What Is Schema.org, And What Is It For?

Scherma.org is a particular vocabulary, a fundamental tool for anyone involved in SEO and web marketing: here’s what it is in detail and how it works.

When dealing with the topic of SEO, you may hear about Schema.org and wonder what it is about without being able to find a clear answer. Its definition is simple: it is a structured data vocabulary, markups, or tags, which define entities, relationships, and actions on the Internet.

In other words, it is all that additional information presented in a structured way, which allows the user to make decisions consciously and quickly while searching on the web.

Schema.org: What It Is And Its History

Schema.org is a dictionary that was founded in 2011 by large companies operating on the web, such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Yandex, to allow search engines to interpret web user requests better, to conform using a single language, to provide more satisfactory answers and to guarantee a better User Experience (UX). Contains a large amount of metadata input.

This is critical data that must be used and which can be inserted by web admins in web pages in HTML format. They help position themselves optimally on web search pages, attract visitors’ attention and obtain good results in views and CTR.

Schema.org: How It Works

If you add structured data, Google displays it as Rich Snippets, search results shown to capture visual interest and to be more helpful to users. They can contain reviews or ratings with the star system, the addresses of the offices and commercial points, the days and opening hours, the telephone number, and much more. 

Rich Snippets, by proposing complete and visually compact details, represent showcases that can effectively reach new visitors if well organized.

Rich Snippets provide additional information. The most used are timetables, specific products sold, prices, multimedia content, contact details, recipes, news, film and book authors, and ratings.

Schema.org markups are used for different types of web content. They are helpful for articles and news, mainly published by newspapers. They are also applied to events on a particular day and time, such as festivals and conferences, and can indicate, for example, the ticket cost.

They allow a semantic highlighting of the contents, which helps the search engine and favors the increase of organic traffic within the websites. 

They can be used for any product or service offered (shoes, clothes, beauty products, and much more), to provide information on more or less well-known personalities, whether they are alive or not, real or fictional, organizations (companies, associations without for-profit, schools, and others), physical and local businesses (e.g., restaurants, banks, clothing stores, or hairdressers), reviews, prescriptions, and medical conditions (diseases, injuries, disabilities, ailments, and syndromes).

A commonly used entry in the schema vocabulary is ‘Creative Works,’ which refers to markups such as movies, video games, books, TV series, essays, feature articles, albums or songs, and other works. In this case, details such as direction, author, duration, genre, release date, and many others are immediately returned.

Introducing structured data allows you to communicate better with the Google spider, a crawler or software that scans all the contents published on the web and analyzes them in an organized and automated way on behalf of the search engine. It helps determine the ranking of pages in search results.

Markups are implemented using code languages ​​that must be embedded with HTML to insert metadata as a Schema. These include Microdata, Resource Descriptive Framework in Attribute (RDFa), and JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data (JSON-LD ). The latter is the most used format and is recommended by Google. 

To add a markup, you need to visit the Schema.org site, where there is a directory with all types of pages or needs. The webmaster must select the one closest to the page to be promoted on the search results page, choose the most suitable coding, and insert the code on the page. Finally, you need to test it with a unique tool available on the web.

Schema.Org And SEO Because It’s Essential To Use Them To Achieve Your Goals

If included in a well-developed strategy, a web page, site, or content published online is created to achieve specific and vital objectives. Using Schema.org makes it easier to get the desired results.

This happens because being able to make the content of the web pages understood by the search engine favors a better positioning in the SERP ( Search Engine Results Pages ), even if it does not have a direct impact. A more prosperous snippet of details and information results in increased organic traffic and potentially interested visitors. 

Additionally, voice-activated devices like smart TVs, smart speakers, and more leverage structured data to better identify responses to user queries. The more you use markups, the more chances a voice assistant will use the web page to deliver information.

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