Schema Markup is a key SEO strategy for brands that want to stay competitive in this new world of search.
Implementing robust Schema Markup can enable brands to improve their SEO performance by:
Helping search engines understand, contextualize, and disambiguate the content on their site – which allows search engines to show users more accurate results and drive more quality traffic to their site.
Achieving enhanced search results, specifically rich results on Google – which has been proven to increase click-through rates to webpages.
That said, implementing a proper strategy can be tedious and time-consuming. In addition, cross-functional coordination between content, IT, and SEO teams is required for this strategy to be done right.
In this article, we’ll help you figure out if your organization is ready to do this strategy and the right timing for you to kickstart your journey.
Is Your Website Ready For Schema Markup?
Let’s start by talking about the foundational elements you need to have on your website to get a positive ROI from doing it.
Before doing it, your website must have a solid technical SEO foundation. This includes (but is not limited to) pages on your site being indexable by Google and other search engines, your website having a fast load speed, and your website being mobile-friendly.
These technical SEO factors contribute to your visibility on the search engine results page (SERP). Without them, you may not yield the desired outcome from your investments.
In addition to these technical SEO factors, your website should have sufficient content for you to translate into Schema Markup.
Over the years, Google has emphasized the importance of helpful, people-first content and even made it part of its core ranking systems. This approach also requires robust, helpful, people-first content.
Is Your Content Ready For Schema Markup?
Content To Achieve Rich Results
Historically, the improved click-through rate from applying the structured data stemmed from pages achieving rich results on Google.
A rich result is an enhanced search result that includes additional visualizations like stars, pricing, or images in the search result.
As of today, there are over 30 rich results available, each with its own required Schema.org properties and content guidelines to adhere to. Since you can only markup content visible on your page, you must have the content available on your site to use the required Schema.org properties.
For example, to achieve a review snippet for your physician page, you need content on the rating count, rating value, review count, and the physician being reviewed.
Content To Describe Your Entities In Detail
Rich results aside, your website content should also describe the key “things” or entities related to your organization.
Entities are the most important things your customers need to know about your organization so they can engage or buy from you.
Your website is where you provide all the details about these entities, and this technique is what you can use to ensure search engines clearly understand the details about them and how they are related to other things on the internet.
When search engines can understand and contextualize your content with greater accuracy, they can present it to more relevant search queries.
When you have the content to achieve a rich result and semantic understanding, an even higher click-through rate can be achieved.
Content Formatted For Scale
For larger websites, your page layout is also a crucial content factor to consider before doing markup. We recommend having a consistent page layout for each pageset if you want to do it at scale.
For example, if you are using Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), you should use the same AEM components on your product pages.
This enables vendors or your IT team to implement this approach at scale, with consistency and accuracy.
In summary, this is what you need to have before you start doing the markup:
Strong SEO foundation.
Robust, helpful content.
Content formatted for scale.
Good news: If you have these done, you will be ready to start your journey.
Key Events That Indicate It’s Time To Start Doing Schema Markup
There is arguably no better time to start doing this strategy than the present.
However, there are certain key events and sensible moments that can indicate that it’s time for your organization to start doing implementation.
Your Organization Is Looking For Incremental Growth Of Leads From Organic Search
The prime time to start doing it can come as a natural course of your marketing journey.