SEO marketing has been one of the most throat heating discussions in the past few years across the globe. The world of marketing is getting a shift from conventional marketing to SEO marketing since the internet, and IT has provided numerous tools. SEO, which is optimizing the search engine to divert more clients towards you from Google by showing up high in its SERP, is being experimented and improved through a lot of innovations these days.
There have been many factors that search engines use to analyze the data available in the labyrinth of the web to pick up your webpage and put it on the SERP. Presently there are 4-5 major factors that are used in Google’s algorithm which decide the qualification of your website for show-up. But, if you look at the trend in the SEO field, a new term Schema has been pinging up every SEO’s mind, and many experts are predicting it to be the future SEO. It is important to know what future of SEO holds so that your website can be ready with it when it comes in.
Currently, Google hasn’t incorporated Schema in its ranking algorithm, but like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex have invented and run Schema, it is pretty sure that it will soon be a part of their algorithm. So, isn’t it better to understand its importance and value from now only and inculcate it, the sooner, the better?
What is Schema?
The schema is simply a guideline of the structuring of data. It offers the vocabulary or tags to be incorporated in the code of your website, which provides structure to your website. Thus, if those common vocabs are incorporated in your website, it is easy and quick for the search engine’s algorithm to read your website, understand your website and quality your website. Once the schema is added in your HTML code, it has better chances of your website being picked up for display in the SERPs with a display of rich snippets.
When the schema is incorporated in your website’s HTML coding, search engine indexes your data, reads your data, understand its meaning and displays the results with rich snippets that are best to show.
You must have been seeing that when you search on Google, nowadays, the first few results are displayed differently than others. For example, their star performance, their rating out of 5, latest event or information is also displayed, along with metadata. This helps the user to understand your website quicker, and he gets more curious and interested in exploring your website. Since these search engines are trustworthy to all users who search, they believe in the results displayed with value-added information.
Rich Snippets
With the help of schema mark up, SEOs can make their website more eligible to be the top contender in the SERPs, with a display of many rich snippets. Rich snippets are that value-added information in the search results that are displayed below your website details. For example, when you search for iPhone 8, it returns the results with a star rating of Amazon, no of reviews available on Amazon for iPhone 8, its price and some metadata. This helps users to get more interested in Amazon, and they decide to click on that search result only. If such information is available, the user gets the required thing more quickly.
Types of Mark-ups
There are many types of mark-ups in the schema. Let us list a few:
- Person mark-up
- Location mark-up
- Organization markup
- Product price markup
- Product offers markup
- Product/service rating markup
- Article markup
- Video markup
- Event markup
These are few most common mark-ups that you will come across. Otherwise, there are hundreds of mark-ups that are listed on schema.org. These mark-ups, when used in the HTML coding of your website, can bring your website on top in search.
For example, when you use product price markup in your website’s HTML coding, it helps the search engine to not only read your website’s code and content but understand that the product has this much price. So, when you type iPhone 8 in the search box, search engine navigates through the HMTL code of Amazon, sees a code with markup as “Price.” That’s the moment where it understands that it has to pick that information and show it as the price in SERP. Similar is the case with other mark-ups.
For example, there is mark-up category as Video, and it understands information like video length, video size, video resolution, no of views, etc. Thus, when a user does a search for videos, your video will automatically come up with the information that you described in your code using the schema markup.
Current status of algorithms
As of now, the schema is in practice but hasn’t been made a compulsory factor by Google or other search engines to get a good ranking during the search process. However, currently, it is already helping websites to get a better click-through rate and more customers. Till date, there is no official information by any search engine that they have to incorporate schema in their search algorithm.
Thus, as of now, it is not a deciding factor for ranking of your website during the run of an algorithm. Schema markup doesn’t affect your ranking. Many SEO services providing companies have already started tightening their belts on the schema, such as Vision Smash, which has expertise in this aspect.
The schema is helping the industry to move towards a more structured approach, and thus it will be a win-win situation for users who are getting more relevant information, as well as the website, whose value-adding information is directly presented to the user.
Wrapping up
In the near future, this will make the world of algorithm and webpage HTML coding, more structured and quicker. It is one of the most applauded innovations in the SEO field and seems to be a horse of long run. It is the exact time for SEO enthusiasts to learn the tactics, ups, and downs, do’s and don’ts of schema approach and get their firm’s revenue to a great height.