About Schema Markup

Search Engines and SEO

This was originally published as a tweet thread here:

Today I'm talking about Schema Markup (structured data)

This is markup or code in the source of your website that gives specific detailed information meant to be used by search engines to classify your content. Makes it easier for machines to read and know what it's about.

1. What is Schema markup

It's a set structure of code that is in the source of your website. There are several types: json-ld, Microdata and RDFa. json-ld is preferred by Google. It's also referred to as structured data.

2. What can you markup?

For now Google supports only some types of markup but they're adding to it all the time. You can see what's current here. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search-gallery And for more about Schema here: https://schema.org/

3. Why does it matter for SEO

Schema or structured data matters for SEO because it can help the search engines understand what your site is about. in Google's case, you can show up with rich snippets, which place you in position 0, at the top of the search results.

3.25 Voice search and assistants

Like Google Assistant, Alexa & Siri are leveraging this, as people shift to using voice, this will become even more important. Depending on your market, it might already be important. Google has Speakable which is in beta & Apple is actively hiring in structured data.

3.5 Anything you can control.

It is a case of giving the search engine's more granular info about your content, your site, your business. Something under your control, so use it! It enables your results to show with expanded features like extra links, video thumbnails, breadcrumbs, and more. Increase your visibility.

4. how can you use it

How will depend on your site and the type of content you have. Lets look at a few examples: organization, events, video, products, recipes, breadcrumbs…

5. Examples: Logo

Use this markup to tell about your official logo. This is used in knowledge graph panels in Google. It looks like this in the SERPs:

6. Examples: Breadcrumbs

These indicate a page's position in your site's hierarchy. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcrumb They look like this in the SERPs:

7. Examples: Product

Include info about your product, it's details, pricing, availability and even review ratings. This one belongs on single product pages for a specific product. If you aggregate, they have an example for that: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/product

8. Examples: Recipe

Use for recipes, as in cooking. This one has lots of options and features, you can even break down the steps in your recipe, include images and include carousel markup that can be featured in carousel results on Google. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/recipe

9. Examples: Video

Add this to your videos on your site, with description, duration, thumbnail your pages with video can be more discoverable in Google. Ever wonder about SERPs that have a video thumbnail next to them? This is it.

10. Examples: Events

Events are things like performances, classes, conferences or meet ups. Don't use this for things that are not events. Adding this type of markup can add direct links to your events in your listing.

More on events:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/event

Word of warning

Don't use markup on something that shouldn't be, in other words don't game markup and say that something is a recipe when it isn't, or that something is a product or event when it isn't. Penalties happen and that's one way to get your site into hot water.

Testing your markup

Make sure you're getting in the required elements for the type of markup you choose. You can test your markup here https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool
Keep tabs on it in GSC https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7552505

I hope this helped you learn more about structured data and schema markup. Let me know if you have a topic to suggest. If this is helpful, I'd love a follow. If you need help with technical SEO, say hey.

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