When you work with a company that provides technical SEO services, one of the first things that will be analysed is how a website utilises different types of schema. A schema is an organisational pattern that effectively organises your website, or shows the user how the website is structured. When schemas are used correctly, they can improve the digital customer experience by making a site easier to navigate. If you’re working to improve your SEO, here are some tips and tools for implementing schemas into your website.
5 Types of Schema Every Webmaster Should Know
Breadcrumbs are navigational tools that are useful to help users track the location of a certain page or piece of content on a website. On a well-organised site, they appear at the top or bottom of the page and show the “trail” that the user would have taken to reach the content. Breadcrumbs are especially useful for pages with many categories and sub-categories.
Breadcrumbs help to build better website hierarchies than standard URLs, as URLs can sometimes be unreliable if they are misconfigured or align differently in the website’s content management system (CMS). For example, if you were looking at a specific blog article on Online Performance’s site, a breadcrumb would look like this:
This is the most direct path to this article, and its location on the site map is now clearly defined. Plus, with breadcrumbs, there is no need to alter pre-existing URLs or other re-directs to each page on the website.
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "BreadcrumbList",
"itemListElement": [{
"@type": "ListItem",
"position": 1,
"item": {
"@id": "https://example.com/books",
"name": "Books",
"image": "http://example.com/images/icon-book.png"
}
}, {
"@type": "ListItem",
"position": 2,
"item": {
"@id": "https://example.com/books/authors",
"name": "Authors",
"image": "http://example.com/images/icon-author.png"
}
}, {
"@type": "ListItem",
"position": 3,
"item": {
"@id": "https://example.com/books/authors/annleckie",
"name": "Ann Leckie",
"image": "http://example.com/images/author-leckie-ann.png"
}
}, {
"@type": "ListItem",
"position": 4,
"item": {
"@id": "https://example.com/books/authors/ancillaryjustice",
"name": "Ancillary Justice",
"image": "http://example.com/images/cover-ancillary-justice.png"
}
}]
}
</script>
Organisation schemas are used for companies with recognised brand information, such as a logo, social media links, contact information. It quickly highlights the relevant information so that users can see the information quickly and clearly. Being the most relevant information, it should all be easy to locate on your website. Google even suggests what information should be included in your organisation schema to provide the most information for potential clients or users. Here is what Apple’s organisation schema looks like on Google:
Here you can see Apple’s essential information without digging around on their website. Plus, it provides related information in a clear and concise fashion. Organisation schemas increase visibility of a brand by providing structured information about a company and its entities. Companies with a strong, detailed organisation schemas will increase their click-through rate (CTR) and improve their prominence in the search results. (Screenshot from google.com)
Product or offer schemas are used on e-commerce sites. They can help users track product ratings, current prices, and see if a product is in stock. These details can appear right on your Google search results, helping Google-and users- get specific information about what is being offered on a specific page. The more they know, the more likely they will click on the link and increase your CTR.
<script type='application/ld+json'>
{
"@context": "http://www.schema.org",
"@type": "product",
"brand": "Acme",
"logo": "http://www.example.com/logo.png",
"name": "WidgetPress",
"category": "Widgets",
"image": "http://www.example.com/image.jpg",
"description": "This is an excellent widget with 21 features and 4 colors.",
"aggregateRating": {
"@type": "aggregateRating",
"ratingValue": "5",
"reviewCount": "21"
}
}
</script>
Rating schemas are tools for both e-commerce sites and local businesses. Most items or businesses will have more than one rating, so you will need to use an aggregate rating system that averages all
the ratings together. As you can see in the example above, the product is rated out of 5 stars and has an aggregate (average) ranking for all of its 3 reviews of 4.4. Google naturally works off a scale of 1-5, with 1 being the worst, and 5 being the best. If you want to adjust that (say, rank something on a scale of 1-10 or even 1-4), you need to adjust the settings in your schema in order for Google and other pages to adjust the rating scale. (Screenshot from Google.com)
Rating schemas have become more central to SEO as more sites have gotten the user involved by encouraging them to rank places, companies, or products. This ranges from Google to Amazon to Yelp and many others. All of these have increased the importance of rating schemas and their impact on SEO.
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org/",
"@type": "Product",
"image": "http://www.example.com/iphone-case.jpg",
"name": "The Catcher in the Rye",
"review": {
"@type": "Review",
"reviewRating": {
"@type": "Rating",
"ratingValue": "4"
},
"name": "iPhone 6 Case Plus",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Linus Torvalds"
},
"datePublished": "2016-04-04",
"reviewBody": "I loved this case, it is strurdy and lightweight. Only issue is that it smudges.",
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "iPhone 6 Cases Inc."
}
}
}
</script>
Event schemas are useful for many types of events and appearances and can be broken down by category within each specific website:
- Defining a music event gives you options for inserting information about tour dates, venues, cities, genres, and the artists themselves.
- For a comedy performance, the schema allows you to include the name of the performer, the name of the tour, dates, cities, venues, and age restrictions.
- If you’re promoting a sporting event, there are areas in the schema for the teams, the arena, seating arrangements, time zone differences for international matches, and ticket prices.
- For theatre patrons, schemas can provide details about venues, awards, schedules, merchandise, as well as the cast and crew.
<script type='application/ld+json'>
{
"@context": "http://www.schema.org",
"@type": "Event",
"name": "Launch Party",
"url": "http://www.example.com/launch-party",
"description": "We're excited to announce the launch party for our newest app!",
"startDate": "10/05/2015 12:00PM",
"endDate": "10/05/2015 02:00PM",
"location": {
"@type": "Place",
"name": "Joe's Party Palace",
"sameAs": "http://www.example.com",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "100 Main Street",
"addressLocality": "Seattle",
"addressRegion": "WA",
"postalCode": "98101",
"addressCountry": "USA"
}
},
"offers": {
"@type": "Offer",
"description": "an offer description",
"url": "http://www.example.com",
"price": "$9.99"
}
}
</script>
When this schema appears on Google, it not only creates a chronological line that is easy to read, but it can provide essential information about each location, such as dates, times, venues, maps, and links to buy tickets. Event schemas can appear on Google search pages and on websites, so you are able to see more page options at once (one for each individual event plus a central page). Because there are more options for the user to click on, event schema gain better CTR and once again increase their visibility. (Screenshot from Google.com)
How Schemas Help SEO
Schemas do more than just arrange the text on your website; they tell search engines how to read that content. They can help search engines identify relevant information faster, and they can be applied to many different types of data. Schemas work to improve your visibility, but NOT your search ranking.
On Google search results pages (SERP), the user is given what are known as “rich snippets”. A rich snippet is a search result with enhanced information. While it still contains the basic title and definition, you can learn more about a company or a webpage with a rich snippet than you could otherwise. With schemas, you can increase the information that is seen on the SERP before you even get to the webpage. The ultimate goal of schemas is to increase CTR overall, and in turn, improve your SEO. Therefore, schemas are useful tools for many websites, and not just a select few. That is why it is best to find out from technical experts at an SEO agency what schemas will best enhance your SEO.
Overall, with a little bit of coding know-how, it’s very easy to create schemas and not terribly difficult to implement them. However, as schemas are an essential part of improving your website’s SEO, there is no reason to not have your site fully optimised for SEO rather than only focusing on one element.
While there are many different types of schema, they might not all apply to your site. It’s best to have a company that offers professional SEO agency handle the technical analysis and let their experts do a full technical analysis of your site. Click here to contact Online Performance, and their team will provide the SEO services you need for your business to be successful.
