You might already recognize the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your WordPress website. However, it can be difficult to find effective SEO strategies that truly give your content an edge when compared to the competition.
Fortunately, implementing schema markup is an easy way to improve your search rankings. By adding this structured data, you can help search engines better understand your content. Plus, it enables Google to create ‘rich snippets’, making your search results more useful to visitors.
In this post, we’ll give you an overview of schema markup. Then we’ll show you two methods to implement it on your website and achieve better SEO results. Let’s get started!
An introduction to schema markup
Schema markup is structured data that helps search engines understand your website. When search engine bots ‘crawl’ a specific page, they can analyze this data to make sure your content appears in relevant searches and contains key information.
If you’ve designed your content well, visitors should be able to easily understand it. However, search engines might have trouble recognizing what is being discussed. Structured data gives them context, so they can tell what different parts of the page mean and how they relate.
For example, let’s say you’re creating a page to promote an upcoming event. You can use the “Event” schema markup type to make the page’s purpose apparent. Then you can use properties such as “location”, “price”, and “startDate” to tag important details about the event, so search engines can see them (and display them in results).
Other types you can use include:
- Creative works
- Organization
- Person
- Place
- Product
As for properties, there are many options available. Some are more generic in nature, while others are highly-specific to the type they fall under.
How schema markup can improve your SEO
Adding schema markup to your website’s HTML can be an effective way to bolster SEO. When you use structured data effectively, you can improve the way your pages are displayed in search engines.
For example, using structured data enables Google to create a ‘rich snippet‘ for your content. This is a summary of the page that users can see on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
For example, let’s say you’ve written a recipe. When optimized with schema markup, the search result for your recipe page could feature a photo of the finished meal and information about its cooking time:
You can also see a rich snippet when viewing product information. It may list details about the item’s ratings and reviews:
This extra information can make your search results more interesting to potential
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This article was written by Will Morris and originally published on ManageWP.