Importance of Schema markup
Many SEO enthusiasts and webmasters ignore the importance of schema markup and structured data. Even if they know its importance, this aspect is not given the importance it deserves. Schema is one of the most famous structured data markup formats. Yet how negligent and uninterested webmasters, in general, are of this format can be gauged from the fact that “Schema markup” has a search volume of less than 500.
This post aims to familiarize you with Schema markup and clarify its importance for SERPs. As mentioned earlier,
Schema is a structured data markup format that allows search engines such as Google to quickly interpret the information on the webpage. This will enable them to show the most relevant results to the users in Google SERP or Bing SERP.
The official website of the Schema markup project is Schema.org. This project came into existence because of the collaboration between Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This collaboration itself is testimony to how much importance this project holds. It also goes to show the importance microdata and especially Schema markup could have a few years later.
How does schema markup works?
Schema data is inserted into any webpage. Because of the inserted data, search engines can ascertain the nature of information better than HTML tags; however, schema microdata is usually applied by modifying a page’s HTML code. The mechanism of Schema markup is demonstrated in the example below. Schema markup allows the webmasters to define elements such as itemscope and type. It is quite clear from the picture that itemscope enables the webmaster to identify the nature of the page. Along with the movie’s name, the director’s details and even the genre are given. The search engines would easily identify that the webpage is related to the movie Avatar and not talking about “Avatar the last Airbender,” which happens to be another science fiction movie and animation series. This was made possible because the director was mentioned in microdata.
How can Schema markup help you?
The application of Schema markup can help you in a number of ways. Firstly, this project will grow big and eventually have more weight in SERP rankings. Why? Because it’s not often that rivals decide to collaborate on any issue. If they have done that, then there is probably a reason.
And the reason is that microdata allows the search engine to display the most relevant results. The goal of every search engine is to show the most relevant results. So, you see the point? The search engines are eventually going to attach more importance to the schema. For that reason, and if you are working on building an authority site, you must adopt such best practices from the start.
In addition, if you are already ranking for some keywords, schema markup can enhance the visibility of your rich snippets and give the result more prominence in SERPs.
So, these were some of the advantages of Schema markup. Despite these clear advantages, search engines have yet to include schema markup as an official SERPs ranking factor. However, for the reasons described earlier, I would strongly suggest adopting good practices like the application of Schema microdata on web pages.