How to convince your developers or boss to implement schema.org
Hello, and thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
First, let’s talk about what schema markup is.
Schema.org (often called Schema) is a semantic vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that you can add to your HTML to improve the way search engines read and represent your page in SERPs. It’s metadata that is agreed upon by ALL of the major search engines.
Why is schema markup necessary?
It can result in rich search snippets, and it can create Google Actions, which feed data into voice results.
Once your data is structured, it can become interoperable in other systems, and it helps searchers who don’t know the exact name of a topic but can find it by searching for its characteristics. Or if there is online confusion around your brand name or products – or your Knowledge Panel is inaccurate, it could help with disambiguation.
Or, if you notice that the click-through rate for your listings is low, schema markup might help by creating rich results for your URLs and assets in search.
If your site has recipes, it’s almost a requirement. For recipes (if they have schema.org in place) …the structured data labels each element of the recipe and allows users to search for your recipe by ingredient, calorie count, cook time, and so on.
Additionally, the top results for almost all recipe queries are enhanced search snippets powered by schema – results that push the non-enhanced snippets to the bottom of the search engine results page.
While it’s not a ranking factor per se, 75% of the top 100 Alexa sites have schema markup in place.
How can schema markup impact organic traffic?
Google has also compiled a variety of case studies regarding the impact of schema.org markup.
- Rakuten increased their traffic from search engines by 2.7X by adding the recipe schema markup.
- Eventbrite boosted traffic 100% with event schema markup.
- Schema app has seen that their enterprise customers have 35% more impressions, 26% more clicks, and 20% higher CTR by adding schema markup. They also have, on average, ranked nine positions higher in search.
Other benefits of adding schema mark up include:
- For video schema markup: the ability for users to play your video directly from search. This markup also adds the video length and further details in search.
- Or, if you have a job posting, the markup will make your post eligible to be shown in Google’s job search experience.
The schema types that I recommend for most clients are:
- Organization/Sameas
- Video
- FAQ and How-to content.
- Breadcrumb
- Images
- Events
- Author
- Search box
- Speakable
How do you implement schema markup?
Google recommends implementing schema.org in the JSON-LD format with Google Tag Manager and Google even provides instructions here.
Some plugins make it easier to add schema markup like Yoast, Schema.org Metatag module for Drupal, and SchemaApp.
But most of the time, it takes developer resources to get it implemented. And drafting User Stories that include the need for the results schema markup provides might help persuade your developers. Here’s a great example from Izzy Smith’s presentation at SMX:
So that’s your tip for today – justification for why you should add schema markup to your SEO roadmap and get it prioritized.
Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.
Listen to the previous episode: Content Pruning
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