How to use Schema.org tags for SEO?

This form of SEO optimization is one of the most potent available today, yet it is seldom used. After reviewing the concept and way of marking the scheme, you can better your siters search results (SERP).

Schema.org tags are created and used to allow search engines to understand the content of the page. This is achieved by assigning meaning to a specific text in the content in a way that can be read and understood by the search engines. Standardized and adjustable text or vocabulary used for this purpose are recognized by major search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo. It is not very often for competitors to help each other, but Schema.org leads to such cooperation between industries. What you get is an agreed set of code markers that informs most popular search engines about what to do with the data on your site.

Some history about Schema.org

Schema.org is an initiative launched on June 2, 2011 by Bing, Google and Yahoo, to create and support a set of structured data tags for websites. In November 2011, Yandex joined the aforementioned. The initiative proposes usage of the schema.org dictionary along with the Microdata, RDF or JSON-LD formats to mark the content of the website with metadata about oneself. Such a tag can be recognized by search engine robots and parsers, thus it provides access to the meaning of websites. The initiative also describes the extension mechanism that allows to add additional properties.

What are the Schema.org tags?

They are a peace of code on your website that helps search engines get more detailed results for users. Schema.org maintains a huge list of dictionaries recognized by major search engines. These vocabularies cover most of the things that can be identified, from entities to relation between those entities and their activities. Schema.org informs the search engines what the data means. The content of your site will be indexed and returned in the search results. But with tags, some of this content is indexed and returned in a different way.

They use a unique semantic dictionary in the microdata format. You do not need to learn new programming skills. Web pages with tags still use HTML. The only difference is to add fragments of schema.org vocabulary to HTML microdata.

Schema.org tags help you improve your site’s ranking for all types of content. There are tags for many kinds of data including: articles, local business, restaurants, TV episodes and ratings, book reviews, cinemas, applications, events or products. There are hundreds of tag types. If you have any data on your website, there is a good chance that it will be associated with itemscope and itemtype.

Sites that use schema tags will have a better SERP ranking than those that do not.  One of the studies showed that the pages with Schema tags were on average, placed four positions higher in SERPs compared to those without. Although it is not completely clear that this higher result is due to the markers themselves, there is an obvious correlation. Currently, one-third of Google’s search results contain rich snippets, including Schema tags.

How to use Schema. org tags on your website?

The goal of every business is better positioning, better website appearance and better results in the SERP and among users. That’s what schema.org is for.

Here’s what to do to implement Schema.org tags:

1. First you have to go to the Assistant to mark the data.
2. Then you have to select the type of data you want to mark.
3. Paste the URL of the page or article that you want to mark
4. Select the type of elements to be marked.
5. Continue adding tag positions. Use the list of data items as a guide and select other items in your article to add them to the list of tags.
6. Create HTML code. When finished, click “Create HTML”. On the next page you will see the HTML of your site with the appropriate microdata placed on the selected positions.
7. Add schema markers to your website. Then you need to go to your CMS (or source code if you do not use CMS) and add highlighted fragments to the approproate places. Find the yellow markers on the scroll bar to find  the schema tag code. A simple alternative is to download an automatically generated HTML file and copy it to a CMS or your source code.
8. Use the structured data testing tool to find out what will the page look like with added tags. Instead of analyzing the published page, I will analyze the code generated by the tool. After pasting the code, click “preview”. The test tool shows how the article will look in Google search results.

Tips for using Schema tags

– Find the schemas that are most commonly used – Schema.org provides a list of the most popular tag types. Check the types that best suit your business.

– Find all the necessary schematic types. There are many types of markers. The list provides most of the available tag types.

– The more tags, the better – the Schema.org instructions clearly explain: “The more materials you mark, the better.” When you start to understand the vast amount  of possible item types, you will start to see how much is on your site that you can tag.

But remember to exclude depedency: “You should only mark content that is visible to visitors to the website, not the content of hidden div or other hidden elements of the page”

Schema.org now and in the future

The concept of network infrastructure, which requires structured data mechanisms to describe individuals and relation in the real world, is as old as the network itself. The idea of describing the world using a network of typed relations was well known even in the seventies, and the use of logical statements about the world has a history from even before digital. It is surprising how difficult it was for such seemingly obvious ideas  to find a purpose for themselves on the web as an information platform.

Over the last four years, schema.org has evolved in many ways, both in organizational terms and in terms of real patterns. Almost eight years after launch, schema.org enters the next phase, and the development of vocabulary takes place in a more dispersed form. Many extensions on topics, from cars to product details, are already underway. In this model, schema.org itself is just the core, providing a uniform vocabulary and a congregation forum if necessary.

Increased interest in large data means that the need for common schemes is even more necessary. While data experts evaluate the value of a data-driven analysis, there is a growing need to collect data from various sources, and thus the need for common vocabulary. Developers express their hopes that schema.org will contribute to this.

The introduction of schema.org tags is very simple and it is surprising how few companies and websites have benefited from it. They are the SEO innovation that will probably stay with us longer than anticipated. It’s time to learn and implement the right microdata to improve your search results. Doing this will immediately give you an advantage over the competition!