Schema Markup (also known as Structured Data) is a code that helps search engines understand the content of your web pages. If you add the appropriate Schema Markup and have the right page content, you are also eligible for a rich result on the search engine results page (SERP).
Example of a Product rich result.
Schema Markup has been around since 2011 and is now considered a must-do SEO strategy. As search engines shift to become more semantic and competition heats up, Schema Markup provides organizations with a measurable way to stay relevant on the SERP and differentiate themselves from other competitors in the market.
However, implementing a semantic Schema Markup strategy is often challenging and costly. Some organizations lack the expertise and internal resources to manage their markup. Other organizations have complicated web architectures or multiple domains, adding further complexity to the implementation process.
Fortunately, you can overcome the challenges of managing Schema Markup by partnering with Schema App. Our team provides an end-to-end scalable Schema Markup solution to help enterprise SEO teams execute their Schema Markup strategy with scale and agility.
Not sure if Schema App’s end-to-end Schema Markup solution is right for your organization? Here are five distinct benefits of our Schema Markup solution:
Benefit 1: Ability to Manage Schema Markup at Scale
Managing your Schema Markup on a page-by-page basis is incredibly complicated and time-consuming. This approach is not nearly scalable enough to facilitate implementation across a large-scale site.
For instance, let’s say that you wanted to add Review Schema Markup to all of your company’s location pages. To accomplish this, you would have to write the Schema Markup for each location page, and then add it to the individual pages manually. If you change the content on your page, you’ll also need to go back and update the Schema Markup to avoid Schema Drift.
As a Schema App customer, you would gain access to our Schema App platform, including our Highlighter. The Schema App Highlighter allows users to create semantic Schema Markup templates for pages with similar layouts (i.e. blogs, location pages, etc.) and deploy Schema Markup to those pages in a scalable manner.
When you first become a Schema App customer, you will be assigned a Customer Success Manager (CSM) who will help you customize your Schema Markup strategy and create your templates on the Highlighter accordingly.
After setting up the templates, the Highlighter will dynamically generate and deploy Schema Markup based on the content on your page. Your team can make content updates to the page without manually updating the markup.
When you create a new blog post, for example, the Highlighter will automatically deploy the appropriate Schema Markup to the page if it fits the template. This avoids the need for teams to take the time to add Schema Markup to these new pages each time.
Adding to this scalability, once your entities have been identified using Schema Markup, our Omni Linked Entity Recognition (LER) can link the known entities on your page to external authoritative knowledge bases.
Benefit 2: Develop a Reusable Knowledge Graph to Future-Proof for AI
Many organizations implement Schema Markup to help their pages stand out on search through rich results. They use plugins to automatically add Schema Markup that offers easy implementation. However, plugins restrict Schema Markup to a surface-level approach without establishing connections among entities on the site or linking them to external knowledge bases. This impedes the creation of a robust knowledge graph.
In doing so, they miss out on the semantic value of implementing Schema Markup. The main purpose of doing Schema Markup is to help search engines understand and contextualize the content on your site so that they can provide more relevant results to searchers.
Knowledge graphs are important for understanding the relationship between your entities and disambiguating what your content is about.
At Schema App, we go beyond the mere generation of Schema Markup; we leverage our semantic technologies to connect the entities on your site using Schema Markup and help you develop a reusable content knowledge graph. This involves not only defining entities but also establishing connections on and off the site, using features such as Omni LER.
The outcome is a comprehensive RDF knowledge graph that informs search engines about your business. This graph consolidates all your Schema Markup into a single, accessible marketing data layer.
On top of informing search engines, you can go on to re-use this knowledge graph to ground your Language Model Models (LLMs) with factual information about your business in a structured manner. This puts you in control of how your brand content is being interpreted by these intelligent systems.
Benefits of a Content Knowledge Graph
Implementing semantic Schema Markup and entity linking helps build your content knowledge graph, which:
- Enhances search engines’ understanding of your entity relationships, optimizing content relevance and query accuracy in the SERP.
- Facilitates effective matching of pages with user queries and driving higher qualified traffic and click-through rates.
- Positions your content to be AI-search ready, improving search engines’ understanding and ensuring a refined user experience as AI becomes integral to delivering relevant answers.
Benefit 3: Access to Schema Markup Experts
Schema Markup is one of the most technical strategies in SEO. On top of learning the Schema.org vocabulary, one would also need to be able to implement the code and manage the markup on an ongoing basis to succeed.
So, while most SEO teams undoubtedly understand the benefits of implementing Schema Markup, they are unlikely to have the time or expertise to do it well.
