Schema Markups: Everything You Need To Know

Table of Contents

Hi folks Chris here, from Search-pilot, in today’s article we’re going to be covering an advanced seo topic called schema markups.

We’ll explain to you:

what schema markups are

why they’re important

the different types of schema markups that are out there, and

how you can create and deploy schema markups For your web pages.

So let’s get started,

What are schema markups

schemas are semantic vocabulary of tags that you can add to the html code of a page, they help search engine crawlers read specific parts of your website and represent them the way you want in the search results.

for example this little snippet of code is a schema markup for a recipe for apple pie on food network’s website

That’s what it looks like in the code or Tag form, don’t worry they aren’t supposed to be read by you the human readers.

This tag is for google bots or crawlers when crawlers read this tag they know how to represent it in a visual manner on google serps for human readers like you and me.

Like this

Why are schema markups so important

Well firstly structured data like schema markup can Help google understand who you are and what your page is all about.

For example again this apple pie page has the relevant structured data

So it’s essentially saying to google, hey we are a website that’s all about food and recipes and this page has a complete recipe for making an apple pie.

So if anyone searches with queries like How to make an apple pie or apple pie recipe, then this page will be pretty useful for you and that can potentially help you rank better for relevant search queries.

Secondly schema markup can help you stand out on google serps.

Not only do they look better from an aesthetic point of view but they deliver useful information to searchers you can entice users to click on your Page and drive traffic to your site and a high click-through rate sends positive signals to google helping it understand that your content is in demand,

So the next time your page may rank even higher for those search queries.

What are the different types of schema markups

Well the simple answer is a lot, Schema.org is a huge platform with hundreds of markup types you can check out the full list on schema.org

But i just want to cover some of the most important ones, so let’s start off with

1. Organizational schema markup

This schema isn’t a rich snippet, which means it won’t visually show things like the gold stars that you might see in Reviews,

but it’s still super important since it gives google information like, who you are, what your business is all about, your logo, address etc.

That helps google better understand your business and helps establish links between your business and other things associated with your business such as any creative works your Company might have created.

2. Person schema

If you’re a person with some sort of following or want to give out a bit more info about someone apart from the usual search result,

person schema is the one for you, it helps you add details with a better structure and a better overall look.

3. Review product and offer schema markup

probably the most common type of schema markups are the review product and offer schema markups, like the name suggests you can add details like the name of your product, its services and any special offers.

They display rich results like these

which help them stand out on serps, i also want to touch on schemas for local businesses, local businesses can get the most out of their seo using the local business schema markup,

this usually consists of a Number of smaller schemas which when added up, basically tell google everything it needs to know about your business establishment, this includes information like your location, your reviews, your operating hours, the nature of your business and more.

All this information is then displayed in search results including the local pack which is super useful from a local seo point of view.

All right, now we understand what schema markups are and why they’re important, we understand what they look like and how they’re displayed. But how do we go about actually creating and implementing schemas

How to create and deploy schema markups

Well, it becomes much easier if you’re familiar with JSON-LD. JSON-LD is basically a way of linking data in the json format and json is what we use To transmit data back and forth between websites and browsers.

You can write the schema yourself in JSON-LD or you can use tools like merkle or google’s structured data markup helper, these generators usually only cover basic schema markup,

so if you want to create schema for anything beyond that, you’ll have to adjust the code yourself.

Creating schema in JSON-LD is pretty Straightforward if you know a bit of coding, i’ll use an example straight from schema.org to show you.

For example ACME home cleaning is a local business that provides different cleaning services in Massachusetts, using the correct schema markup it can tell google crawlers that it’s a local business with the business name acme home cleaning in Massachusetts,

that provides Cleaning services such as house cleaning and window washing, if google bots can understand this information then google just might show ACME home cleaning in its search results when someone in massachusetts searches for house cleaning or window washing services,

pretty cool right, so here’s what that information will look like in Json-LD

That’s the schema markup Right there, nothing too mysterious about it, i’ll leave it up here for a bit because i know it’s slightly long,

but you can see that the JSON-LD has a logical flow to it, it starts off with the context of schema.org, moves on to the type which is service, then explains the service type as weekly home cleaning.

You can even see the name of The service provider given as acme home cleaning along with the type, which is local business, we even see the area served as the state of massachusetts along with all the services offered.

Once you’ve created the entire snippet you can simply paste it to the header position of the html of your web page.

By the way i strongly advise you get a developer to do this Because there’s a chance if you do it wrong that will mess up your whole page, for simpler schemas you could just use the tools i mentioned like merkel or google’s structured data markup helper.

For example if you just wanted to add schema markup for an article on your website, you can go to the tools i mentioned earlier

Copy the url of your article and post it on this tab, then hit start tagging, after which a new window Will pop up, then just tag the relevant details of your article like adding the author’s information, once all the tagging is complete click create html.

You can then review the html including the micro data in your selected areas, after that you just head over to your cms and add the snippets in the appropriate Spots or you can download the automatically generated html file and directly copy and paste it into your cms.

But before you push it live you should check the preview version of the page with the markup using the structured data testing tool.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to Create structured data for your website i want you to give it a shot, if you’re not comfortable doing this on your live site that’s fine,

but I will suggest you create snippets of schema markup just for practice on your computer, you can create structured data for an article on your website or for one of your service offerings.

if you’re having any trouble just go back and read that part again Where we walked you through exactly how to do it and with that we’ve come to the end of this post.

What in this post were you excited about? was it helpful? What would you like to read more about?

Or maybe you just have a question about something you read.

Either way, let us know in the comments below.

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