How to Add Schema Markup to Your Website
Adding schema markup to your website isn’t as complicated as it may sound, but if you have a web developer contracted or as part of your team, you may want to advise them if you don’t have some basic HTML skills.
Here are the steps to take:
- First, ensure that your theme or we build doesn’t already come with some schema already implemented. You can run it through Google’s Structured Data Tester.
- Determine what types of schema you should implement on your site/pages.
- Use the Merkle tool I referenced above to create the schema code.
- Note: There will be many plugins that can implement schema as well for platforms like WordPress. Yoast even has those capabilities now. Check out if they will suffice. If I’m being honest I haven’t had much success with using plugins as they always seem to bring back errors. I prefer the manual approach or working with a web developer.
- Add the code to your site’s/page’s source code through the file manager or an insert header footer scripts plugin.
- Run another test with the Google testing tool to see if it brings back any warnings or errors.
- If it does, work to fix them, if it doesn’t, you are good to go!
What is schema markup?
Schema markup is a type of structured data that tells search engines more about the content on your website. With this data, you can help crawlers understand the meaning of certain elements on your website. Adding schema markup can lead to rich snippets which are detailed listings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
In the example above, the schema markup told the search engine which pieces of information were customer ratings. Google decided to display that straight away on the SERP, helping the user decide whether or not to click on the link.
Rich snippets help generate more organic traffic to websites. That’s because they are more visually appealing, attention-grabbing, and offer helpful content upfront. Schema markup gives you the best chance at generating one of these high-value search engine listings.
How does Schema markup work?
Schema.org marks up the individual elements of a webpage, like pictures or names, with specific code that tells a search engine exactly what that page element is.
The way this is done depends on the type of structured data markup you choose to use on your web pages.
The full list of things that you can mark up with Schema can be found here. Although it seems extensive, it doesn’t by any means cover everything that you might want to feature on a webpage, so there will be some things that the vocabulary just doesn’t exist for yet.
But the vocabulary is always being updated and expanded, and if you’re ambitious, you can even add an extension of your own.
Marking up your web pages with structured data means that a search engine can ‘read’ them more easily and understand what the content refers to.
Why Is Schema Markup Important for SEO?
The point of structuring your data is to communicate better with search engines. When Google understands entities on a deeper level, it serves better results to searchers.
Items like rich cards, rich snippets, and the knowledge panel appear on SERPs after gathering information from structured data.
While there’s no evidence that that schema will improve your rankings, it does provide a wealth of opportunities.
How to Add Schema Markup to Your Website
Adding schema markup to your website is a great way to provide search engines with additional information about your content, and it can help your site rank better in search results.
Here are the steps to add schema markup to your website:
1. Choose the type of schema markup to add
The first step is to choose the type of schema markup that you want to add to your website. There are several types of schema markup that you can use, such as organization, product, event, and review. You can find a complete list of schema markup types at schema.org.
2. Identify the content to be marked up
Once you have chosen the type of schema markup, you need to identify the content that you want to mark up. For example, if you want to add organization markup, you need to identify the information you want to include, such as the organization name, address, phone number, logo, and other relevant details.
3. Create the schema markup code
After identifying the content to be marked up, you need to create the schema markup code. There are different formats for creating schema markup, but the most common ones are JSON-LD and microdata. JSON-LD is the recommended format by Google because it’s easier to implement and understand. Here is an example of an organization schema markup using JSON-LD:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Your Organization Name",
"url": "https://www.yourwebsite.com",
"logo": "https://www.yourwebsite.com/logo.png",
"description": "Your organization description.",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "1234 Main Street",
"addressLocality": "Your City",
"postalCode": "12345",
"addressCountry": "Your Country"
},
"contactPoint": {
"@type": "ContactPoint",
"telephone": "+1-555-555-5555",
"contactType": "Customer Support"
}
}
</script>4. Add the schema markup code to your website
5. Test your schema markup
After adding the schema markup code to your website, you need to test it to ensure that it’s working correctly. You can use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to test your schema markup. This tool will check your schema markup for errors and provide suggestions for improvement.
6. Monitor your website’s performance
Once your schema markup is working correctly, you should monitor your website’s performance in search results. Schema markup can help improve your website’s visibility in search results, so you should keep an eye on your website’s traffic and ranking.
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