What is schema and how can it be used to improve my businesses SEO?

Introduction

Have you just got your latest seo report from your marketing agency? And when you cast your eyes down the report, you may see that the marketing agency has been working on implementing schema.

Now, as a business owner you may not have the foggiest clue as to what schema is, or how it can be used to help your business.

So if you want a clear explanation as to what schema is, and you don’t want to hear tons of marketing waffle, well you’ve come to the right business.

We are also going to explain how you add schema to your website, using a tool that’s provided by Google that’s super easy to use.

 

So what is schema?

The majority of information that’s shown on a businesses website is what is called unstructured data.

So, just imagine for a second your off to buy a new car. Naturally you will want to check a view reviews about that new car first.

So you start to have a look at reviews, and one website pops out at you, that’s because it has the star rating clearly displayed in the serps.

So how is that possible? Well, its possible because the website designers or the seo company has implemented schema.

This means that the whole page may have unstructured data, such as describing how the car drives and how economical it is.

This information is meant for us, the readers, that want to find out about the car. Therefore text is normally unstructured.

Yet this can present a sort of problem to the search engines. As if the information is written for us mortals, well it can sometimes be hard to figure out what the website or that page is about.

That’s because the text may cover many topics, for instance this blog post is talking about schema, seo and now new car reviews.

So you can appreciate that this gives the search engines a headache when trying to work out the meaning of the page.

This is partly why schema was created, and that’s to make a universal mark-up language that makes it a piece of cake to mark-up in structured language what the website, or page is about.

So, in this instance, the person wanted to know opinions and reviews on a new model of car. So, this means that the business will have used schema to mark-up the star rating, this is so that this clearly was displayed in the SERP’s.

 

CTR, click through rate

This leads us on nicely now to our next point, which is why your seo company should be aiming to improve your businesses CTR.

Now, as you can see from our last example, if your business stands out from the crowd, by having say a star rating for your business or a product, well more people are likely to click the business listing.

But this hasn’t got to be just a star rating of your business, it could also be something like opening hours for example.

So having schema added to your website, increases your chances of Google using the information so that your business shows up more prominently in the serps.

This can help to improve your businesses CTR, and this means that when people have loads of options in terms of which businesses they can choose to click on, yours is clicked more because it stands out.

Of course, the businesses that are ranked right at the top of Google are more likely to get clicked on.

Yet with that said, say if someone wants a product or service, and they are conscious they want a business with a good reputation, well seeing the businesses star rating in the serps may persuade them to click a business that might be ranked much lower down the page.

So in a nutshell, schema can help you to stand-out, and then help to improve your businesses CTR.

 

Local SEO

If you know a thing or two about local seo, then you will know that an essential part of the seo process is optimise your businesses NAP details.

NAP stands for name of the business, address of the business and the phone number. And seo agencies mark-up this information using schema.

This makes it a lot easier for Googlebot to read the NAP information, and to then cross check that this is correct with the businesses citations.

How do you add schema to a website?

Google has made it super easy to add schema to a website. The Google Structured Data Markup Helper is really easy to use, and helps you to add schema to your website.

 Can our SEO business help?

We are a white hat seo agency, if your business requires help with its seo, then we can help.