There is a lot to search engine optimization. The person assigned with optimizing a website for search engines has a variety of tasks to do, including many technical tasks. Schema markup is an extremely significant aspect of SEO. Read on to find why do you need to focus on schema markup.
User experience (UX) of a website is a significant factor influencing its search rankings. A visitor will have a great user experience on your website only when the content of your website meets his search intent. This goes beyond random keyword matches and stuff. Search engines want to know what your website content has to offer in qualitative terms. Moreover, they want to help users quickly and properly understand what a website is about.
Hence, search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex collaborated to invent Schema.org—or what you may schema markup. It is also known as microdata and is added to your web page HTML. You may also understand it as the semantic vocabulary of the content on your website. With this, you can improve the SERP representation of your business.
It may not be a direct ranking factor for search engines. However, it has great importance in SEO. The list gives below will help you understand that.
Reasons to focus on Schema Markup
➯ A way to supply more definite information
Think of it this way—Google crawls your web pages to understand what your content is about. And then, Schema helps Google understand the meaning of your content. It is only after this that Google ranks it based on the search query intent. When search engines will get more context of your website’s content, they are able to present it on the SERPs better.
The point being, Schema Markup is like a semantic vocabulary of your website’s content. Using it, you can provide more definite information about the content of your webpages.
➯ Better representation on the SERPs
I have suggested a bit on how adding schema markup to your website can improve its representation on the SERPs. Let’s see how that works.
Using schema will help provide rich snippets for your webpages on the SERPs. Rich snippets—unlike traditional only ‘blue-text’ results—have items like carousels, images, and other non-textual elements along with the link.
Moreover, it helps your business show up in the knowledge graph. Adding Schema markup will also allow you to structure your reviews and ratings. All this will help your website have a better representation of the SERPs.
It can be especially beneficial for the success of local Search Engine Optimization. So, if yours is a local business, using Schema markup can give you a great edge.
➯ Increases organic click-through-rate
Search engines like Google keep changing the looks and organization of their SERPs. Now, there are featured snippets, paid ads, the “People also ask” section, and so on. As a result, the space for organic results is shrinking. This calls for a greater need to appear in the top results.
I have already explained in the point above how using Schema markup can help your business have a better representation on SERPs. Hence, this will further increase the chances of your links being clicked on.
Thus, by employing schema markup in your web page’s HTML code, you can increase your organic click-through-rate.
➯ Improved user experience (UX)
Apparently, the whole point behind the making of Schema.org is this – improving user experience (UX). So, yes, it was basically invented to help users find the best-suited content. When the search engine understands the context of your website content better, it will be able to match it better with related search queries and intent.
So, this suggests that the likelihood of the user finding value in your content increases. As a result, they’d apparently have a great experience on your website. And you must know how positive UX can add to your SEO efforts. Hence, this way, using schema markup helps improve the user experience on your website.
Related articles: What SEO strategies you need to apply to improve UX?
➯ Most voice search results use schema markup
SEMRush showed in a study that most of the voice search results were marked up with some or the other form of Schema.
In case you are not aware, the voice search is getting bigger rapidly. More and more people are becoming comfortable and habitual of search the internet via voice command. In fact, SEO experts will tell you how important it has become for current online businesses to optimize for voice search.
Hence, by incorporating Schema markup in your website’s HTML, you can effectively optimize for voice search.
➯ You can get an upper-hand on your competitors
According to stats, hardly one-third of the websites use schema markup. This means using this still has so much potential.
Hence, using schema markup can help you get an upper hand on those competitors of yours who don’t use it yet. So, get on optimizing your website with Schema markup now!
Bottom Line
Schema markup is an important technical aspect of search engine optimization. As it was introduced to improve user experience, using schema markup can help businesses to improve the UX on their website. Although it is not a direct ranking factor, it has a lot of SEO benefits. You can enhance your representation in the SERPs, receive more clicks, and effectively optimize for voice search. And if you do it now, you will have an edge over your competitors since schema markup is used hardly by one-third of the websites.
If you got more queries regarding Schema markup, or just simply want to have a nice discussion—our comment section is right below!
