What is schema markup?
Introduction
let’s say that you are looking for a local vets, or something completely different such as looking for a local baker to make a wedding cake.
A lot of people choose their business based on this star rating, that’s the say how many positive reviews has the business got?
Now a lot of us do not have the time to start reading hundreds of different reviews, so a lot of us rely on a star rating
But what good is a star rating if it is not presented to a potential customer at the time that they are looking for a company?
This is why schema markup is so important, schema market can be useful multiple different is to markup important information on the company’s website.
Such as the company’s name, phone number or indeed the customer’s reviews.
Let’s say that you are looking to purchase a used car in Bath, England, and at the top you have PPC ads, then you have a list of local businesses, then you have the organic results, yet one company might catch your eye, why does that company catch your eye?
It’s simply because you see that they have a five-star customer review rating, and this is based on a lot of customer reviews.
Therefore your eye might be automatically attracted to clicking on that business, therefore the business has successfully improved its click through rate simply because the SEO agency has successfully used schema.
What is Schema mark-up?
Have you ever click on the right hand button on a website and viewed a company source code?
Now for a lot of people the source code will simply be like looking at the matrix, it will make no sense to a lot of people because it is simply HTML code that is used to construct a website.
However we also have to think about how uses this HTML coding.
That’s the say if there is a lot of coding, and sometimes the really important part such as your company’s name, its address and also phone number might not be clearly distinguishable from all the rest of the information that is held within your company’s source code.
This is why a lot of web designers and also SEO agencies use schema, as it’s a very effective way of marking up important information about your business.
For example, let’s return back to our example of a used-car dealer, if you have many positive customer reviews then you may ask your SCO company to mark this information up with schema, so that your company can have its five-star rating possibly directly appear in the Serps.
This can obviously help to improve your businesses click through rate, somebody is more likely to click on a company that is showing a five-star customer review as opposed to another company which has not implemented schema.
Why do SEO agencies use Schema to mark-up HTML?
When you think about SEO, often an SEO agency will sometimes be adding a lot of code to your website, for example they will be adding meta titles, meta descriptions, anchor text, evergreen content marketing and titles as well as a lot more.
This is a lot of information, therefore sometimes the important information such as your businesses map information, such as the company’s name, address and phone number sometimes will not be clearly distinguishable from say the rest of the text that is held in your company’s evergreen content marketing.
For example, a company within Bristol might have a homepage that has over 400 words, therefore it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish where the company’s address is.
Obviously a really good SEO agency will add NAP information to the footer of your website, and also add NAP information to the contact page, but they will also mark this information up using Schema.
How did schema mark-up come into existence
schema is an open source project, meaning that a lot of different companies come together to work on the project to create schema.
Therefore many digital marketing agencies use schema, as it is universally used by many different web designers and also SCO company’s.
schema.org
If you would like to find out more about schema, we would highly recommend visiting schema.org.
Star rating
We would highly recommend that your SEO company uses schema to markup your businesses reviews.
This can make the difference between improving your company’s click through rate.
And what do we mean by this, well for example let’s say that you employ a digital marketing agency in Bath to improve your company’s organic SEO.
And let’s say that you run a business where sells furniture, yet your business makes the furniture from scratch so you employ joiners.
You therefore wish for the marketing agency to get your company onto the first page in Bath bespoke furniture.
Now it might take many months for the SEO company to achieve this, and even when they do manage to get your business onto the first page, you still have to compete with all the other businesses that are on the first page.
For example at the top there might be three pay per click ads, then it might be three my business results and then might be 10 organic businesses which are also listed in the business results.
Obviously want as many customers to click on your company, so therefore you have to get your business to rank as high as possible, but you also have to get your business to standout, one of the ways of getting your business to stand out is to invest in white hat SCO and to add schema to the important elements within your company source code.
For example our agency normally recommends that customer reviews, name of the business, the company’s address, and the company’s phone number is marked up using schema.
