Schema Markup & Structured Data SEO

Structured data can help you to send the right signals to search engines about your business and content. But where do you start? Columnist Tony Edward has some suggestions.

You have probably heard that leveraging schema markup (or other kinds of structured data) can help increase search engines’ understanding of your site’s content, as well as enhance search visibility via rich snippets, featured snippets and Knowledge Graph results. Structured data is a great way to create more search engine-friendly signals, which can indirectly impact search rankings.

Google’s John Mueller recently stated that the search engine giant may add structured data markup as a ranking factor. So it is definitely worth the effort to implement schema markup on your website, as this is becoming more important to Google.

However, it can be confusing at times to determine which schemas you should use on your website. There are many, and determining which ones to use can be difficult. Below, I have listed a breakdown of which schemas might be used by specific website types. Some can be used across all sites.

All Sites:-

The following schema markup types can and should be used across all different site types. They are not specific to any vertical or industry.

Organization Schema Markup:-

The organization schema markup helps generate brand signals which can enhance your Knowledge Graph entry and website snippet presence in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Be sure to specify your logo, social profile links, and corporate contact information.

Website Schema Markup:-

The WebSite schema markup helps generate the Sitelinks Search Box feature for brand SERPs and can help your site name to appear in search results. You must, of course, have an existing site search on your website to enable the Sitelinks Search Box element.

Google Resource Pages:-

Sitelinks Search Box

Include Your Site Name in Search Results

Breadcrumbs Markup

The BreadcrumbList schema allows you to mark up the breadcrumbs on your site to generate breadcrumb rich snippets for your pages in the SERPs.

Google Resource Page: Breadcrumbs

Site Navigation Schema Markup:-

The SiteNavigationElement markup can help increase search engines’ understanding of your site structure and navigation and can be used to influence organic sitelinks.

Video Schema Markup:-

A site with embedded or hosted video content can leverage the VideoObject schema. Google primarily displays video rich snippets for YouTube videos, but this will help video rich snippets to appear for your Web pages in Google Video Search.

Schema Software Application Markup:-

Leverage the SoftwareApplication markup on your software apps to enable app rich snippets.

Required Properties: The only required property is the “name,” but Google notes that rich snippets are currently only shown for apps that include at least two of the following properties: