What Is Schema Markup And How To Implement It

Updated by Chima Mmeje — November 11, 2024.

Schema.org (often called schema) is a semantic vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that you can add to your HTML to improve the way search engines read and represent your page in SERPs. To enhance your SEO strategy, it's crucial to add schema markup to your web pages, as it helps search engines better understand your content and improve search visibility. By adding schema markup to your HTML, you provide context to your web page’s content, making it easier for search engines to interpret and display the information accurately in search results.

Importance of schema markup for search engines

Schema markup plays a crucial role in how search engines perceive and rank your web pages. By providing additional information about your web page, such as its title, description, and images, schema markup helps search engines understand the meaning and context of your content. 

This improved understanding can lead to better visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Moreover, schema markup can enable your web pages to appear in rich search results, which are more visually appealing and informative, thereby increasing the click-through rate (CTR) and driving more traffic to your website.

Using structured data, or schema markup, offers several significant benefits for your web pages. Firstly, it can enhance the visibility of your web pages in search engine results pages (SERPs) by providing more detailed and relevant information. 

This, in turn, can improve the click-through rate (CTR) as rich results generated by schema markup are more attention-grabbing and informative. Additionally, structured data helps search engines better understand the context of your web pages, making it easier for them to rank your content for relevant search queries. By implementing schema markup, you can ensure that your web pages stand out in search results, ultimately driving more traffic to your site.

Code samplmple

<div itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Book">  
<span itemprop="name"> Inbound Marketing and SEO: Insights from the Moz Blog</span>  
<span itemprop="author">Rand Fishkin</span></div>

Schema.org is the result of collaboration between Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo! to help you provide the information their search engines need to understand your content and provide the best search results possible at this time. Adding schema markup to your HTML improves the way your page displays in SERPs by enhancing the rich snippets that are displayed beneath the page title.

For example, the first search result above contains both a star rating and a publication date. Both of these can be added using schema. The second example does not have rich snippets and instead displays either the meta description or other information chosen by Google. To get the review rich snippet, you would use the following code:

<div itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/AggregateRating">  
<span itemprop="ratingValue">[Aggregate rating given]</span> 
stars –   
<span itemprop="reviewCount">[Number of reviews]</span> 
reviews</div>

To generate your own code, you can use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper:

Review schema markup is essential for enhancing search results with review snippets and star ratings, significantly boosting credibility and user trust.

The difference between Schema.org, microdata, and structured data

Structured data is a system of pairing a name with a value that helps search engines categorize and index your content. Microdata is one form of structured data that works with HTML5. Schema.org is a project that provides a particular set of agreed-upon definitions for microdata tags.

Does schema replace Open Graph?

Open Graph is a type of markup used by Facebook to parse out information like what image and description to display. Schema provides a more detailed list of options than Open Graph. They can be used together, but Open Graph cannot be used in place of schema.

Types of items described by schema

Structured data can be used to mark up all kinds of items from products to events to recipes. It is most often used to provide additional information about the following:

• Creative work
• Event
• Organization
• Person
• Place
• Product
• Organization schema markup: This is crucial for improving brand identity and awareness by consolidating essential business information into a knowledge panel displayed alongside search results.

A full list of items you can mark up with schema is available here.

Each type of information has properties that can be used to describe items in more detail. For example, a “book,” which falls under the category “creative work,” can have the properties “name” (title), “author,” “illustrator,” “isbn,” and more, depending on how fully you want to describe it. Similarly, an “event” can be classified as anything from a “businessevent” to a “theaterevent.”

Search engines that use schema markup

Schema is recognized (and in fact the vocabulary is maintained) by Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex. It’s unclear whether other search engines are using this markup to change how they display search results.

Implementing schema markup can significantly improve a website's performance in Google search results by enhancing visibility and click-through rates (CTR).

Structured data's effect on rankings

Whether structured data affects rankings has been the subject of much discussion and many experiments. As of yet, there is no conclusive evidence that this markup improves rankings. But there are some indications that search results with more extensive rich snippets (like those created using schema) will have a better click-through rate. Implementing schema markup code can significantly enhance a website's visibility to search engines. For best results, experiment with schema markup to see how your audience responds to the resulting rich snippets.

Writing schema markup correctly is crucial to ensure that search engines can parse the markup without errors.

Implementing schema markup with other structured data

Schema can be used with RDFa and JSON-LD, but it is not supported by microformats.

To implement schema markup, you can use various tools that require no coding skills. Start by choosing the appropriate schema type, then create the code and insert it into the HTML of your webpage. JSON-LD is the recommended approach for implementation.

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Keep learning

• Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper
• What GPT Means for Structured Data — Whiteboard Friday
• Structured Data Testing Tool
• SEO Essentials Certificate
• Bing Guide to Marking Up Your Site
• Schema.org
• What is a SERP Feature?
• Schema markup generator tools simplify the process of adding structured data by automating the coding required for schema markup implementation.
• Schema markup generators enhance search engine understanding and improve overall site visibility by creating and implementing customized schema markup.