It’s essential to view Schema Markup as more than a one-off SEO task; it’s an ongoing business strategy shaping your brand’s search presence.
Therefore, it’s crucial to have a dedicated, knowledgeable resource like Schema App managing your Schema Markup strategy on an ongoing basis and ensuring that it aligns with your business objectives.
You will partner with a team of experts and a dedicated CSM, ensuring effective Schema Markup management from strategy to results.
To start, your CSM will create a customized Schema Markup strategy to fit your organization’s desired outcomes. Next, they will bring your strategy to life by setting up, authoring, and deploying your Schema Markup on the Schema App platform.
As an extension of your SEO team, your CSM will also monitor your Schema Markup strategy regularly and provide content recommendations and improvements to it during your monthly High Touch Support hour. This ensures that you maximize your return from our solution.
Here’s what our customer, Laura Losito from Sonova, has to say about their Customer Success Manager.
Our customer success manager is very responsive and helpful whenever we find errors in Google Search Console or see a decline in certain metrics. She’s always able to assist and willing to investigate the issue and provide explanations or solutions.
Read the Sonova Audiological Care Business case study to learn about the value and services provided by a Schema App CSM.
Benefit 4: Reduce Dependency on IT and Increased Agility
One of the primary reasons enterprises struggle to implement an effective Schema Markup strategy is the limited bandwidth of their IT team.
To deploy and update the markup, SEO teams often require support from IT. If the IT team has other competing priorities, they often delay the implementation and management of Schema Markup.
With our Schema App platform and Customer Success team, your SEO team can operate with more agility. After the initial integration process, your SEO team can rely on their Schema App Customer Success Manager to make any updates to the markup using our Editor or Highlighter tool.
They’ll no longer require the assistance of the IT team to implement and manage their Schema Markup strategy.
Ultimately, that will prevent markup implementation delays and help your SEO staff manage your new strategy more effectively.
Benefit 5: Measurable ROI
According to a 2021 survey, 84% of marketing professionals feel pressured to demonstrate their ROI to justify marketing spending. While paid digital advertising offers an easy-to-measure ROI, the results are often lackluster.
Although measuring the ROI of SEO is widely considered quite difficult, many view SEO as one of the most effective marketing tactics.
Schema Markup offers a perfect balance between the two, as you can clearly measure the impact of it on your business objectives and achieve an exceptional ROI.
When you incorporate Schema Markup on your site, you will start achieving rich results on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). Results of rich results can be measured through Google Search Console as well as our Schema Performance Analytics (SPA) platform. On SPA, you can view detailed reports about the impressions, clicks and click-through rates (CTR) you generate from those rich results and more.
One of the reports in Schema Performance Analytics shows the CTR for a URL or group of URLs when it achieves a rich result and when it does not achieve a rich result. Most often, URLs with rich results yield a higher click-through rate and contribute to higher conversion.
By using these ROI measurement methods, Schema App clients can see a positive return on their work with Schema App.
The Value of Schema Markup Beyond Rich Results
It’s important to note, however, that the value of Schema Markup goes beyond rich results. Your content should be tailored to your audience’s needs and not produced solely for the purpose of achieving a rich result. Instead of only focusing on rich result eligibility in your Schema Markup strategy, focus on the semantic value of implementing Schema Markup and identifying and connecting your entities within a knowledge graph. This is where you will see the true return on investment.
Read our customer stories to see how we’ve helped clients across different industries gain measurable results from implementing Schema App.
Schema App: The Ideal Solution for Schema Markup Management
Our Schema Markup solution can help you accelerate your Schema Markup, provide measurable results, and yield a strong ROI. Our customers, like SAP, CAPREIT, Avid Technology, and Baptist Health have all seen significant growth in organic traffic through our Schema App solution.
Not only have they been able to get measurable results, but they have also increased their agility as search evolves and used our expertise to execute their Schema Markup strategy with confidence.
If you need help implementing a semantic Schema Markup strategy at scale, we can help. Get in touch with us today.
Ready to implement a sophisticated Schema Markup strategy at scale?
Martha van Berkel is the co-founder and CEO of Schema App, an end-to-end Semantic Schema Markup solution provider based in Ontario, Canada. She focuses on helping SEO teams globally understand the value of Schema Markup and how they can leverage Schema Markup to grow search performance and develop a reusable content knowledge graph that drives innovation. Before starting Schema App, Martha was a Senior Manager responsible for online support tools at Cisco. She is a Mom of two energetic kids, loves to row, and drinks bulletproof coffee.