How to Use Schema Markup for Your SEO Strategy

Transcript: Have you ever wondered why certain snippets on a search engine results page are displayed with extra features that make them stand out amongst the rest?

These are called rich snippets, and the magic behind rich snippets is schema markup. Hey, I’m Rendell, an Internet marketer at WebFX, and today we’re going to talk about what schema markup is, and how to use it to improve your website’s search engine optimization. So, first of all, what is it?

What is schema markup?

Schema markup, which is sometimes just called schema or structured data, is essentially coding that can be added to the back end of your website to make it easier for search engines, to crawl, organize, and display content to users. With traditional HTML scripts, search engines’ crawlers are only able to determine what your data says, but not what the data means.

So implementing schema markup helps us communicate to those search engines what our content actually means and why it’s important.

How schema markup works

For example, if a search engine sees a number listed on your site, without schema markup, they have no idea what that number means. It could be a price of a product, a street number, or a phone number listed on your site. In this case, we could implement schema markup to communicate to those search engines that this number is, in fact, a phone number, so that they can display that information to users who are looking for it.

Schema markup benefits SEO greatly, by improving a search engine’s ability to crawl your site, increasing your site’s visibility in the search results, and ultimately improving your users’ experience. So…

When do you use schema markup?

And the answer is, really any time there’s an opportunity to do so. There is schema markup for articles, blogs, local businesses, restaurants, recipes, events, products, and hundreds of other applications.

So choose any schema markup that’s going to fit your website and your goals. Now let’s look at…

How you can use schema markup on your site

A popular tool you can use to get started with generating schema markup is Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. Here, all you’ll need to do is select a type of schema and paste in the URL of the page that you would like to implement that schema on.

Then, to create the tags, highlight or click elements on the page, and select an attribute of that element based on the drop down menu. Once done, click “Create HTML,” and the tool generates HTML structured data based on your selection. If everything looks good, you can implement the schema markup on your site through your CMS or directly into your source code.

After search engines recognize the change you made, you should start seeing the fruit of your labor in the search results with rich snippets. Finally, here’s…

Tips for making the most of schema markup on your site

If you’re not sure where to start with schema markup, try creating and implementing just one type of schema markup, such as a video schema markup. It’s estimated only 30% of web pages online use schema markup.

So even implementing just one type is going to make you stand out amongst your competition in the search results. And finally, when considering schema markup, focus on your users. Which schema markup is going to be most helpful for them when they’re looking for your information?

So there you have it.

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