Schema-Up your Pages
Schema markup is the addition of structured metadata to your website’s code. In 2011, search engine giants Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex came together as schema.org and agreed on a universal vocabulary. This resulted in a better understanding of the intent behind search queries and the birth of rich snippets (knowledge panels, FAQs, snack packs).
Today, schema markup is becoming more and more valuable to webmasters, and schema.org records over 10 million sites marking up their pages. Read on to learn more about structured data (SD) and how adding it to your code will benefit your business.
How Does Schema Marketing Work?
Schema marketing involves leveraging schema markup to allow your target audience to find you better. By adding structured data to your code, Google and other search engines understand your content better, resulting in refined answers to search queries and more significant traffic to your site. Tags like local business, organization, and address are just some examples. You even have the option to attribute your page to a relevant Wikipedia page or other authoritative sites using the SameAs tag.
All that data is then cataloged and displayed to match the right queries or pulled up as rich snippets. Simply put, content understanding increases findability, and findability helps your business get in front of the right audience, as remarked by John Muller, Google Webmaster Trend Analyst and foremost authority on schema markup.
Do note that brand schema markup is not required for you to rank, nor does it directly cause you to be featured on the first page. Together with other digital marketing strategies, it provides as much detail to the search engines as possible. It’s also an advanced SEO technique that needs an understanding of code and the use of tools. Taking up Schema services is an option but should you skip it, your website will still be crawled and indexed as usual.
But, if you’d like your Google knowledge panel to show on search results, have rich snippets featured in search queries for your company, or are looking for ways to rank up to the first page, even for voice search, then schema marketing can help.
To prove it, let’s examine case studies of companies that have reaped the benefits of schema markup.
Brand Schema Success Stories
SAP Answer Center
SAP saw a considerable increase in impressions and clicks for their search result pages after implementing rich results with SchemaApp. SAP also paired schema markup with content migration to achieve this growth, which provided the search engine with more information about what is being searched instead of just giving links.
AdventHealth
AdventHealth, a large healthcare provider with over 800 websites and 35 different CMS platforms under its brand, was planning to rebrand. They knew that this transition would cause 25% of organic traffic to drop the following year, so they decided to engage structured data as a critical strategy for managing Google Search during that critical time, which helped the organization significantly reduce risks.
After the rebrand, The company did experience a brief downturn in organic traffic, but this was followed by significant gains!
- 90% increase in clicks
- 40% increase in impressions
- 38% increase in CTR
- Top position in the rankings
Schema markup allowed AdventHealth to increase its digital presence by 26%. The company’s page with a URL of /find-a-doctor accounted for 25% of clicks and 31% of impressions.
Using schema markup in their marketing strategy mitigated the risk of how their site appeared on mobile devices and desktop browsers during the transition, resulting in more people visiting their site.
AdventHealth was also able to experience growth on all pages during the first three months of their response to COVID-19, thanks to the rapid deployment of pandemic-related structured data:
- 22% increase in impressions or a total of 5.4M impressions
- 8% increase in clicks or a total of 100,000 clicks
Home Hardware
Home Hardware Stores Limited, the largest home improvement retailer in Canada, began using product-rich results with SchemaApp to increase their brand’s presence online, by mainly focusing on visibility and real estate in search. Within the first year of integrating structured data into their digital marketing strategy, product-rich results increased QoQ by 290% in impressions and 190% in clicks.
Spectrum’s Own Experience
- We and our clients apply schema markup to our websites, from WikiData links to images and call-to-actions.
- Schema is related to Local and Global SEO, helping search engines understand a company’s brand and geographic reach, etc.
- A popular use of schema marketing is adding code to the FAQ section of a page or post. We make use of this strategy to rank for rich snippets in the People Also Ask section of SERP.
Our Schema Services & SchemaApp Partnership
Advanced SEO uses the benefits of schema markup, by first adding schema tags on your web pages. Helping Google and search engines understand what you are trying to convey allows potential clients to find your site more easily.
We are also a SchemaApp partner. With SchemaApp, we help maintain the ever-changing schema code with clients we work with and make sure the structure is up to date. What does it mean to you and your business? A customized schema strategy plan for more rich results in organic traffic. Learn more about the technicalities of Schema SEO from SchemaApp’s case studies & resources.
Ready to Start Schema Marketing?
We will help you mark up your pages from homepages to service pages. We have been helping businesses generate revenue from their websites for years, so we know a thing or two about getting found by search engines and increasing sales through them.
Learn more about our digital marketing services on schema for advanced SEO.
Do you want more traffic?
“Transparency in digital marketing is a rare thing. And The Spectrum Group Online delivers just that. Nothing was over promised. They know how to build a brand. They did what they said they’d do. They seamlessly blended technical SEO with user experience in order to get business”.
~ Dan Hartnett, President Sergeant Shredder
FAQs
- How does Google decide who gets a knowledge panel?
When your company gains enough authority, the panel will appear for queries related to your brand. Wikipedia is one example of an authoritative site which Google gets information from. You can link your pages to appropriate Wiki pages using the SameAs tag through schema. If your Google knowledge panel is still not showing, a schema marketing strategy combined with other marketing techniques is one way to go.
- How do I add a schema to my local business?
Local business schema markup uses JSON-LD code using any schema markup builder like SchemaApp. If you have a physical address, you can use the LocalBusiness tag but for eCommerce businesses and brands, using the Organization tag is a better option. There are even subtypes to the Organization tag, from Airlines to Medical Organizations and Corporations.
- Is schema important for SEO?
Yes, schema is essential for SEO since it helps the search engine get more information about your website. When web crawlers understand the context and category of your pages, the search engine can display them on search results in the form of FAQs, knowledge panels, and other rich snippets.