Schema Markup and Rich Snippets are becoming vitally important and popular among SEO experts. They have a major role in helping search engines index your website. Therefore, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of those in driving quality leads to your website and turning them into customers.
Still, only a tiny fraction of websites are currently using it.
That may be due to many reasons, but the main one is obvious — they don’t understand the real value they’re missing on by not using schema markups.
In this article, we’re going to show you how you can implement structured data into your website, use it to create Rich Snippets, and eventually convert more leads:
What is Schema Markup?
Schema Markup is a type of data or code that’s added to your website to help search engines understand the structure of its web pages.
When implemented correctly, it will drive more leads to your website and convert them into customers.
It’s inserted your web pages to help Google and other search engines understand the underlying structure of your website and know what data to show in search results.
Schema Markups improve the display of your results on search engines — which in turn leads to saving your potential customers time, enriching their experience, and making them more likely to visit your website.
Without it, a website is a pile of meaningless text because crawling spiders can’t clearly tell a page title from its description or it’s author’s name.
For example, when a user types in a term related to your website, Google will know what information display from within your website.
It will then pull that data, display it in specific elements, and organize it into an eye-catching snippet that’s more likely to get clicks and drive more potential customers to your web pages.
What are Rich Snippets?
In addition to the usual data (Meta Tag, URL, and Description) that search engines pull, a Rich Snippet will include structured information that was pulled from your website.
The term “Rich Snippets” comes from snippets that are richer with additional content. A rich snippet is more noticeable among regular snippets and therefore has higher click-through-rates.
Here’s an example of a normal snippet:
And here’s Rich Snippet result:
If a business owner who needs our services is looking for reviews for our agency, they can see from this result that the page has reviews within it.
There are various types of Rich Snippets (depending on the type of data the page contains).
For example: Business pages, Article pages, review pages, etc.
Structured Data Examples:
Besides reviews, there is a long list of Rich Snippets Google can create using your website data.
Here are some of the most popular ones:
Articles:
Featured Snippets for articles are created with a specific Schema Markup that shows a lot of information from the blog post. For example, your specific Snippet can display an image with a short description and a title.
Featured Snippets are popular because they appear at the top even if your result isn’t ranking the first on the page.
They also give the user a reason to trust your website after you provide them with the initial piece of information they were looking for.
Products:
This type of markup shows key information about products on your website.
Some of the information may include ratings, reviews, price, quantity, image, description, etc. (Depending on the markup you created and your website structure.)
Organization:
Organization Markups provide important data (logo, name, images description, etc) on an organization or a business.
Top stories:
The Top stories Snippet is mostly used by large news websites and media outlets to keep Google News updated with the latest trends. (It shows recent articles with images and titles.)
Events:
Markups are a great solution to let your potential customers know about upcoming events on your website. You can display details such as the date, event name, location, description, and a call-to-action in one text.
Recipes:
Rich Snippets for recipes contain a lot of essential information like user rating, preparation time, calories, a short description, images, etc.
If your business provides meal recipes, this markup would be a great feature to add to your website to make your search result stand out more.
Videos:
Crawling spiders are just bots that can’t understand what you say unless it’s written in words. Therefore, using Schema Markup helps search engines create Snippets if your pages include videos.
Those are the main types of Rich Snippets that should know as a business owner. They can cover almost every data type on your website.
Check out this for more markup types.
Why Are Schema Markups important?
Although your visitors won’t see any change in your website, using Schema Markups will positively affect your results in many ways.
Schema Markups are in direct relation to creating Rich Snippets, which we know to be the reason websites get more website visitors, higher CTR — and most importantly, higher conversions.
There are many reasons why Schema Markups are crucial to growing your business online, but here are the most important ones:
Rich Snippets Provide a Better User Experience
By organizing your website data structure using Schema Markups, you make it simple for search engines to know what to show when pulling data.
That results in effective Rich Snippets and better rankings in the SERPs.
Since most users are either too lazy to read or in a hurry when searching, they’d be less willing to click on your article or review page unless they’re confident it’s invaluable.
Rich Snippets provide value to users before they even visit the page. That makes them more inclined to click, read, and even take your call-to-action if your content meets them where they are.
