All About Schema and Why it is Important For You.

When designing your website to be completely effective for SEO purposes, you want to have a Schema.

That word may seem foreign to you.

The importance of schema is one of those things that you never really give much thought too but is essential when conducting local SEO.

The importance of schema is astounding when you are attempting to develop an online platform.

What is Schema?

In short: Schema is the structure behind your data organization. What this means is that it is a visual representation of how different table relationships enable the hidden agenda of mission business rules that were created for databases.

Basically, you want to think of a schema as though it were a new language. This language shows relevant content in search results as they pertain to your website. Using schema in search results will show all the information and the structured data that is associated with websites.

The schema can do a variety of different things for you. Stuff like show your business hours of operation, your travel plans and so on. In Google, they use a wide variety of cards across a vast number of different use cases to give you a visual of the most relevant search results when you are looking for something.

If you are now wondering what cards are, you can find that out here.

Structured Data:

What this means is it is a general term used to refer to any data which is organized. It’s like having a day planner versus a mirage of sticky notes all over your desk. Structured data will keep information about your website easy to read and understand using clear and concise organization.

The schema will do something like this:

Post it #1 – meeting with John in the conference room at 10 am

Post it #2 – phone call with Vanessa at 1 pm.

Schema will take this information from the post it notes and turn it into this:

What do you need a schema for?

You may think that schema isn’t necessary for your website, but you would be wrong. There isn’t a single website out there that couldn’t benefit from having a schema implemented. Think of it this way, you are trying to advertise books and don’t want a bunch of fluff-filled content to show up in your search results. Using schema, you can implement a wide range of information that is specific to you and your niche.

This information can include things like:

• Book editions
• The number of pages
• How about the authors?
• Moreover, the ISBN number associated with the books.

There is so much more you can do, regardless of the industry your in for your website. The importance of schema is any possible piece of information you need to obtain, or show can be used in a schema.

Here is what Schema looks like: The part that is circled in red is the schema for this website.

What is the importance of schema?

To sum it up, the schema will allow for more structured data and search information to be shown to searchers who are looking for specifics about organizations like yours.

As a result, there will be visitors to your website who are truly interested in what you are offering. Ultimately, using schema to enhance your local SEO will help bring searchers who are going to use your services or products for specific needs.

The schema also can be used to show reviews of your organization. We all know that peer to peer feedback is a large deciding factor when it comes to offering services or products.

There are all kinds of schema types you can use when implementing it into your website. There are three main types of Schema that are more popular than the others.

Three Schema Types:

JSON-LD:

JavaScript Objective Notation for Linked Data is a format of structured data that is for marking up your website. This particular schema type is supported by the biggest search engines. These search engines include Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex.

Overall, JSON-LD is Google’s preferred and recommended method of implementing structured data to your websites. One of the main advantages of JSON-LD is that it doesn’t have to be in the body of a page. You can embed this one in a script tag that can be placed anywhere on the page. Furthermore, you don’t have to change HTML elements.

Microdata:

Microdata is a tag set that will allow you to mark up your website. You can add these tags directly into your HTML. Each tag will consist of itemtype – the type of item the microdata is refereeing too, itemprops – to markup properties and itemscopes – which identifies the type of item the microdata is referring too.

RDFa:

Resource Description Framework in Attributes is an HTML5 extension that is used to add markups to metadata within your website. Similar to Microdata, it uses tags within your existing HTML.

Resource Description Framework in Attributes uses three particular tags. These tags are vocabulary, property and type of. The schema will identify what vocabulary is being used and the type of schema will help to establish what the page is about locally.

Best of the Three?

Of these three schema types, you should know how they are used. Both Microdata and RDFa require you to have some programming knowledge as they require changes to your HTML. However, JSON-LD does not change your HTML at all. JSON-LD is simply placed anywhere on your website, and it provides a language which the search engines will read.

The importance of schema is both powerful and essential to you.

Structured data is used in many different ways. These ways include using Open Graph markups to specify a Facebook title or description. There is also SQL to query relational databases.

You want to be able to implement and use this information to help increase visitors to your site. The importance of schema will be shown by helping you improve the usability of your website for searchers and to help you climb the ranks in search engines because there is relevant and correct information about your site.

