Schema markup, often known as structured data, is a set of codes or microdata applied to the page’s HTML to provide search engines with better clues for understanding a web page’s context. The theory behind schema markup is simple. While search engines are very efficient in crawling the web, the machines cannot understand content in the way humans do. This lack of understanding has largely to do with the way information is presented on a web page. Schema markup fills this gap in understanding by activating rich snippets in search engine results and improving the way users perceive content in those snippets. As a result, clicks to the page’s URLs also increase.
Schema.org, a community initiative launched in 2011, is the project behind the development of schema markup. It is a collaborative effort among the Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex search teams to promote the enhanced presentation of website search results. Schema markup is a kind of semantic vocabulary of tags that can be added to websites’ HTML to help make the website much easier for search engines to understand.
Markup can be added to a variety of page types, including articles, recipe pages, videos, or even local businesses. With 13 million active installations, Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress plugin today. Developed by team Yoast, the tool offers built-in schema markup for pages and posts for individuals and organizations. It comes with a knowledge graph that makes website disambiguation easier and enhances the appearance of search engine results by allowing breadcrumbs and adding social profiles. Other schema attributes supported by Yoast SEO include CreativeWork, Event, Course, and Ages.
Compared to Yoast SEO’s highlight of its schema feature, Rank Math includes fewer types of schema attributes (specifies only 17), but its implementation across its structured data capabilities is better than Yoast SEO.
What is Schema Markup?
What is Schema Markup? Here we are going to discuss in detail about this. Schema Markup is a code that we have to put on our website that helps search engines provide more informative results for users. It provides more context to a website, and it provides rich features. If we don’t implement Schema Markup on our website, our website would be looking like the following image.
Moreover, we couldn’t be able to rank in position 0. Let me know how many of you don’t want to rank in position 0 in Google. If you have a WordPress website and want to integrate Schema Markup in it, for sure, this blog will be going to help you in that. In this blog, I am going to share everything about Schema Markup like what is it, the implementation method, what is the best way to implement Schema and much more. Let’s start with the first question which is “What is Schema Markup?”.
Why is Schema Markup Important for SEO?
By using Schema markup, you can increase the chances of getting rich snippets that are displayed in the search results. Rich snippets can increase the visibility of your website. This principle for getting shown in rich snippets is exactly the same as schema reviews, a special field from the schema snippets that enables users to add specific markup for products and services reviews. These have become all the rage in the past few months as more and more websites started seeing those review stars that get in the way.
Title Tags: Everyone must know by now that title tags are one of the most important SEO factors. Title tags can increase the chances of getting visitors to click on your article, blog or webpage. Although, it can also increase the chances of getting better organic rankings through the use of title tags that must reflect the content theme as closely as possible. But not only that, by using schema markup and enhancing the content of the title tag, you can achieve a much higher organic ranking as you can increase the relevancy of the search results compared to your competitors.
Different Types of Schema Markup
There are two types of schema markup, and they both can be used to enhance the listings on your pages. The two types of schema are ‘Organization’ schema and ‘Article’ schema. They can be used separately or together, depending on the content on your website and your business needs.
The organization schema markup is used to give information about the company or website. Information like name, logo, and what the business does. When you have made the schema for the organization, then it can show up in the Knowledge Graph. You can access the Knowledge Graph by typing your company name into Google and see what appears in the Knowledge Graph. A bonus ‘knowledge panel’ also appears on the right side with the information of Wikipedia.
Article markup is used to show search engines like Google the informative content of the articles. It can help the search engine to categorize the content on your website and figure out what article is actually showing. This is helpful to show articles in news results, rich card listing, and it can also be displayed in the Knowledge Graph, underneath the Google advertisement on the right side.
Organization Markup
Organization markup is important for creating a deeper profile for your organization, and it’s also a key component for search features such as the knowledge graph. For Organization markup, you need the following parameters: @type = Organization, logo, name, url, sameAs (array of strings), contactPoint (array of objects). You can use the Organization markup for a university or school if you wish. Organization schema depends on a list of properties that you can fill in. Some of these properties include: alternate name, description, address, legal name, founding date, contact point, email, legal name, location, logo, sameAs, url. What are they for? Let’s say that you have a lot of contact people on your website. You write bios for all of them and you also make sure that all of them have the proper information. If someone would look up this person in Google, they would immediately see that the person is linked to your organization. Also, keep your logo small in bytes. A tiny logo is a good idea for mobile users as well. In fact, a logo can also double as a favicon for a website.
Local Business Markup
Local business markup is mainly used on local business websites or local business WordPress websites that aim to let local customers discover them online. Local business schema markup provides search engines with useful information about your business such as name, address, phone number, hours of operation, and other general details, which can give your business an edge over your local competitors in the local search results.
In addition, this type of schema markup content can potentially be used by GPS providers, collectively helping to improve their mapping interface. Utilized properly, local business schema markup can be a significant trust signal for search engines, which tells local search engines that it is valid and that you are located where you say you are. By improving the visibility of your business in search results, the likelihood of bringing in new customers increases. It is crucial to ensure that you are delivering accurate schema details that match your on-site information as these details may be used to qualify the visibility of your business.
