What is Schema? How to Get Rich Results on the SERP

What is schema markup?

Schema markup is semantic code that can be added to a website to help search engines understand the site’s content.

Why is schema important to SEO?

Schema markup provides structured data about the information on a page and helps search engines return richer results on SERPs. Studies have shown that schema improves organic CTR.

What schema markup should be used and on which pages?

• Local Business (opens in a new tab): Provides rich data on a specific business appearing in Google Search, Maps, or Knowledge Graph.
  • Local business homepage.
  • More local business schema properties (opens in a new tab)
  • **A note here: Ideally, the phone number on every location page should be the local phone number that matches the number in that building’s GMB profile. That is the number that you mark up with schema.
• Reviews (opens in a new tab): Displays star reviews on SERPs or in the Google Knowledge Graph. Studies indicate that star ratings on SERPs increase organic CTR.
  • Products, Locations, etc.
  • More schema review properties (opens in a new tab)
• Events (opens in a new tab): Provides structured data about events and helps search engines display them in SERPs.
  • Events pages.
  • More events schema properties (opens in a new tab)
• Breadcrumbs (opens in a new tab): Indicates a page’s position in relation to the rest of a website’s hierarchy and displays this information on the SERP.
  • More breadcrumb schema properties (opens in a new tab)
• Site Navigation (opens in a new tab): Helps search engines better understand the structure of your site and generate organic SERP sitelinks.
• Articles (opens in a new tab): Enhances the way blog posts appear on SERPs and allows entry into a top stories carousel or other rich result feature.

How do we implement schema?

• Structured Data Highlighter in Search Console: This allows you to add basic markup to specific pages or page templates.
  • ** Note: You can only used Structured Data Highlighter for Events, LocalBusiness, and Articles.
• Microdata: This is an HTML specification used to encode data.
• JSON-LD: This is a markup data-linking format that allows for embedding of data in a <script> tag.

Schema Tools:

Structured Data Testing Tool (opens in a new tab)

• Tests for proper schema markup

The OpenLink Structured Data Sniffer (OSDS) (opens in a new tab)

• Scrapes and exports full schema tag lists into excel.
• Use Case: Competitive Schema Analysis