The mindset and mentality of the searchers are continuously changing. The thirst for immediate results on all their search queries makes it compulsory for the major search engines that the information they provide cannot afford to be irrelevant.

The search engines are getting increasingly sophisticated but still can’t interpret or understand a web page the same way a human being is can. In order to provide the best search results possible to the searchers, popular search engines of the world such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex have come up with an ingenious solution called Schema markup.

What Exactly Schema Markup is?

Schema is a markup vocabulary for structured data that is created in collaboration of Top search engines – including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Bing and Yandex. When integrated on the website, it provides relevant parts of a webpage in the form of rich data and rich snippets.

This markup will make the returned results page more informative and increases click-through rate. Adding structured data gives context to a web page. Various elements such as images, dates, reviews and opening hours can be defined separately through Schema markup.

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How does Schema Function?

Whenever a search engine crawls a certain website, it originally tries to get the idea of the content of the website, its layout and its navigation. Schema markup not just tells the search engines’ crawlers what the webpage says but also assigns meaning to the content.

The Schema markup contains attributes and elements that can be integrated directly to the HTML code of a web page. A search engine can easily understand and read the content of a webpage when it is marked up with structured data.

What describes Schema?

Whether it is product or reviews, structured data can be utilized to markup various sort of items. Additional information that can be provided by using Schema markup are:

Products & Offers- Business owners can easily markup their products, special items and lucrative offers on their webpages. While a search is executed that includes any of the following queries, the crawler will take the searchers to their webpage.

It is an excellent way to grab the attention of the customers and increase traffic to your website. As an example, when someone search a product with the following keywords “25% discount on floral dress” or “best offers on sports shoes”, if the words in bold are marked up, the searcher will see the result of your website first.

Events- Making an event popular and letting the people find all the information about the event can be done by integrating Schema on the official webpage of that event. Charity events, dance shows, sporting events and many more can be described by Schema.

It is hugely effective especially for targeting local audience. As an instance, when someone searches an event with the following keywords “musical events in Sydney” or “donation events in Minnesota” he/she will get the complete information furnished in your website. Schema markup is highly effective for the promotional purpose.

Videos- Basic how to do videos, training videos or personal videos can be marked up to make it more popular. You can apply several filters that Schema offers for information and give search engines a greater understanding of your video. For example when someone searches “fitness training video” or “tutorial video on photoshop” they will find your videos easily.

Reviews- Business owners can highlight the testimonials, on-page reviews and comments of their customers using Schema. Consumers have become more selective and skeptic before making a purchasing decision, they usually take help from review sites like Glassdoor, Yelp and UrbanSpoon to form an idea about the service and product of a company.

Reviews drive business, so if you integrate the reviews of your company published in those sites you can enjoy a lot of exposure. Lets say XYZ is the name of a company, use the markup in the following way “Yelp review of XYZ” or “Glassdoor employee review of XYZ”. It will help to convert new customers.

TV Episodes with Ratings- By wrapping markup around your special episodes of television shows with ratings is a brilliant idea to make it more popular and enhanced its viewership. Practically channel operators can use it to promote a new show or offer information about their popular shows. For example, when someone searches for “Latest ratings of Friends Season Three”, they will find the ratings easily.

Business Location- Businesses can mark up their phone number, location on Google map, address, operating hours and off days. It will boost the visibility of your local SEO.

Apart from the following things other content types that can be wrapped up by Schema are:

·         Creative Work

·         Articles

·         Software Applications

·         Restaurants

·         Organization

·         Book Reviews

·         Movies

·         Recipes and More.

·         Benefits of Adding Schema Markup

Using Schema markup helps one to achieve better ranking in the SERPs comparing to the companies without markup, and this is a proven fact. Till date, no concrete evidence has been found that indicates this markup improves rankings. However, it has been witnessed that a website could gain considerable amount of click-through rate when it uses more extensive rich snippets created by using Schema markup.

A searcher can quickly realize whether the content on your site is what they are searching for is an excellent way to grab real people genuinely interested in your products or services. Before adding schema to your web pages, it is advised to clearly figure out ‘Item Type’ of the content on your web page to get excellent results.

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