What is schema markup (and why use it)?
Schema markup is a simple — but extensive — tool that sounds fancy. Essentially, schema is code for your website that helps search engines (and, in many cases, people) better understand the content they’re looking at. There are many different types of schema, the implementation of which manifests themselves differently.
That’s because schema is the code behind rich snippets or rich results. You’ve encountered these, even if you didn’t know what to call them — these are the search results that have greater, more in-depth information on a site, business, or product than others do.
Image source: https://www.quattr.com/improve-discoverability/google-rich-results-guide
This in turn improves your search engine optimization by providing users with more informative results while also giving search engines themselves more navigable, clearer context. Both these benefits then build off each other with compounding positive effects.
Because of this, schema is useful for many websites — but it’s arguably a necessity for ecommerce ones.
Key schema types for e-commerce websites
There are loads of schema options for different sites, the usefulness of which depends on the nature of your site and goals. Because of this, there are a handful of schema that are especially useful for e-commerce purposes.
Product schema: This schema displays information like price, availability, and images of your product in the search engine results page. It can be encoded as microdata embedded in HTML or as a JSON-LD in an HTML script tag.
Offer & price schema: This is a schema that shows up within the greater product schema — from this users will see information on discounts, stock availability, and potentially dynamic pricing. This is especially helpful in how it pairs with the Google Shopping feed.
Image source: https://wpschema.com/review-schema/
Review schema: This allows users to easily see reviews and aggregate ratings. In a landscape where you have less of users’ time and attention span than ever and so need to gain their trust ASAP, showing immediate evidence of your reliability from others’ testimonials is extremely valuable. Furthermore, the more reviews you receive — and the more genuine they are — the more trust this builds, particularly when there are updated, recent reviews readily available for people to read from.
Breadcrumb schema: Breadcrumb schema help improve both navigability of your site, and your site’s hierarchy in search results. Essentially, this is helping the search engine crawler “understand” your site’s pathways. Subsequently, it makes your result not just more user friendly, but also improves indexing.
Local business schema: Here you’re providing details about your physical store or, depending on your business’ circumstances, pickup location. Fields here include your name, address, number, opening hours, and geographical coordinates — basically all the main information to know to be able to find you. Local business schema are especially important to help users looking specifically for local search results — often queries ending with “near me.” It then not only increases your visibility on Google Maps, but also the increasingly dominant mobile search domain while also supporting Google Business profile integration.
How schema enhances both Google Shopping and organic listings
Because schema improves user experience and provides search engines with a better understanding of your business, products, and site, the benefits of these are multi-faceted.
To begin with, implementing structured data via schema on your Google Merchant Center allows people to more directly discover and purchase your products.
Beyond that, it contextualizes you and your products so search engines can in theory serve you to more relevant users who are the most likely to be searching for what you offer. At the same time, simply by providing this extra information to the web crawler, you’re giving it a richer picture that by its own merit makes you rank higher than otherwise.
At the same time, that has a positive compound impact because this not only puts you in front of more users’ eyes, but gives them more information on you too. This makes it easier for them to see how you offer a solution to what they’re looking for.
Essentially, schema is helpful for both machines and humans.
From both standpoints, there are specific, tangible benefits:
- Automatic inventory and item updates
- Faster product listing approvals
- Rich results eligibility for free product listings
- Increased accuracy of your data being provided to users, and subsequent increased trust
By giving search engines a better “understanding” of your site and products, you’re helping yourself rank higher more often — by giving people a better understanding of your site and products, you’re helping give them a reason to interact more with what you’re offering. Which, subsequently… ranks you higher in the eyes of Google. Which makes more people interact with your site and purchase products. Which — okay, you get it.
Implementing schema on your website
So, we’ve established that, if you’re running an ecommerce site, you really want to take advantage of schema.
You have two options to implement schema: JSON-LD and microdata. For ease of visualizing, here’s the main pros and cons of both. First, JSON-LD:
- Separate from site HTML
- Easier to maintain
- “Preferred” by Google
- More flexible and scalable for dynamic SKUs
This all adds up to make JSON-LD ideal if you’re a larger ecommerce site who’s more likely to have a lot of moving parts. Meanwhile, microdata:
- Embedded in the HTML — can make it easier for devs to see
- Harder to maintain — higher likelihood of interfering with visual elements or adding errors
- Supported by Google, but not as recommended as JSON-LD
- Not as scalable
Basically, microdata can be easier in some ways but trickier the larger the scale of operations becomes. Because of this, it can be a good choice for smaller, more straightforward ecommerce sites.
When you do implement schema, you’re now giving your site and products the ability to show up in SERPs as rich snippets. That said, just because you have schema implemented doesn’t mean everything is guaranteed to show up as a rich snippet.
To make sure you’ve implemented your schema correctly though — and said product or site entry is eligible to appear as a rich snippet — you can test this through Google’s Rich Results Test. Schema.org’s Markup Validator can also help you identify any mistakes you might have missed.
Tips for popular ecommerce content management systems
With all that in mind, here are some quick tips for Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento — all popular CMS platforms for ecommerce.
Shopify: Basic schema should already be baked into the Shopify theme, but you can add to it if there’s anything specifically you feel would be beneficial. Because of that, however, watch out for duplication — Shopify themes can include both JSON-LD and microdata, and you don’t want to accidentally create any redundancies.
WooCommerce: Similar to Shopify, you’ll find built-in schema here too. We still recommend adding plug-ins like Yoast SEO, which can help you implement more advanced schema like product, breadcrumb, and review. WooCommerce also has nifty filters for adding or modifying schema within your themes.
Magento: Once again, there are some built-in schema already — particularly great for products. Adding reviews, ratings, and breadcrumb schema is a good call here, though, along with adding extensions like Mageworx SEO Suite. Here, if you edit the schema directly, make sure to validate it with Google Tools.
Common mistakes with schema markup
Before we go, you should be aware of a few mistakes that are common but easy to avoid if you’re made aware.
The first is schema overuse or misuse. Google penalizes spammy uses of schema — for example, fake reviews — so obviously don’t do that. Pretty much, just use common sense: Is this type of schema in this context helpful for users and/or a web crawler? Yes? Great. Also, we recommend checking Schema.org often for updates.
Second: outdated product info. For obvious reasons, you want all the information conveyed in your schema to be accurate and up-to-date! Out-of-date information will be counterproductive for potential customers, search engines, and through extension your business.
Lastly is ignoring validation errors. Related to the above logic, you want everything to be accurate — validate everything to make sure there aren’t any errors you’re missing.
Bottom line
While schema are extremely helpful for ecommerce businesses, they’re not too complicated either once you familiarize yourself. The kinds we mentioned here are of course quite useful, but you might learn about more types of schema that are relevant to your business.
And of course, if you feel you’d like some guidance along the way with schema and overall SEO, never hesitate to give us a ring at Fujisan!
