What Is Schema Markup & How it can Boost SEO

What Is Schema Markup?

The language of search engines, also known as structured data, is schema markup, which uses a unique semantic vocabulary. It’s a type of code that helps search engines understand your content by giving them more information. As a result, the rich snippets displayed beneath the page title can provide users with better, more accurate information.

Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo! collaborated to create Schema.org to help you provide the information their search engines require to understand your content and provide the best search results possible at the time. By enhancing the rich snippets that appear beneath the page title, adding schema markup to your HTML improves the way your page appears in SERPs.

What is the distinction between Schema.org, microdata, and structured data?

Structured data is a method of associating a name with a value that aids in the categorization and indexing of your content by search engines. Microdata is a type of structured data that can be used in HTML5. Schema.org is a project that provides a set of microdata tag definitions that have been agreed upon.

Is schema a viable alternative to Open Graph?

Facebook uses Open Graph markup to parse out information such as which image and description to display. Compared to Open Graph, Schema provides a more comprehensive list of options. They can be used in conjunction, but Open Graph cannot replace schema.

Schema describes the different types of items. All kinds of items, from products to events to recipes, can be marked up with structured data. It’s most commonly used to provide more details about the following:

• Creative work
• Event
• Organization
• Person
• Place
• Product

A complete list of items that can be marked up with schema can be found here.

Each type of data has properties that can be used to further describe objects. A “book,” for example, can have the properties “name” (title), “author,” “illustrator,” “ISBN,” and more, depending on how comprehensively you want to describe it. In the same way, a “event” can be anything from a “business event” to a “theater event.”

Schema-based search engines

Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex all recognize Schema. It’s unclear whether other search engines are using this markup to alter how search results are displayed.

The impact of structured data on rankings

The impact of structured data on rankings has been the subject of much debate and numerous experiments. There is no conclusive evidence that this markup improves rankings at the moment. However, some evidence suggests that search results with more comprehensive rich snippets (such as those created using schema) will have a higher click-through rate. Experiment with schema markup to see how your audience responds to the rich snippets that result.