Maximizing SEO With Structured Data: A Complete Guide to Schema Markup

Among dozens of well-known search engine optimization tactics, schema markup might be one of the least understood and often overlooked ones. Yet, it has the power to take your SEO game to the next level.

So what does it stand for, why does it matter, and how do you use it? Read on to learn!

Source: Freepik

What Is Structured Data?

Structured data is a standardized format of data used to help search engines crawl and understand your site. Added to your site, structured data enables you to classify the content on specific pages.

For example, if you have a blog article, structured data can help you emphasize where the article’s heading, author, and body are located on the page, hence helping search engines understand it better.

And What Is Schema Markup?

Though there is often some confusion around these terms, they aren’t exactly the same.

Structured data is the information you provide about your website, whereas schema markup is the specific language (semantic vocabulary) you use to provide the needed data.

Why Is Schema Important for Your SEO?

As we all know, many ways exist to take higher positions in search engine results. Namely, some of the core best practices include creating high-quality content that resonates and dealing with on-page optimization. Businesses can leverage reliable tools like aioverviewtracker.com to analyze their current rankings and find helpful content optimization tips to dominate SERP. Also, there are many effective link-building tactics that help build trust and drive more traffic.

Yet, among all the known SEO best practices, there is one with enormous power that’s still often overlooked. And it’s SEO markup.

Structured data markup SEO is crucial for a few reasons:

  • First of all, it helps search engines crawl and index your site better. Sites that use this to their benefit have the potential to appear higher in SERP.
  • By understanding different elements of your pages, Google can enrich your results with additional data. For example, if you’re posting a recipe, people will be able to see the calorie count of your recipe, the time it takes to cook, the recipe’s rating, etc. Eventually, users will see more details about what they find on your page and will be likelier to click.
  • Although the importance of microdata SEO is undoubtful, many businesses still don’t use it. That is, if you implement structured data right now, you will also get a chance to outshine the competitors.

Types of Schema You Can Use

Schema.org, the official source of schema vocabulary, allows users to select the right type of markup, each attributed with a set of specific properties. Currently, there are over 800 types, and it’s crucial to pick the right option for your site in order to ensure that search engine bots understand it well.

Some commonly used schema types include:

  • Event;
  • Health and medical types;
  • Organization;
  • Person;
  • Creative works (e.g., Book, TVSeries, Movie, Recipe, etc.);
  • Review, AggregateRating;
  • Embedded non-text objects (aka AudioObject, ImageObject, and VideoObject);
  • Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant;
  • Product, Offer, AggregateOffer;
  • The list could go on.

The type of schema organization you pick will directly affect how your site looks in search engine results. For example, if you use product tags (Product, Offer, AggregateOffer), users can see the top products offered on your site right under your site in results. Or, if you implement a search action, users will be able to search for something on your site right from SERP.

How to Implement Schema Markup

If you don’t know where to start, Google has an excellent resource that can set you on the right track. The Search Gallery and Rich Results is a comprehensive catalog of tags that Google supports. The catalog is broken down into eight industry categories:

  • News
  • Organizations
  • Ecommerce
  • Jobs
  • Sports
  • Entertainment
  • Food and Drink
  • Education and Science

Pick your industry and find the needed page element types to implement that you can tag. For example, brands in the Food and Drink category can add a carousel, recipe, review, or video.

2. Learn From Your Competitors

Some attributes and objects that you can add might not be very obvious for your niche. Hence, apart from browsing Google’s gallery, it can be helpful to peep into your direct competitors’ strategies.

You can use Google results or the “Inspect” option on the needed page to see what markup your competitors have added and then replicate their efforts on your site.

3. Build Your Code

Once you know what elements of your site you want to tag, you need to build the code. You can do this manually using the information from schema.org and Google’s Search Gallery and Rich Results. Or you can go the easy way and use Google Structured Data Markup Helper.

This tool lets you pick the type of data you want to tag and then attribute the right tags to different page elements step by step.

Source: Google

Alt text: The starting page of Google’s Structured Data Helper

4. Add and Test

Once ready, you can add your SEO markup to your website. You can do it by going to your CMS (if you use one) or source code and manually adding the generated code to appropriate spots. Alternatively, you can download the automatically generated HTML file with your website schema using Google Helper and simply paste it into your CMS or source code.

Once ready, leverage the Rich Results Test in Google Search Central to test your structured data and see if all attributes are easily detected by search bots.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Now that you have a step-by-step guide to schema markup SEO let us give you a few extra tips on what to avoid:

  • Featuring wrong tag types. For example, using HowTo instead of Recipe schema when marking up a recipe page or implementing Article instead of BlogPosting tag on a blog post/article that’s not newsworthy.
  • Using unnecessary tags and spamming structured data just to boost your chances of ranking high.
  • Using incorrect code formatting.
  • Not testing your markup thoroughly to detect and fix possible errors.
  • Applying markup everywhere across your site when it only needs to be added to your key pages.

Avoiding these and other mistakes shouldn’t be hard if you leverage the right tools and thoroughly plan before implementing your markup. Additionally, it’s important to remember that less is better in structured data, so be sure not to overdo it.

Conclusion

These days, schema markup is an irreplaceable element of every strategy that aims for high traffic and excellent SEO performance. Structured data can help you make your pages easier to understand and rank for search engines. Additionally, you can make your site appear as a rich snippet in SERP and, thus, receive a better click-through rate. And it can let you beat the competition too!

As you can see, the benefits of structured data are huge. So don’t wait any longer. Use the guide we shared here to make it a part of your SEO strategy and receive impeccable results!