Using Schema Markup to Rank with SEO
Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important tasks to carry out as a website owner since it helps to reach your target audience and create an authoritative stand in their mind. There has been several developments geared towards making seo an easier task and one of these new developments is Schema Markup- a very powerful evolution in SEO which has often been underutilized by most websites. Once you understand how this works and how best to utilize this for your website, you can easily boost your website’s ranking in the search engine result pages (SERPs).
So, what is Schema Markup, how does it help with SEO, and how do I utilize markup for SEO & structured data?
What is Schema Markup?
Schema Markup is a language of search engine that has been created to help search engines better understand web contents and better process them for search results. Created by Goggle, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex in 2011, it is a semantic vocabulary that serves as a global standard for understanding your website’s content.
So, we can say: Schema Markup tells the search engines what your website content means.
From this explanation above, we can see that schema mark-ups add meaning to your page and make it possible for search engine to provide the most important information to potential visitors.
How does Schema Markup help with SEO?
Achieve Rich Results: Businesses who utilize schema mark-ups in their web pages tend to enjoy better conversion since they can display information like event listings, product information, information panels, review information and more on their search results.
To further prove this, Google has added Local Business Listings and Place Actions to its search results. This gives local businesses the ability to include the following to their business information:
• Business hours
• Multiple departments
• Orders
• Reservations
• Job postings
• Restaurant lists
So, the more listings and actions you provide on a page, the better the result.
Improve your Ranking: To prove some of the importance of schema markup to your website’s SEO, Google has started using Schema markup in its ranking. This means that the more information you provide about your business or website, the easier it is for search engines to understand and display your business/website in search results.
So, how does this affect business? Adding enough description to your business or service will lead to:
• Higher Click Through Rate
• Increased leads or purchases
• Decreased bounce rate
• Increased Time On Page
With the increase in the adoption of voice search, Amazon’s Echo, Google Home and Alexa, your business or website won’t be found without the proper markup.
Well, now that we know the impact of adding schema mark-ups to our website, it’s time to bring the business to 2018 and utilize the power of schema markup in our quest to top the SERPs.
How should you use Schema Markup?
The aim is to look good, do better and rank higher in SERPs. To achieve this, utilizing the right schema structure goes a long way. Therefore, we have created a guide to make this easier for you. With your website in hand, simply follow these steps.
• Visit the Google Structured Schema Markup Helper.
• Select the data you want to markup. Here we will be choosing the article option since it’s the most common content type.
• Paste the URL of the blog post you wish to markup or if you have the html, copy it into the html section and click the “Start Targeting” button.
Your page should load in the markup tool and provide you with the workspace for the next step- “tagging items”.
• Highlight and Select the types of element you wish to markup. It’s not compulsory to add up all the items on the list, simply add the ones you can.
• Once done with adding elements, click the “Create HTML” button. In the next page, you should see the HTML of your page with the appropriate microdata inserted in the spots that you added elements.
• To make implementation easier, simply download the HTML file and copy/paste it into your source code or Content Management System.
• Click finish.
• On the pop-up page, select the Structured Data Testing Tool to see what your page will look like after using the added markup.
Schema Markup is a very deep tool that if used correctly can improve your website’s SEO and boost your business’s awareness. For a more in-depth approach to your business markup, hire the SEO Industry Leaders in Local Business Types to improve your Local Business Markup.