Rich snippets
We would also recommend using schema, because simply your business then has a much higher chance of being displayed in the rich snippets.
For example, let’s say that you run an independent cinema in the city of Bristol, you might want to add Schema to your company website? This is so a rich-snippet will show what your customers have given as the star rating for your cinema.
For example, you may notice that you have a very high five star customer review, therefore you wish to mark this up using schema.
Then when somebody is looking to find a local cinema, your business may appear as a “rich snippet”, with a five-star average customer review, therefore making it more likely that a customer will want to watch a film at your cinemas.
Can make your business stand out
Therefore schema is a very good way of making your website stand out, therefore you may wish to hire a web developer which can add schema to your website’s source code.
Source code
Source code is simply the HTML that is written in order to construct your company website, and if you are to look at a website’s source code, especially an e-commerce website, which sells many products, then you will see that the source code can sometimes be very complicated.
That’s the say there will be a lot of HTML that is written in order to construct that page.
In order to help the important information, such as your company’s opening hours to standout then the web designers should mark this information up using schema.
A good SEO agency should therefore be able to use schema to highlight the important information such as your company’s name, address and phone number.
Microdata
You may hear schema referred to as microdata.
Local SEO
a lot of businesses, here in the city of Bath and also in Bristol, in the south-west of England will use schema to improve the company’s local SEO.
For example if you are looking for a local plumber, you may choose a business because it has a five star customer review, and this is displayed directly in the Serps.
Then because the business has a quality website, the company has also managed to reduce its bounce rate, therefore it is use schema in order to improve it click through rate, it also has a very good website, in terms of its design so it is managed to lower the company’s bounce rate as well.
Therefore a lot of marketing agencies use schema to improve a website’s click through rate, then they will also improve the SEO and on-site SEO in order to reduce the businesses bounce rate.
Click through rate
It’s really important that your SEO agency Bristol, works to improve your businesses “CTR”, click through rate, that’s because there’s no point in getting a website onto the first page unless you are also working to improve how many customers click on your business, one way to improve CTR is to obtain a “rich snippet”.
for example, an SEO company might manage to get your company into the first place position, however if the business in position three has implemented schema, and therefore has succeeded in obtaining a rich snippet that business, and that business is obtaining more clicks simply because it stands out as answering the customer’s question better, then obviously the business that has implemented schema will be benefiting because they have implemented schema.
So for example, you might want to find a local builder that specialises in building loft conversions, and the third results on has a rich snippet which explains that the company has been building loft conversions for over 20 years and also explains a bit more about the company, this business is more likely to standout because it has a rich snippet rather than a company that is just displayed in the organic Serps.
It’s worth remembering that there will be normally 10 businesses that are displayed in the organic Serps, this is why it’s so important that your marketing agency works hard to get your business to stand out by using rich snippets and also schema.
Why we recommend using schema
For an SEO agency like Pack digital it is easy for us to add schema to your website, so we can use schema to highlight your company’s NAP information. If you know a bit about local SEO, you will know that NAP information really important, this is why your marketing agency should work very hard to use schema to mark up your businesses NAP information.
For those that do not know what NAP means, it simply means name of the business, the address of the business and also businesses phone number.
We normally add NAP information to the footer of the website and we also add NAP information to the contact page as well.
We then mark-up this NAP information using schema.
How our SEO company can help:
We work with many companies in Bristol, we also work with many companies that are based in Bath.
Our agency specialises in two areas of marketing, they are organic and local SEO.
Therefore whether you’re a plumber looking to get your business onto the first page or you run a large solicitors practice our agency will be able to help.
Schema is just one way that we can improve your businesses on-site SEO, we can also improve your companies meta titles and meta descriptions, we can also improve your businesses evergreen content marketing and also anchor text, internal links we can also improve your company’s overall on-site SEO.
We work with a broad range of different businesses, it’s fair to say also that organic SEO is a slow process.
This means that the business should not expect immediate results, and often takes many months before our agency or most digital marketing agencies can show any results.
