Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a robust content management solution widely used for building websites, mobile apps, and forms. It is recognized as a leader Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management for eight consecutive years.
Many large enterprises leverage AEM to create rich online experiences due to its high level of customization. AEM’s component-based architecture offers a flexible and modular approach to building and customizing websites, which, while powerful, can also create a complex environment.
Organizations can customize their AEM setup extensively, whether running on-premise or in the cloud, and can use AEM headless to deliver experiences across platforms and channels at scale.
Why Implement Schema Markup on an AEM Site?
Implementing Schema Markup on an AEM site is crucial for enhancing a website’s performance.
Schema Markup helps search engines understand and contextualize your website’s content more effectively, leading to better-aligned search queries, improved search performance, and higher conversion rates. Implementing specific types of Schema Markup can also make your web page eligible for rich results, allowing your brand to further enhance its visibility on the search engine results page (SERP).
Additionally, Schema Markup supports AI initiatives by building your organization’s content knowledge graph, facilitating deep machine understanding of your content and brand.
How to Implement Schema Markup on Your AEM Site
While the benefits of implementing Schema Markup are evident, AEM’s complexities can make it difficult for SEO teams to implement robust Schema Markup at scale. In this section, we will dive into the various methods of implementing Schema Markup on AEM to help you determine the option that best suits your team’s abilities and goals.
1. Manually Implementing Schema Markup on AEM
There are two primary approaches to manually implementing Schema Markup on AEM, both with their own unique challenges:
- creating static markup and pasting it into the post HTML, or
- creating a dynamic but complex solution.
Let’s dive in.
Write the Markup Manually and Paste it Within the Post HTML
You can manually write the Schema Markup and insert it into the HTML of each post. This method involves authoring the Schema Markup in JSON-LD and adding the markup directly to the page’s source code, which is not dynamic or scalable.
With this method, every time the content on a page is updated, the Schema Markup must also be manually updated to reflect the updated content. This approach results in static Schema Markup that requires constant maintenance and is not ideal for large-scale implementations.
Create a Dynamic Schema Markup Solution in AEM Manually
Since AEM is highly customizable, there are currently no standard plugins that can automatically inject default Schema Markup across pages.
If you want to dynamically generate Schema Markup based on the latest content on your page, you must manually develop a solution that maps AEM components to Schema.org properties. This involves identifying the components on each page and defining how their properties correspond to Schema.org properties.
Due to AEM’s lack of standardized components (i.e., title, featured image, author, etc.), this method will require you to manually structure the data and map each property to the appropriate Schema Markup, which can be tedious. Each page may have different components and subcomponents, making it challenging to create a one-size-fits-all solution.
Challenges and Considerations for this Approach
Implementing a dynamic Schema Markup solution in AEM is labor-intensive and typically not feasible for marketing teams to manage independently. It requires a dedicated IT team to build and maintain the system, and depending on the organization’s resources, it may not be a practical trade-off.
While manual implementation of Schema Markup on AEM is possible, it demands skilled execution and significant development time and resources to ensure the solution is effective and sustainable.
2. Leverage a Schema Markup Solution for AEM
If you want to implement Schema Markup on AEM at scale without dealing with the complexity, the best alternative would be to partner with a full-service Schema Markup solution like Schema App.
Schema App offers an end-to-end Schema Markup solution specifically designed for enterprise teams, covering everything from strategy and authoring to achieving measurable results.
When you work with Schema App, you will get an assigned Customer Success Manager who will create your Schema Markup strategy and author your Schema Markup using our authoring tools. This includes our Schema App Highlighter, which generates dynamic Schema Markup for your page categories and deploys the markup to your AEM site (headless or not) at scale without requiring manual coding.
Our solution offers flexibility to ensure your site benefits from improved search engine understanding and visibility, regardless of its architecture.
How does Schema App deploy Schema Markup to AEM?
Deploying Schema Markup to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) can be complex due to its high customizability. At Schema App, we offer two methods to simplify this process:
1. Using the Schema App Connector for AEM (Server-Side Deployment)
The Schema App Connector for AEM is a plugin that integrates the Schema App platform with your AEM system.
The Connector receives your Schema Markup from Schema App and stores it server-side, ensuring that the markup is readily available for deployment. Through a cloud services configuration, the Connector inserts the markup into the page in real-time during page load, making it easily accessible to search engines.
This method increases the reliability of Schema Markup delivery and reduces page rendering time.
Your development team will only be required to set up the integration. Once the Schema App Connector is installed as a dependency in your AEM setup, any Schema Markup you create with Schema App will be automatically deployed.
2. Using a Tag Manager (Most Popular for its Dynamic Capabilities and Ease of Use)
Schema App can also deploy Schema Markup to AEM using a Tag Manager like Adobe Launch, Google Tag Manager, or similar tools.
This approach is popular among Schema App customers because it is:
- easy to use,
- quick to install and
- doesn’t require input or resources from your development team.
How does it work?
The Tag Manager method adds a JavaScript element to your AEM installation. This script dynamically generates Schema Markup by interacting with the final rendered page, regardless of where the content originates.
When a user visits your page, the script is loaded from a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and generates the markup on the fly. Even if components load outside of AEM, the script can still capture and mark up this information.
This approach reflects changes instantly without caching, making it a highly dynamic solution.
Choosing the Best Method
You can choose the method that best suits your web environment and preferences. During the sales process, our team will assist you in determining the most suitable integration method for your AEM system.
Beyond the dynamic deployment capabilities, partnering with Schema App also offers additional benefits:
- Schema Markup Strategy Guidance: You’ll be assigned a Customer Success Manager (CSM) to help you identify the properties to target for achieving rich results or enhancing your knowledge graph.
- Ongoing Support and Content Recommendations: After the initial implementation, you’ll receive ongoing content recommendations to optimize your website for Schema Markup, and measurable insights through Schema Performance Analytics (SPA) and timely business reviews.
Read this article to learn how our Customer Success Team will manage your Schema Markup for long-term success.
Implement Schema Markup on Your AEM Website With Schema App
Implementing Schema Markup on your AEM site can enhance your website’s search visibility and user engagement. By offering search engines clear and structured information about your content, you can achieve rich results, increase click-through rates, and drive more conversions to your website.
Whether you choose the Schema App Connector for AEM or the dynamic and easy-to-use Tag Manager method, Schema App’s end-to-end Schema Markup solution will empower your organization to generate robust Schema Markup at scale with speed, agility, and accuracy.
Contact us today to see how we can help you implement Schema Markup on AEM and drive better results.
See how Schema App can help your team implement advanced Schema Markup on AEM
Joel is the Staff Engineer at Schema App. Schema App is an end-to-end Schema Markup solution that helps enterprise SEO teams create, deploy and manage Schema Markup to stand out in search.