How does the importance of schema impact local SEO?

Impacts of Schema on Local SEO

In an SEO context, the schema will refer to the implementation of some type of markup on your website in order to provide more informational details around your site’s content. The markup will improve the search engines ability to understand the content of your site, and that can help with relevancy signals.

Using relevancy signals, the search engine then can determine if your website is pertinent in any given search. This type of markup needs to be understood consistently by search engines as well as by searchers. There are general standardized ways of implementations that are known as formats or syntaxes. Also, there is a classification of concepts and how they relate to the searcher’s inquiry that is used.

The importance of schema is that it impacts local SEO because it provides snippets of your organizational details or services. Using schema to enhance your local SEO will help you by bringing quality local searchers to your site who wants your services and not just passersby.

What this means is that when people are looking for services within their locality and you have your schema set up to explain how you meet that service, when they search through search engines for who in the area provides those services, you will rank above others because you have a schema set up. If you are wanting to know what other ways you can rank ahead of others using local SEO, contact us here for more information.

Implementing schema:

Now that you know what schema is and how important it is to you, as well as what makes it a suitable way to improve local SEO, how do you implement it? What can you do to get a schema set up for your organization?

As always, schemas get added to your website through the use of plugins.

All in One Schema .org Rich Snippets is a free plugin you can use on your WordPress sites.

This plugin is widely powerful, and it comes from the same creators of those who created the popular add-on ConvertPlug.

Since it is out of the box and works well from the second you implement it, you can get started immediately with creating your organizational schema. However, this plugin is limited when it comes to the schema types that can be used with it.

Right now, the types that can be supported are:

• People
• Product
• Event
• Articles
• Software Applications
• Recipes
• Reviews
• Videos

What this can mean for you is that when you choose the plugin for your site, you need to check the schema type in order to see if your website will be supported. Right now, this particular plugin lacks these schema types.

• Breadcrumbs,
• Books
• Businesses that are local.

There are more that aren’t included as well. Just check ahead before installing a plugin.

Schema

This schema has another data to give you rich snippet markups for your WordPress websites. Again, this one is out of the box, and it can support a large range of different schema types. These types include blogs, articles, and sideline search boxes. You can also add a review schema through a free add-on plugin.

However, though compatible with Yoast SEO and a range of other plugins like Visual Composer, it is still missing a large majority of schema types. However, it might be worth taking a look at if you don’t have complicated schema requirements.

Paid Schema plugins?

There are a lot of paid plugins that will provide you with all the schema types, the rich features you would want and theme compatibility. However, these can range from $20 on upwards. Again, they are for WordPress websites and come at a premium cost.

If you are willing to purchase a schema plugin, look carefully into your options so that you get the one that will meet your specific website needs. You want to make sure you stand out through the use of a schema, and it won’t be helpful if you purchase one that doesn’t support the schema type you need to improve your local SEO.

The importance of Schema summary:

A schema is basically another tool to help you improve your website ranking by providing you with a tool to organize and summarize the data on your website to increase visibility into what you offer. By having a way to structure your data, you can improve your ranking in search engines.

Using this SEO tool to help improve visibility to searchers who are looking for specific information that is either local or online, a schema will improve the quality of visitors you have to your website, searchers who are more likely to use your services or purchase your products because you have what they are looking for specifically.

Final thoughts:

Schema data isn’t only important to your visitors; it is also essential for helping improve your local SEO ranking specifically. Subsequently, it will improve your ranking in Google and other popular search engines.

Using a schema plugin, you can improve your overall site markup. You can get started using schema immediately and let it help you.

If you have used a schema markup on your site, you might have seen an improvement in your search engine ranking through the use of the structured data. Maybe you didn’t. Don’t assume because you implement a schema that there will be a huge improvement to your ranking right away.

The schema is a way to structure your data to provide you more quality visitors. Therefore, you might not see an overall ranking markup right away. However, the place you will see the improved ranking most is local.

Overall, the schema is a great way to improve local SEO among other things. The importance of schema can easily be lost among the other things you need to do to improve your site for SEO purposes. However, don’t overlook it.

If you want some more information regarding the importance of schema and how to implement it for local SEO purposes, you can contact us. Fill out the form below if you would like help creating your SEO strategy.