If you want to take your SEO game to the next level, it’s time to get clued up on schema markup. But what exactly is it?

Schema markup is a form of structured data you add to your website to help search engines understand your content better. It provides search engines with a guide to your site’s content, helping them display your information better in search results.

You’ve probably seen the results of schema markup without even realising it. Those recipe cards with cooking times and ingredients or product listings with prices and reviews right in the search results? Yep, that’s schema markup doing its thing.

In this article, we’ll break down:

The different types of schema you can use
Why schema markup is a big deal for your SEO
How to add schema to your site (don’t worry, it’s less techy than it sounds!)
Some pro tips to make sure you’re doing it right

Different Types of Schema Markup

Alright, let’s talk about the different types of schema markup. Each type is designed to help search engines understand specific aspects of your content, and you can use multiple types on a single page where appropriate.

For example, an e-commerce product page might use the Product schema to highlight price and availability, the Review schema for customer ratings, and the FAQ schema for common questions about the product.

Here are some of the most common types of schema markup you might want to use:

Organisation Schema: This provides essential information about your business, including name, logo, and contact details.
Local Business Schema: This schema type is essential for businesses with physical locations, helping them appear in local search results.
Product Schema: This is used to highlight product details directly in search results, such as price, availability, and reviews.
Review Schema: This schema type displays star ratings and review counts in search results, potentially increasing click-through rates.
Article Schema: This schema type provides additional context about articles, such as the author and publication date.
Event Schema: This schema type showcases event details like date, time, location, and ticket information in search results.
Recipe Schema: Ideal for food bloggers and recipe sites, this schema type can display cooking time, ingredients, and nutritional information in search results.
FAQ Schema: This schema type is used to feature frequently asked questions and their answers directly in search results.

Why Schema Markup Matters for Your SEO

Now that we’ve covered the different types of schema markup, it’s time to explore why it’s so important for your SEO strategy. Understanding the benefits will help you see why implementing schema markup is worth your time and effort.

Improved Search Engine Understanding

Schema markup is like a special language that helps search engines understand your website better. You’re basically labelling different elements of your content to help search engines understand what your content really means, not just what it says.

For example, if you have a recipe on your site, you can use schema markup to tell search engines that it’s a recipe, the ingredients, the cooking time, and even the calorie count.

Or if you’ve got an ecommerce site, you can add schema markup to your product pages so they know it’s a product, what the price is, stock and identify the product image.

This improved understanding helps search engines to match your pages more accurately to relevant searches.

Higher Click-Through Rates (CTR)

Have you ever scrolled through search results and noticed some listings have extra features, like star ratings, images, or prices? These are known as rich snippets, and they’re directly tied to schema markup.

Schema markup provides the structured data search engines use to create these rich snippets. When you implement schema markup on your website, you give search engines the information they need to display these eye-catching features in search results.

So, why does this matter? It all comes down to click-through rates (CTR). Rich snippets make your search listings more noticeable and informative, which can significantly improve your CTR. Here’s why that’s important:

More organic traffic: The more clicks you get, the more visitors land on your website.
Potential ranking boost: If more people click on your result, search engines interpret this as a sign that your content attracts users, potentially leading to better rankings.

Improved Local SEO

For local businesses, schema markup is particularly powerful. Local Business schema allows you to tell search engines information about your business, such as:

Business name
Address
Phone number
Opening hours
Accepted payment methods
Price range
Service area

When you use local business schema markup, you’re waving a flag saying, “This is where we’re located, and this is what we do”. This makes it easier for search engines to pop your business into local search results and map listings.

Think about it, when someone’s looking for a “cafe near me,” you want your coffee shop to show up, right? Schema markup helps make that happen.

Here’s what a basic Local Business schema might look like:

{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "LocalBusiness",
"name": "Joe's Coffee Shop",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "123 Main St",
"addressLocality": "Anytown",
"addressRegion": "CA",
"postalCode": "12345",
"addressCountry": "US"
},
"telephone": "+1-555-123-4567",
"openingHoursSpecification": [
{
"@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": [
"Monday",
"Tuesday",
"Wednesday",
"Thursday",
"Friday"
],
"opens": "09:00",
"closes": "17:00"
}
]
}

Voice Search Optimisation

Ever caught yourself asking your phone where the nearest pizza place is? You’re not alone. Voice search is becoming a big deal, and schema markup plays a big role in optimising your content for these conversational queries.

When people use voice search, they ask complete questions instead of just using keywords. For example, they might say, “What’s the best Italian restaurant near me?” instead of just typing “Italian restaurant.”

By implementing the correct schema markup, you provide voice search algorithms with the structured data they need to match your content to these more conversational queries.

Here’s how schema markup specifically helps with voice search:

Structured answers: Schema markup allows you to format your content in a way that’s easily digestible for voice assistants. For example, FAQ schema can help your content appear in featured snippets, which are often used for voice search results.
Local SEO boost: Local Business schema provides precise location information that voice assistants use when people ask for businesses “near me”.
Speakable schema: This specific type of schema markup identifies sections of your content that are particularly suitable for text-to-speech conversion, making it more likely to be used in voice search results.
Enhanced context: Schema markup provides additional context about your content, helping voice assistants understand the relationships between different pieces of information on your page.

More and more people are using voice search to find local businesses, get quick answers, or shop online. If you want your website to show up in these voice search results, schema markup is your secret weapon.

Implementing Schema Markup

Ready to implement schema markup? It’s more straightforward than you think.

One of the easiest ways to begin is using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. This user-friendly tool guides you through selecting the appropriate schema for your content.

Choose your content type & input your URL

Tag all the elements on your page

Generate your HTML

The code you receive for your page will be formatted in JSON-LD by default, but you can select the dropdown and choose the format you want.

Copy the markup to your page

Once you’ve added your schema markup, take the time to test it with Google’s Rich Results Test to ensure all the data you’ve included is marked up correctly. Remember to keep your schema markup updated as your site content changes to maintain its effectiveness.

Alternative Methods

Schema.org

Schema.org provides a detailed list of all available schema types and their properties for a more complete approach. Whether you’re looking to implement Product schema or any other type, you’ll find in-depth information here. For example, if you’re using Product schema, you can find property details like price, availability, reviews, and more.

Once you’ve determined your schema, it’s time to add it to your site. If you’re not comfortable with code, don’t worry – there are several no-code options available depending on your platform:

WordPress

For WordPress users, plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO can add schema markup automatically. These tools simplify implementing schema by clicking a few buttons without touching any code.

Shopify

Shopify automatically adds basic structured data to your online store, including product markup. This helps search engines understand essential product information.

For more advanced implementations, consider the JSON-LD for SEO app. It enhances your schema capabilities, allowing you to add detailed product information and other schema types like Articles, FAQs, and How-to.

While many Shopify themes include schema markup, the extent can vary, so check your store’s current schema using Google’s Rich Results Test. For those comfortable with code, you can manually add custom JSON-LD schema to your theme, but this should be done cautiously to avoid conflicts with existing markup.

Squarespace

Squarespace automatically generates structured data for several content types, including blog posts, events, local businesses, organisations, products, and websites. This means that if you’re using Squarespace, basic schema markup is already in place for these content types. However, it’s important to note that Squarespace doesn’t currently offer a way to customise or add additional schema markup beyond what they automatically generate.

Outsourcing

If implementing schema markup sounds like too much work or you’re not sure where to go from here, we offer this service on monthly SEO packages for all our clients. Apply to work with us today to find out how we can support your business and boost your website’s visibility.

Why is Schema Markup Important?