Schema markup is how you let the search engines know exactly what is on your site. Think of it as Google’s language. Using structured data (code), systems like AI and search engines can read, understand, and index your site’s content better.
Using schema markup on your pages also makes the content eligible to show in enhanced search results known as rich snippets. These are something referred to as rich results and include things such as star ratings, price tags, and product stock count.
In the example above, Google has displayed an image, author, star rating, review count, cooking time and recipe ingredients in a dedicated Recipes section. For the above search results, this Recipes section appears before the rest of the search results, allowing you to gain a competitive edge over your competitors.
Here’s a quick introduction to schema markup and why it’s so important to SEO:
- Schema markup (or structured data) is code you can add to your website to help search engines understand the context and meaning of your content.
- This allows your pages to appear as rich snippets in the search engine results, which are more engaging for users and can increase your CTR and traffic.
- To create structured data, you can either do it yourself or use an online tool or CMS plugin.
- To implement schema, you can do it manually by adding the structured data to your website’s code, using a plugin or using Google Tag Manager.
- There are many different types of schema, with some of the most commonly used ones being organisation, breadcrumb, FAQ and product schema.
Why Do We Need Schema Markup?
Although search engines are very powerful tools, they don’t have the same visual and linguistic understanding of content as humans. This means they require additional information to read, identify and categorise content. Although a human might look at a list of ingredients and quantities and intuitively understand that they’re looking at a recipe, search engines lack this intuitive understanding.
Adding recipe schema and including recipe ingredients (pictured above) helps search engines understand that a particular webpage is a recipe and should be shown for relevant recipe searches. Without schema, search engines would find it much more difficult to understand the meaning of content.
Schemas can be applied to pages through encodings, such as RDFa, Microdata, and JSON-LD. Google supports all three languages; however, JSON-LD is preferred as it is the easiest to understand.
What is Schema.org?
Schema.org is an independent, community-driven project that helps people add structured data to their web pages. It provides a collection of schemas that are used to apply structured data markup to different types of content, such as recipe schema, product schema and organisation schema. Since 2011, Schema.org has collaborated with search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex, to create, maintain and promote schemas.
What Does Schema Markup Do?
It’s important to understand that although schema can help boost the content on your site by helping Google and other search engines to understand the context, it is not a ranking shortcut.
Adding the correct schema markup to your content, e.g., FAQ schema to FAQs, product markup schema to your product pages, etc., can increase the chances of the content showing in rich results and help search engines and AI algorithms understand your content.
Take a look at our article, “Is Structured Data a Google Ranking Factor?” for a more in-depth discussion.
The Main Types Of Schema In SEO
There are currently hundreds of schema type available, according to Schema.org, but most websites only need a small number of them. Here’s an overview of the most common types of schema:
- Local Business Schema
- Organisation Schema
- Recipe Schema
- Product Schema
- Breadcrumb Schema
- Blog Schema
- Review Schema
- Person Schema
- Video Schema
- FAQ Schema
We’ll go into some of these in a bit more detail below.
What is Local Business Schema?
Local Business Schema is a structured data markup that provides search engines with additional information about a local business. This includes:
- Name
- Type of business
- Phone number
- Address
- Opening hours
- geoCoordinates
- Reviews
- Additional information, such as menus or reservations for restaurants
As a general rule, you should implement Local Business schema on your homepage. If you have more than one location, we have some advice about the best practice for implementing Local Business schema in our blog, ‘Should You Add Local Business Schema on Every Page?’.
What is Organisation Schema?
Organisation Schema is fairly similar to Local Business Schema, but it can be used for any type of organisation, company or business. It provides search engines with detailed information, including:
- Name
- Organisation type
- Logo
- Website
- Phone number
- Address
- Founder
- Founding date
- Number of employees
- Headquarters
- Social media links
Organisation schema is typically implemented on the home page or About Us page.
What is Product Schema?