If an agency was to boast that it could put your business on the first page in a number of weeks, then we would recommend that you check that they are using white hat methods, as it white hat methods are not used then this could mean that your business incurs a penalty.
Therefore when our SEO consultants first work on a customer’s website, one of the first half that we do is to see if we can quickly improve the businesses on-site SEO.
Using white hat methods, we will look to improve the companies meta titles, meta descriptions, evergreen content marketing, internal links and also sometimes the design of the website needs to be improved.
For example, a company here in Bristol might have had a new website designed, but the website is very basic, or sometimes a company simply has had a one page website built, which is very difficult for our SEO agency to improve.
We may therefore recommend, sometimes that some of our customers may need to have pages added to their website example.
Our SEO consultants will then look to improve the following areas:
· Meta titles
· Meta description
· anchor text
· Evergreen content marketing
· content marketing
· Schema
· We can add schema mark-up to your company’s NAP information
· We can add schema mark-up to your customer’s reviews
· Your schema to mark-up for your company’s opening hours
· add new pages to your website if required
Therefore our SEO agency will quickly see if we can improve your businesses on-site SEO, only one of these tasks will be to add schema to your website.
Therefore if your business would benefit from having a rich snippet, then we may recommend that we add schema to your website.
Useful for businesses in Bath, England
we also work for companies which are based in Bath, England that require our SCO agency to implement high quality white hat SCO.
We will therefore look to see if your business would benefit from having schema added to the website.
A lot of businesses that are based in Bath, require our SEO company to implement local SEO.
For those businesses that know a bit about local SEO they will understand that it needs to be implemented every single month.
We therefore work with many businesses which are based in Bath, England to improve their local SCO. Line
sometimes the business would benefit from having schema added to the website, for example let’s say that the company is a wedding cake maker in the city of Bath.
The company might have a lot of good customer reviews, therefore the marketing agency may mark up the businesses customer reviews, in order to increase the chances that the company has a rich snippet which is displayed directly within the service.
This is likely to improve the businesses CTR, which simply means click through rate.
That’s the say most digital marketing agencies, do not just aimed to get your business onto the first page, instead they are also monitoring analytics, this is to try and reduce the company’s bounce rate and to also improve the businesses click through rate.
A lot of businesses here in Bath, in the South-West of England therefore work with digital marketing agencies, that’s to improve the businesses organic and local SEO, but also to reduce the businesses bounce rate.
Sometimes a company will therefore need to work with a web developer and a SCO company, sometimes a digital marketing agency will have a web developer working in-house.
When you have a web developer working for your company sometimes, they will use what is called “split testing”, which is also referred to sometimes as “A/B testing”.
This simply means that sometimes they will change the design of the company’s website to see if this improves sales, they may then revert back to the all design if it does not generate more sales.
For example a company in Bath might add schema to their website to see if they rich snippet can be created, they may then monitor using analytics to see if this improves the company’s bounce rate.
Therefore if a business is in Bath England trying to improve its a local SCO is might benefit from adding schema to the website.
A web developer should be able to add schema to your website very easily.
A lot of businesses in Bristol also use Schema markup
A lot of businesses in Bristol are also using schema, if you run a business in Bristol then you will know that it is very competitive stop
that’s the say it doesn’t matter if you run a scaffolding business or you run a solicitor’s practice, it’s really important that your business stands out, that’s even when the SEO company has managed to get your business onto the first page of the Serps.
Therefore, your marketing company should work hard to add Schema to your website, so that this increases the chances of your business having a “rich snippet”.
sometimes in order to add schema you will need somebody that has HTML, therefore coding knowledge to add schema.
Sometimes a business will add schema to product pages, and some businesses in Bristol would just add schema to the company’s NAP information.
Therefore it depends on where your business wishes to add schema to your website, therefore it might take a web developer sometimes just 30 minutes, however if you have a large website, such as an e-commerce website, that sells many thousands of different products, then it might take many days or even weeks to add schema.