Schema Markup on page structure
Schema tells the search engines what your data means, not
just what it says.
The content on your website gets indexed and returned in search
results. Obviously. But with schema markup, some of that content gets indexed
and returned in a different way.
How? Because the markup tells the search engine what that
content means. For example, let’s say the word “Neil Patel”
appears on an article. The search engine sees this, and produces a SERP entry
with “Neil Patel.” However, if I put the right schema markup around the name
“Neil Patel,” I’ve just told that search engine that “Neil Patel” is the author
of the article, not just a couple random words. The search engine then provides
results that display better information for the user who was searching for “Neil
Patel.”
Schema.org explains it this way:
Most
webmasters are familiar with HTML tags on their pages. Usually, HTML tags tell
the browser how to display the information included in the tag. For example,
<h1>Avatar</h1> tells the browser to display the text string
“Avatar” in a heading 1 format. However, the HTML tag doesn’t give any
information about what that text string means — “Avatar” could refer to the
hugely successful 3D movie, or it could refer to a type of profile picture—and
this can make it more difficult for search engines to intelligently display
relevant content to a user.
Schema markup uses a unique semantic vocabulary in microdata
format.
You don’t need to learn any new coding skills. Web pages with
markup still use HTML. The only difference is adding bits of schema.org
vocabulary to HTML Microdata.
chema.org, the website for schema markup, was created by a collaborative team from
Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
It’s not too often that competitors come together to help each
other, but Schema.org is exactly that kind of inter-industry collaboration.
What you have, then, is an agreed-upon set of code markers that tells the major
search engines what to do with the data on your website.
Schema markup was
invented for users.
When a website has schema markup in place, users can see in the
SERPs what a website is all about, where they are, what they do, how much stuff
costs, plus plenty of other stuff. Some people have taken to calling schema
markup “your virtual business card.”
This is a user-focused improvement. Search engines exist for
users to gain the information they need. Schema markup does exactly that.
Second,
let’s understand why it’s so important.
Schema markup helps your website rank better for all kinds of
content types. There is data markup for…
·
Articles
·
Local
businesses
·
Restaurants
·
TV
episodes and ratings
·
Book
Reviews
·
Movies
·
Software
Applications
·
Events
·
Products
There are hundreds of markup types — from toy stores to medical
dose schedules. If you have any type of data on your website, there’s a good
chance that it’s going to have an associated itemscope and itemtype.
Websites that use schema markup will rank better in the SERPs
than companies without markup. One study determined that websites with markup
rank an average of four positions higher in the SERPs than those without schema
markup. While it’s not totally clear that this higher result is due to the
markup alone, there is obviously some correlation.
Right now, one third of Google’s search results incorporate rich
snippets, which includes schema markup. However, according to Searchmetrics,
only 0.3 of all websites use schema markup.
In other words, there are
millions of websites missing out on a huge source of SEO potential. If you use
schema markup, you’ll automatically have a leg up on the vast majority of your
competition
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