Product Schema is a type of structured data markup that provides detailed information about a product being sold on a website. Implementing product schema helps search engines better understand products and display them in rich snippets in search results. Here is some information that can be included in product schema:
- Product name
- Price
- Type
- Image
- Brand
- Shipping
- Description
- Stock Keeping Unit (SKU)
- Offers
- Reviews
Specific product schema should be added to individual product pages, but aggregated product information can also be added to category pages using Item List structured data.
What is Breadcrumb Schema?
Breadcrumb Schema is structured data that helps search engines understand the hierarchy and navigation of a website. It does this by defining the path that a user must follow to get to a specific page. Breadcrumb schema allows Google to display breadcrumb navigation in search results. In the example below, this looks like www.bbc.com > news > world.
The key elements that need to be implemented are::
- BreadcrumbList
- itemListElement
- ListItem
- Item
- Name
- Position
Breadcrumb schema should be added to any page where you have breadcrumb navigation visible to the user (in the header or at the top of the page). Each page will need its own breadcrumb schema to reflect its position in the website hierarchy.
What is Review Schema?
Review Schema is used to mark up reviews on a website to help search engines understand ratings and reviews of products and services. When implemented correctly, it can help rich snippets appear in search results. Review schema should be added to all pages with reviews. Here’s what is typically included in review schema:
- Product/service being reviewed
- Review rating
- Number of reviews
- Reviewer
- Review text
- Date published
What is FAQ Schema?
FAQ Schema helps search engines understand frequently asked questions and display them as rich snippets (since 2023, these have often been displayed by Google from authoritative government and health websites). This schema should be added on dedicated FAQ pages and all other pages with FAQs, such as service pages, product pages, category pages and blogs.
If you’re looking for information on adding schema to your site, take a look at our instructions in our article, “How To Add Schema To Your Website”.
Entity SEO and How Schema Helps Machines Interpret Content
Entity SEO is how you help search engines understand why people, locations, products/services, and topics are mentioned on your website. The “entity” in question is a thing that search engines can recognise – like your business name or the author of a blog.
Using entity SEO throughout the content on your site is important because search engines and AI tools like LLMs don’t read websites in the same way a human does. For example, a human can narrow down the meaning of a page by reading it naturally, but a search engine needs more clues. This is where schema markup can help.
By using structured data for entity SEO and AI search, you are giving search engines structured information about your content – think of it as speaking in their “language”. This will clearly label key details such as your business name, address, services, and products, which, in turn, allows the machines to interpret your content correctly and connect it to the right topics and searches.
The easier your content is to understand, the higher the chance that search engines and AI tools will categorise and display it correctly, so it shows up in the right places when people are searching for what you offer. However, this does not guarantee higher rankings; it simply supports stronger content clarity and can help your pages to become eligible for rich search results.
How To Check Whether Schema is Working Correctly
Once you’ve added schema to your website, it’s important to check that it has been implemented correctly. Even small errors in the code can stop search engines from reading your structured data properly, meaning your page may not be eligible for rich results.
One of the easiest ways to test your schema is by using Google’s Rich Results Test. You can either enter the live URL of the page or paste your structured data code directly into the tool. This will show whether Google can detect your schema to show it in the rich results, as well as indicating any errors it may have spotted and ways to fix them.
You can also use the Schema Markup Validator from Schema.org. This is useful for checking whether your structured data is valid from a wider Schema.org point of view, rather than only looking at the rich results Google supports. If there are errors or warnings, the tool will highlight the areas that need fixing. Usually these errors have occurred during the implementation stage, likely meaning that the schema was not implemented correctly.
If your website is already connected to Google Search Console, you could also check the Enhancements section. This shows structured data issues across your site, including pages with valid markup, pages with warnings and pages with errors.
Implement Schema With Help From Wildcat Digital
At Wildcat Digital, our team of technical SEO experts can create and implement a range of structured data to increase the likelihood that your pages appear as rich results and help you get ahead of your competitors. We will use schema, alongside other aspects of technical SEO and an effective content strategy, to help improve your keyword rankings, traffic and ultimately conversions.
Get in touch with a member of our friendly team to learn more or visit our Technical SEO page for more information.
