Schema markup Structured Data can be a little daunting when you are first trying to understand what it is and what it does for your website SEO. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about schema markup so that you can start taking advantage of its benefits!
What is structured data?
Structured data is a standardized format for structured information that you find on the internet. Structured data uses a set of tags or labels to help search engines understand what your website or webpage is about. The Structured Data Markup Language helps search engines better understand the content on your page, which can help it rank higher in search results.
How does structured data work?
How does Structured Data work? Structured data works by using classes and properties to give machine meaning to objects, meaning that any machine can use this information without human interpretation. Let’s look at an example: If I have a business called Tygerberg medical centre and the address is 65 Tyger Road, Tygervally, CPT 7441, then I might want schema markup that can expressly say that there is a medical facility at that address, and it is a local hospital and business. In other words, that is 3 different types of schema depending on what the SEO decides.
Why is it important to use structured data?
Structured data is important because it can help improve your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Structured data markup helps Google and other search engines understand the content of your pages better, which can result in rich snippets being displayed for your pages. Rich snippets are those small boxes with extra information that sometimes appear next to search results listings. They can include things like ratings, prices, or a summary of the page’s content. This extra information can help people decide if they want to click through to your page.
How do I add structured data to a website?
Structured data can be added to websites in a variety of ways, but the most common way is by using Schema.org. Schema.org is a collaborative initiative between Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! that aims to create a structured data standard. Schema markup can be added to your website in two main ways:
- Premium plugins – This is a good option for someone who doesn’t know what schema they should use.
- Using insert headers and footers and inserting the schema code that has been written up and injected into the header of the website.
What is the structured data markup language?
The structured data markup language is called JSON-LD.
As the Structured Data Markup Language is proposed as a W3C recommendation it may become supported by more web browsers over time. To help this happen Google has released its own Structured Data helper tool that makes adding Structured Data a breeze. You just paste a URL into the form and get back Structured Data you can copy and paste into your page.
Schema.org structured data assistance.
What is schema.org structured data assistant and how does it help you? Schema.org Structured Data Assistant helps you create the markup that is most likely to be understood by search engines. It provides markup samples for the item types defined in Schema.org for which Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have jointly agreed on display schemas.
Google structured data helper
If you’re looking for more help adding Structured Data to your website, Google offers a Structured Data helper tool. This tool will help you add Structured Data to your website in the correct format and make sure that it’s implemented correctly.
What is the Google Structured Data Helper tool? The Structured Data Markup Helper lets you enter a URL or web address to automatically generate structured data markup from a website so it can be used as rich snippets in Search engine results pages (SERPs). Structured data allows your business’s content to stand out from the crowd appearing as rich snippets within search results.
What are the different types of structured data that you get?
- Creative works: CreativeWork, Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, TVSeries …
- Embedded non-text objects: AudioObject, ImageObject, VideoObject
- Event
- Health and medical types: notes on the health and medical types under MedicalEntity.
- Organization
- Person
- Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant …
- Product, Offer, AggregateOffer
- Review, AggregateRating
- Action
What are rich snippets?
Google describes Rich Snippets as “a way for you to provide information about an individual [post] or entity on a website.” They consist of Structured Data Markup, and depending on the type of Structured Data Markup can give you different types of information: price, date and location information. Rich Snippets are a great way to enhance your SERP snippets and gain more visibility.
How much does Structured Data Cost?
Structured data markup is free for all webmasters, but there are certainly paid plugins (some are better than others – this is the best one) someone can use to help with the structured data on a website to improve their rankings.
I hope that has provided you with information on what Schema markup is and how structured data can help your website rank.
If you require help with your SEO, consider using our SEO service in order to get a better understanding of what we do and how we help businesses.
