Schema markup is something you’ve definitely seen just using search engines before, even if you don’t know what it is.
Today we’re going to dive into what it is, what it does, and why that matters, so you can come away with a good baseline understanding of the most common essential schema types and how they improve your performance and authority in both search engines and the eyes of internet users.
What is schema markup and why is it important
Schema markup can be a really useful tool to improve your search engine presence. In one of our earlier blog posts about it, we described schema like this:
“When you search for something on, say, Google, you see your standard search results on the SERP. But some results — known as rich snippets or rich results — include further information from structured data included in their corresponding page’s HTML. One common example of a rich snippet is a review on a page in your search results.
What creates these rich snippets? Schema.
Schema markup is a piece of code that search engines can read to better understand your site’s content. This code is read by all the biggest players in the search engine world — Google, Yahoo, Microsoft (Bing), among others — and is used to help improve their own performance, as well as users’ experiences.”
Essentially: Rich snippets create better search engine results, and schema markup creates rich snippets.
Along with providing users with a more comprehensive view of your site (or page), rich snippets help search engines better understand your site and its content. All together, this makes you more useful to users and better served by search engines, enhancing your visibility, improving your traffic, and increasing click-through-rates.
Most common types of schema markup
In this article, we’re focusing on these common kinds of schema markup:
- Organization
- Product
- Article
- Local business
- Review
- Breadcrumb
- FAQ
There are hundreds more, but these are the ones you’ll encounter the most often as an internet user, and which will be the most helpful for your own purposes as a business owner, marketer, and/or developer.
Let’s take a look at each and what they do for you:
Organization schema markup
The organization schema markup provides search engines with detailed information about your company, organization, or whatever kind of group or business you are. Of course, this in turn gives users an easily-recognizable, better understanding of your business. This increases your perceived trustworthiness and, over time (and volume), enhances brand recognition that builds a stronger foundation for, well, everything you do.
Key components for organization schema include:
- Organization name
- Organization type
- Website URL
- Social media profiles
- Contact info
There are many different components that can be included with organizational schema markup than just the ones listed above, but those are some of the most common. The same will be true for all the schema markup types we discuss below.
Product schema markup
Product schema markup is especially relevant for ecommerce businesses, including rich snippets with details for your products including price, reviews, availability, and more directly within the search results.
Components here include:
- Product name
- Brand name
- Product description
- Product image
- Identifiers like SKU
- Price
- Ratings
- In-stock status
Article schema markup
If your site includes articles, blog posts, news content, etc., this schema markup is for you. It helps them stand out by providing rich results that appear fuller with images, authors, recent publication dates, and more.
Key components for article schema markup:
- Headline
- Image and image URL
- Author (if relevant)
- Publication date
- Article URL
- Description
Local business schema markup
Local business schema helps you show up and provide more information in local search results. This is particularly helpful for brick-and-mortar stores, restaurants, and businesses providing services that are especially geared towards local customers or clients, in turn helping improve local SEO and increasing your visibility in location-based search results.
Key components for local business schema markup:
- Business name
- Type
- Image URL
- Site URL
- Hours of operation
- Social media profiles
- Phone number
- Price range
- Departments
- Address (street, city, zip code, state, and country)
- Latitude and longitude
Review schema markup
This allows you to display customer ratings and reviews directly in the search results. This gives potential customers an immediate level of trust with you (assuming you generally have good reviews, which goes without saying), without them having to go looking for it.
There are fewer main components for review schema, with them mainly being reviewer name, rating, and date.
Breadcrumb schema markup
Breadcrumb schema markup explains the hierarchical structure of your site to the search engine, which in turn displays that hierarchy to the user directly underneath the result headline. This is really just to give users a better understanding of your site so that they can navigate it more easily once there — in turn, that improved ease of use can have a notably positive impact on click-through rates.
Breadcrumb schema components appear as a line directing each page and their URL to the next, until reaching the final page name to which the search result directs.
Image source: https://www.grooic.com/what-are-breadcrumbs-on-a-website/
FAQ schema markup
Lastly for our common schema markups is the FAQ. As the name suggests, this displays frequently asked questions directly in your search result, making it easier for users to learn about your site, company, services, products, etc.
The components consist simply of each question and the corresponding answer.
Choosing and implementing the right schema markup for your business
As you can tell, certain schema will be super useful for some businesses and less so for others. To decide which are best for you, you need to evaluate both what’s critical to communicate about your business, plus the most common intentions of users when you show up in search results.
Essentially: “What do I want them to know about us?” and “What do they want to know about us?”
Details that can impact the schema you implement can include your business type, the contents of your website, your goals for your business, and so on. Particularly, the type of business you have might be the most important factor in which schema are the most useful; ecommerce sites, service-based businesses, sites that include heavy use of content, brick-and-mortar shops, etc. — these all have different needs that can be addressed with different schema.
We recommend taking a moment to organize your thoughts on what other details are relevant for your purposes here. Alongside that, conducting a competitor analysis can help shed light on which schema are most effective in your industry (and what competitors might be missing out on that you can take advantage of).
When implementing your schema, these are some steps you can take to ensure you’re getting the most SEO benefit:
- Be as thorough as possible with the schema you choose, including as much relevant information as possible
- Check your website for schema after you’ve implemented it to confirm it was added correctly
- When in doubt, don’t be afraid to get the help of an agency that specializes in this area so you can ensure you’re following best practices
Yes, that last bullet point has a real “sounds like something an agency that specializes in this area would say” vibe to it, but it’s true! Even if that wasn’t something we specialized in, we’d still recommend it for a lot of cases; some businesses are able to take care of all that themselves without missing a beat in other areas of operation — which is awesome! — but others might not have the same level of in-house resources to focus on that area without sacrificing other important ops. Those are cases where you’re probably better off getting the help of a specialist agency — so they can make sure your SEO and schema are at peak functionality while you can just focus all your attention on your business itself.
At the end of the day, these aren’t even close to all the schema available to you — simply some of the most common and a good place to start. Whichever types you decide are the best fit for your site, know that taking the time to implement them will help build a long-term foundation for improved performance online.
And of course, if you need help, give us a call!