Article Markup
The article markup can be the simplest and less detailed type of markup. Here you can use the following properties: Title, Description, and Keyword. There are also some more properties that are commonly used for the general article markups like author, date published, and image. You should use the required property for the title, description, and image but you should use other properties if you have the data. These properties can be optional. Not all of the articles will be written by someone, so this markup does not require the author. The date published can only be useful for the news website and maybe some articles but if your website is a blog website or you have the date of publication then you should use this property. You can use the keyword or subject for the markup. But please do not spam the keyword that is not related to your content. If you have a keyword property, then it will give more to your visitors about your website.
On the structure data testing tool, you can see that article and blog posting schema are applied differently. Google explained that article can be for non-periodical deep dive content or news article, but blog posting can be for a blog post. If you are posting as a blog post, then you should use the blog posting schema. Also, you must use the blog posting schema if your website is categorized as a blogger and not as a news website. But still, it does not require any specific url or subject. All of the required properties from blog posting and article schema are the same. But for exception, blog posting has the URL and subject properties while article has word count and page start property. Please check which one is better applied for your content.
Product Markup
Product markup is an interesting type of schema markup, especially for more advanced affiliates and e-commerce sites. More importantly, product markup can help increase a website’s CTR in search results.
The product markup provides detailed information about a product, including images, price, and currency. All types of products can be used to define product markup.
Contains a administrative region protocol. At the time, all products have the minimum elements of the Schema schema. A basic pattern for the div that contains the product information is as follows: <div class=”product” type=”product” name=”product” description=”category name”>Content</div>.
You can use WooCommerce or other affiliate/e-commerce plugins to quickly create rich product data.
How to Implement Schema Markup on WordPress Websites
When it comes to implementing Schema Markup on WordPress websites, the site owner certainly has several options. Whether they are tech-savvy enough to wield the power of code or they opt to use a Schema Markup plugin, their sites can definitely benefit from this SEO strategy.
Before setting our eyes on the implementation, let’s make two things clear. The first is that WordPress has a built-in function for using and writing Schema code. After all, WordPress is all about improved user experience, and by adding needed information to a page using Schema, we help both search engines and users understand it better. Secondly, remember that the topic of Schema Markup is very complex, and the choice of a plugin or custom code depends on the site structure and the help the webmaster is comfortable with. Hence, it’s highly recommended to do research and study the various plugins or tools available before picking one. Now, let’s take a look at some ways of bringing Schema to WordPress sites.
Using Plugins like Yoast SEO or Schema Pro
Building schemas for WordPress is simple with plugins like Yoast SEO or Schema Pro. They take care of the hard work and let you enjoy the fruits of your labor. But if you want to go bare metal and keep things as light as possible, then there’s a native way to include schema markups in your WordPress website.
This is a great option if you’re not interested in clunky plugins or are experiencing hosting issues with some. The implementation will differ vastly depending on if you are using HTML Builder or React. I will take you through both and also teach you how to organize your schema markups for the greatest efficiency.
One of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress, Yoast, comes with built-in schema markup. This option is available for those who have a premium version of the plugin. If you’re using the free version, you’re out of luck.
When using the Yoast SEO plugin, you can display a Review snippet for your web pages or blogs. You can also include Breadcrumbs on your site. This plugin is simple to use and is perfect for those looking for a reliable means of implementing schema markups on WordPress.
The Schema – All In One Schema Rich Snippet plugin offers seven different types of schema markups, including review, event, recipe, article, author, and more. With this plugin, you can display rich data from the search engine results, thus helping your website stand out from the rest. Make your site visually appealing and elicit more clicks from search engine visitors.
Manually Adding Schema Markup to WordPress Templates
Manually adding schema markup to WordPress templates and pages
If you’re more of a do-it-yourself kind of person and don’t mind doing some coding, you can manually add structured data to your WordPress site. After all, WordPress is designed for websites that are meant to be simple — and adding structured data for one or two content types is pretty simple. We recommend using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, which will give you schema.org microdata to add to your website. It’s a pretty simple process. First, you generate microdata code for your content. Then, you configure the different data elements and download the .html file. Now you can use software like Notepad for Windows, TextEdit for Mac, or my personal favorite, Sublime Text. Notepad++ is also a good option. I’ll walk you through the filled-in template and the output of the template. I recommend using the Bigcommerce Corey-style guide because it’s easiest for me to work with. There are other styles you can use, too.
Once the file is created, you need to add the microdata that was generated to your WordPress theme. Though it might sound a bit intimidating at first, editing your WordPress theme isn’t so bad. The microdata will look something like this: I had the file of your information page. Note: the microdata-specific lines are only code that begins with itemscope itemtype, itemprop, etc. Everything else is invalid. That’s what you add directly to your category page, product page, etc. For example, the homepage will not contain product microdata. Then add a filename to the bottom of the file and upload it to your server via a platform like Filezilla. After that, in Google Webmaster Tools, you can test live data to make sure everything worked out. It’s that easy!
