to add it and see a remarkable difference in your organic traffic.
Read more: How To Embed Pinterest Board On Website – Most Effective Ways
