It is well known that Google recommends Schema as the most reliable structured data markup vocabulary, and it is arguably the favorite on-page markup library of most webmasters. For those who are not sure about the real agenda here, Schema.org is a shared markup that allows search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex, etc. to understand the information and content type on web pages. This forms the basis of how a search engine interprets content on web pages and filters the best within them, in order to display the most relevant results.
Schema markup enables a better representation when a search spider crawls your website by adding a set of HTML tags to each and every individual web page. Hence, Schema remains a critical aspect in respect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), since it provides a better understanding and clarity in the way search engines identify your website, its content quality and other metrics that influence search algorithm and rankings.
How Schema markup works?
As per a report by SEW, most people have a misconception that Schema is limited to the rich snippets that appear in the SERPs, such as star rating of recipes or restaurant, or music or an event activities. How it works can be understood easily with the Google’s own structured data testing tool that is used to verify Google Authorship, which I’m sure most of us have used to verify our authorships. However, in the true sense of things Schema markup is way beyond that and it is in itself actually a bigger collection of schemas including different HTML tags, used by most modern webmasters to markup their pages in the manner advised by major search engines.
In general, Schemas can be used to add markup to a variety of content published on a web page mentioned below. It must be noted that Schema doesn’t explicitly tells search engines (for example, Google) that the page has 10 images, 1500+ word content, or 1 video. However, using this structured markup we give Google signals that the page has both textual and visual content-
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Web Page Structure
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Content Information
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Content Publisher
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Content Author
Web Page Structure
Schema markup help search engines quantifying the site structure and type of content, which they eventually use in their metrics and formulate the page authority (PA) and domain authority (DA) information. Hence, if you want your website or a web page SEO optimized with a good PA and DA ratings then the elemental work starts with Schema. If your site has error free Schema structured markup then Google would consider your optimizing efforts, and on the other hand, if the page has serious markup errors then don’t expect Google to be generous and all your efforts could go in vain.
Content Information
Sometimes you are dealing with lots of content when you are handling a big website with lots of pages. It is possible that some of the unused pages have erroneous markup and that could be limiting your site’s performance. The content information markup allows search engines to identify content type- textual, audio or visual. Imagine you went overly creative with your website’ Content Management System (CMS) and some errors persist that WordPress (example CMS) isn’t able to identify or is showing, but you aren’t able to fix them. In such case, a systematic structured data tool must be used to check and fix Schema related errors.
Content Publisher and Content Authorship
Content is one of the most relevant parameters used to judge how much a website offers value to the web in the contemporary SEO world. Hence, many times it is not sufficient to provide content type markup, and we have to signal search engines that the content has more attributes that facilitate its rankings. For example, who published the content and under what category of interest, or who is its author and does the author have authority to publish it under his name, etc. Hence, Schema markup conveys a lot more information to the search engines and assists them in interpreting page content in a more organized and systematic manner.
Industry experts have opined that one must wait at least four to six weeks after optimizing a website for its Schema markup. Further, we must check webmaster tools on a routine basis and ensure that all page errors are fixed on a priority basis. Schema can help you in reaping numerous benefits for your business in the form of better rankings, enhanced traffic and improved representation among the search engines.
