Schema markup is a way of tagging content on your website to improve the likelihood that Google can understand what it is about. It has been around for years, but there are only certain types of content that you can mark up. You should use schema markup if you want to tell Google what type of article or page it is and provide information like author name, date published, location, and more. In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about schema markup.
What is Schema Markup?
Schema markup, also called structured data, is basically the vocabulary of major search engines like Google and Bing.
When it comes to schema markup, the words you use are important.
Think of search engines like an intelligent robot that is reading your website and needs to understand it in order to be able to give relevant results when people look for specific keywords or phrases.
If Google can’t tell what type of page you have on your site, then they don’t know how to index them properly.
This means that if someone searches “basketball shoes,” but there aren’t any pages tagged with basketball-related information, then Google won’t show those results even though they exist somewhere on your website.
This is where Schema markup comes into play because you can actually provide this additional data about the types of content on each individual page so Search Engines can understand it better.
Why Use Schema Markup?
A few reasons why you might want to add schema markup to your website are to:
- Make sure that your content is being indexed and ranked properly by search engines
- Provide additional information about the content on your pages so users can see it when they hover over or click on the result in Google SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages)
- Help improve Click-Through Rates (CTRs) because users are more likely to click on a result if they know what it is ahead of time
- Get featured in Google’s Knowledge Graph, which is a box that appears at the top of some search results with information gleaned from websites.
How to Implement Schema Markup on a Website
Now that you know about schema markup and why to use it, let’s talk about adding it to your site.
There are three ways to do this: using microdata, JSON-LD, or RDFa Lite.
Each one has its own benefits and drawbacks, so you’ll need to decide which one is best for your situation.
Microdata:
Microdata uses HTML tags to mark up the data on your pages. This means that it can be implemented easily on any type of site without making changes to the code.
However, there are some limitations with microdata because not all search engines support it yet. Google does support it, so if you’re only targeting Google, this might be the best option for you.
JSON-LD:
JSON-LD is a newer type of schema markup that uses JavaScript to add the data onto your pages. All major search engines support it, but is more complex than microdata. This means that if you want to target multiple search engines, JSON-LD is the way to go.
RDFa Lite:
RDFa Lite is an older version of schema markup. It doesn’t use JavaScript and can be implemented on any site using HTML tags. However, it’s not as widely supported as JSON-LD and may not work with some modern websites.
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