Importance of Schema markup and how it can improve the ranking and visibility in search engines:
Many of the SEO enthusiast and webmasters ignore the importance of schema markup and structured data. Even if they are aware of its importance, this aspect is not given the importance it deserves. Schema is one of the most famous structured data markup formats. Yet how negligent and uninterested webmasters in general are of this format can be gauged from the fact that “Schema markup” has a search volume of less than 500.
The purpose of this post is to familiarize you with Schema markup and to clarify its importance for SERPs. As mentioned earlier, Schema is a structured data markup format which allows search engines such as Google to easily interpret the information available on webpage. This allows them to show most relevant results to the users in Google SERP or Bing SERP.
The official website of Schema markup project is Schema.org. This project came into existence because of the collaboration between Google, Bing and Yahoo. This collaboration itself is testimony to how much importance this project holds, and it also goes to show the importance microdata and especially Schema markup could have few years later.
How does schema markup works?
Schema microdata is inserted into any webpage and because of the inserted data, search engines are able to ascertain the nature of data better than they would through only html tags, however, schema microdata is usually applied through modification of page’s html code. The mechanism of Schema markup is demonstrated in the example below. Schema markup allows the webmasters to define elements such as itemscope and itemtype. It is quite clear from the picture that itemscope allows the webmaster to clearly identify the nature of the page. In the picture, along with the name of movie, the details of director and even genre are given. The search engines would easily be able to identify that the webpage is related to movie Avatar, and not actually talking about “Avatar the last Airbender” which happens to be another science fiction movie and animation series. This was made possible because the director was mentioned in microdata.
Let me show you more examples of schema codes
1. Schema review code
This code used to write reviews for( game, program, operating system “OS”, etc…).
2. Schema event code
This code used to publish information about name, date and place of the event.
3. Schema product code
This code used to identify the name of the product you sell and its price and you can also add assessment through user reviews.
4. Schema movie code
this code used to show information related to movies like the director, primary actors and the audiences rating.
5. Schema Organization code
This code used to show your company or your organization address on Google. Also you can show the customers reviews on your page on the Google Business.
And there are much of the other Schema markups like:
- Orders delivery
- Flight booking
- Available jobs
- Restaurant bookings
- Medical medicines
And the list goes on to more than 500 Schema code (on this link)
How can Schema markup help you?
Application of Schema markup can help you in number of ways. Firstly, this project is going to grow big and will eventually have more weight in SERP rankings. Why? Because it’s not often that rivals decide to collaborate on any issue. If they have done that, then there is probably a reason.
And the reason is that microdata allows search engine to display most relevant results. The goal of every search engine is display most relevant results. So, you see the point? The search engines are eventually going to attach more importance to schema. For that reason and if you are working on building authority site, it’s important that you adopt such best practices from the start.
In addition, if you are already ranking for some keywords, schema markup can enhance the visibility of your rich snippets and give the result more prominence in SERPs.
So, these were some of the advantages of Schema markup. Despite these clear advantages, search engines have yet to include schema markup as official SERPs ranking factor. However, for the reasons described earlier, I would strongly suggest to adopt good practices like application of Schema microdata on webpages.