For instance, If you’re looking for beef recipes, you’d love to see some information so that you know the page has what you’re looking for.
In this example, the snippet already tells you the duration, calories, and the ingredients for what you’re searching for without even having to enter the website.
It also has an image of the meal so you know it’s the right one.
This simple tweak makes your results more compelling and noticeable to the user. That explains why businesses using Rich Snippets get more clicks and conversions.
Schema Markup helps Google with Voice Search
According to Google, 20% of all searches are voice searches. They’ve even estimated that by 2020, 50% of all online search will be done through voice search.
That explains why this has become a trending topic on the internet in recent years. In fact, many experts consider it the future of the search engine industry.
And with the rise of virtual assistants, one thing we can be sure of is that Voice search is the future of search engines.
People can use search voice while doing anything. Most of them are too busy doing other things rather than write questions and read answers.
It is then the responsibility of search engines to come up with accurate results to save them time and keep them around.
But there is one problem:
Voice search requires more Artificial Intelligence from search engines before it can pull the right results. After all, users don’t use voice search as they do with text search when it comes to tone, word choice, and phrasing.
Customers also prefer text search when it comes to sensitive subjects. However, most of them use voice when looking for the nearest restaurants or local businesses because they’ll mainly be looking for direct answers and not long-form articles to answer their questions.
To minimize all those differences, you should be using Structured Data and Schema Markup.
You can assist search engines is by telling them exactly where it can find the right answer. Most voice devices nowadays work well with websites using structured data where answer phrases are direct and less detailed.
How to add Schema Markup to Your Website?
Implementing Schema Markup to your website is simple.
You first need a Schema markup generator to create a code that you’ll add to your website.
We’ll use a tool called Structured Data Markup Helper (by Google) to generate our Markup code.
This tool is amazing because it will save you time and keep you from making errors while editing the code manually.
1- Choose your preferred data type:
As we mentioned earlier, there are various data types that you can markup to create Rich Snippets.
From the list, select the data type that you want to create structured data for.
For this example, we’re going to go with “Local Businesses” as a data type.
2- Enter the URL for the page
You have two options here to select from.
If you have a URL, insert it in the box.
Or you can paste the HTML code for your page if you don’t have a URL ready for now.
And then click Start Tagging.
The next page will load in a few seconds with the schema markup generator.
3- Highlight Data to Match the Structure
Select data inputs, one by one, and give proper tagging to each one them.
For example, highlight the title of your post and select Name from the dropdown menu.
(It will appear on the right column as you enter it.)
Continue doing the same with the rest of the items until you’re finished.
Your final result should look something like this:
4 – Create the Code
Click Create HTML.
Then select JSON-LD for a javascript code to add to your header or Microdata for a complete HTML code to put in your website files.
You can either copy the code and paste it or download an HTML file.
Click Finish.
Now that you’ve finished creating the code for your Schema Markup, you can edit your HTML web page in your site to add the code there.
5 – Check Your Code For Any Errors
One important last step is to check your code to spot any errors or warnings. You can do that by using the Structured Data Testing Tool (by Google).
Select CODE SNIPPET (or URL if you already have your code inserted).
Paste your code in the empty box, and hit RUN TEST.
If your code is error-free, your results will be like this:
That means that it’s ready to be used.
You can now paste it to your website and expect it to work perfectly with any search engine.
A Common Misconception About Schema Markups:
Many website owners who are using premium themes believe that they’ve got their structured data part covered.
But the truth is, they’re almost all wrong.
Although some themes may indeed come with a basic schema to work with all websites, it doesn’t tell search engines what the structure of your website is.
It’s just there to show crawling bots the basic structure of the theme such as the header, body, footer, etc.
Check if your Schema Markup is correctly added to your website using the Structured Data Testing Tool (Paste page URL instead of using the code).
Wrapping It Up
Now is the time to start using Schema Markup and Rich Snippets to take your business to the next level.
So, what are you waiting for?
Don’t miss on the chance to outrank your competitors with this simple trick because although it’s really essential to growth, most websites are not using it.
Need help with your structured data? Contact us now. We’re here to help you!
