Get 300% More Visitors with Schema Markup SEO

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If you keep up on all of the latest SEO trends, then it’s likely you have heard of schema markup or schema tags.

Though they aren’t anything new, setting up schema tags on your website can give you a huge increase in organic traffic.

Why?

Basically, it makes your website stand out more in Google, increasing your CTR (click-through-rate) which can help you move up a lot faster in Google.

But we will get more into why you should set up schema tags on your website.

First, let’s talk about what schema actually is.

What is a schema?

According to Google schema is:

a representation of a plan or theory in the form of an outline or model.

In the case of SEO, Schema refers to schema.org, which is a structured data language that defines relationships, actions, entities, and other information. It allows search engines to better understand web pages and content.

schema org website

For example, I am sure that you have searched for a product on Google. Some listings have extra data on them about the site or product.

A more common schema you see is the ratings & reviews schema.

schema tags

There are a ton of other schema starting to show up on the regular. So it’s super important to implement these so that you stand out more than your competitors.

But first, let’s talk about what schema tags are.

What are Schema Tags?

Schema tags are a piece of code added to a web page or pages that give search engines more information and data about your site.

It can be a little confusing because schema tags have a few different names including:

  • Structured Data
  • Structured Snippets
  • Schema Snippets
  • Schema Markup

But all of these mean the same thing. They are pieces of data on your website that pass extra information on to Google to use in their SERPs.

events schema snippet example

Schema tags can be used for a number of different properties but here are some commonly used ones:

  • Creative works: CreativeWork, Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, TVSeries
  • Event (see image above)
  • Organization
  • Person
  • Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant
  • Product, Offer, AggregateOffer
  • Review, AggregateRating
  • Action

You can visit the schema.org documentation for a full list of all schemas.

Why Schema Tags are Important?

Why do schema tags matter for SEO?

The number 1 reason is that they make you stand out more. The SERPs (search engine results pages) can go on forever and ever with thousands of competitors. But when you have rich snippets installed, your listing stands out more, resulting in more clicks to your site.

Google and other search engines can see this and often rank you higher because your listing is being clicked more.

So which schema tags should you install on your site?

I would recommend setting up as many schema tags that are as relevant as possible. If you have recipes on your site, add the recipes schema, if you have reviews, add the reviews schema.

When adding schema to your site, it’s also important to note that there are several different schema languages you can use.

Types of Schema Implementations

Schema tags can be implemented in a number of different formats.

RDFa, Microdata, and JSON-LD are all of the languages of code you can use to implement schema tags.

RDFa

RDFa stands for resource description framework in attributes. You can embed RDFa in HTML, XML, and XHTML. Unlike other implementations, RDFa only defines the meta syntax for semantic tagging purposes.

RDFa uses different attributes than other structured data. Here is a list of all the RDFa subsets:

Attribute Description
vocab The vocab attribute defines the vocabulary that forms the basis of tagging elements with RDFa (e.g. Schema.org).
typeof With the typeof attribute, elements are assigned certain themes (i.e. ‘types’) according to the selected vocabulary.
property This attribute assigns properties to elements.
resource The resource attribute allows programmers to assign individual terms, known as ‘identifiers’, to different elements.
prefix The prefix attribute gives programmers the possibility of specifying more than one vocabulary in cases where the initial vocabulary isn’t sufficient for the desired tagging.

Below is an example of an RDFa markup implementation for a postal address schema:

<p vocab="http://Schema.org/" typeof="PostalAddress"><br> 
<span property="name">Google Inc.</span><br> P.O. Box 
<span property="postOfficeBoxNumber">1234</span><br> 
<span property="addressLocality">Mountain View</span>,<br> 
<span property="addressRegion">CA</span><br> <span property="postalCode">94043</span><br> 
<span property="addressCountry">United States</span><br> 
</p>

Microdata

Microdata markup is a front-end implementation of schema tags. Elements can be added to normal HTML elements to build schema tags for certain pieces of data.

For example, here is some Microdata for a book:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Book">
<h3 itemprop="name">The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People</h3>
<table summary="Bibliographic Details">
<tr>
<th>Main Author: </th>
<td itemprop="author">Stephen Covey</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>

JSON-LD

JSON-LD stands for Javascript object notation for linked data and its a backend implementation of schema markup.

It uses JSON to pass extra information to search engines about your website and content.

Unlike the other implementations, you cannot see any of the data on the front end of your website with JSON-LD. Since it uses a <script> tag its hidden from the client, but still passes the schema data on to search engines.

Here is an example schema implementation of JSON-LD using the Person schema:

<script type="application/ld+json">
    {
      "@context": "https://schema.org",
      "@type": "Person",
      "address": {
        "@type": "PostalAddress",
        "addressLocality": "Colorado Springs",
        "addressRegion": "CO",
        "postalCode": "80840",
        "streetAddress": "100 Main Street"
      },
      "email": "info@example.com",
      "jobTitle": "Research Assistant",
      "name": "Jane Doe",
      "birthPlace": "Philadelphia, PA",
      "birthDate": "1979-10-12",
      "telephone": "(123) 456-6789",
      "url": "http://www.example.com",
	    "sameAs" : [ "https://www.facebook.com/",
      "https://www.linkedin.com/",
      "http://twitter.com/",
      "http://instagram.com/",
      "https://plus.google.com/"]
    }
    </script>

So which one should you use?

Well, if your website is custom developed its really up to you which one you use. If you are using a CMS like WordPress or Shopify, its super easy to set up schema tags without any manual implementation.

How to Implement Schema Tags

It may seem difficult to set up schema tags on your website but if you are using a CMS, its really simple to do.

Set Up Schema on WordPress

Schema Pro is one of the best plugins for adding schema to your WordPress pages.

It is a paid plugin, but its affordable and can greatly increase your rankings. To get started, install SchemaPro and then go to settings where you will find the SchemaPro settings.

Click the add new schema button to open the SchemaPro wizard, that will walk you through setting up each schema type.

Choose the schema type that you want to add to your site. Currently, there are 13 options in Schema Pro but they are always adding more.

schema pro schema types

Select the pages you want to enable the schema on. If you are adding product schema, you want them on the product pages. Article schema should go on all posts and so on.

Once you select a schema type, you will need to match your WordPress fields with the plugins fields so they can generate dynamic schema tags with your data.

schema pro settings

Some of the fields will be pre-populated but you will need to select some of them. The ones with a red asterisk are required so make sure those are all filled in. You can select custom fields by choosing ‘select other custom fields here’ from the dropdown and searching for your field.

custom field schema pro

Once all of the fields are matched up, click save and your schema tags will be dynamically inserted for all of the types you chose.

Now that your schema are all set up, you should test your pages to make sure they are implemented correctly.

Testing Your Schema Tags

Once you have your schema tags set up on your website, I would recommend testing the implementation to make sure everything is installed correctly.

You can use the Google Structured Data Testing Tool to run tests on your URLs and see any errors or warnings that your schema has. alternatively, you can enter in a code snippet as well.

structured data test

Just enter in your URL and see the results:

structured data testing tool

The right side will show you all of the schemas and any errors. You can click on each schema to view more data about the schema.

article schema type

Warnings are ok but errors should be fixed or you may not have success getting them featured in search engines.

Once the testing is complete, you have now successfully set up schema tags on your website.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion. adding schema tags to your website can help search engines learn more about your products, services, and information. With schema tags your website will stand out more, bringing in more organic traffic and ranking you higher in search engines.

 

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