5 Underutilized and Underrepresented Uses of Schema Markup

Schema markup is one of the most overlooked tools in search engine optimization. By adding structured data to web page markup, you can add a variety of different information to describe the purpose of the page and what content is present. Many websites underuse schema markup by not using it on all of their pages, using invalid structured data, or not using it at all. There are several underutilized schema validators that can be used to improve the quality of web content and boost SEO. Add structured data of these types to the appropriate web content.

Better Rich Snippets

Schema markup helps search engines pull the right information from the page to use in rich snippets on the search engine results page. If you want a more accurate preview of the content than the first few words on the page or the meta description, categorize it properly with schema. Google and other search engines are getting better at directly displaying relevant content to the search query. Categorizing web content as articles, recipes, offers, reviews, creative works, and more can place your content in front of users before they click.

Reviews and Ratings

87% of customers in 2020 used online reviews to choose local businesses, according to BrightLocal. Several schema types and properties are supported by Schema.org for online reviews and ratings, and using them will make your product reviews much more easier for search engines to find and display in search results.

Add the Rating type to numerical ratings such as 1 to 5 stars, with properties such as bestRating, ratingValue, and worstRating to outline the range of possible ratings, and the author property to show who gave the rating. The Review type can be used for text reviews, with the itemReviewed property indicating what product, movie, book, or other item the review is for, and properties such as positiveNotes and negativeNotes setting apart positive and negative aspects of the review. The AggregateRating type can be used to make the overall rating of a product appear directly on the search engine results page.

Describe Organizations and People

Structured data tells search engines how words relate to each other. This is useful in the case of organizations and people. ‘Apple’ is a very common word, but apply the Organization type and appropriate properties, and search engines will know that it’s the company that makes iPhones. This is important for giving information about what industry a company is in, what they produce and sell, and how they can be contacted. The Person type supports properties that give information about who a person is, what organization they are affiliated with, who they are related to, and more. This is useful for distinguishing between different people with similar names, as is often done through unique birthdates, professions, or backgrounds.

Offers

The Offer type can be very useful for businesses that want their sales pages to stand out. Any offer to provide a good or service can be given properties, such as paymentMethod to indicate what type of payment is accepted, availability to show whether it is in stock or on pre-order, and price to show the cost of the item. Properties can be used to go into greater detail about the price, currency, time of availability, condition of the item, as well as including reviews and ratings. If customers want to go straight to the purchasing page from search results, the Offer type is essential for categorizing the purpose of these pages.

Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) pages are ubiquitous on the Web, and they’re a likely target of web searches. Using the FAQPage type for these pages will ensure that search engines locate them immediately so they are visible. Properties for FAQ like specialty can show the subject matter of various questions in case they are being searched for. Most importantly, by applying the Question and Answer type to each FAQ, the questions and answers can appear in rich snippets on the search results page, drawing attention to this page above all other search results. Questions that people ask their voice assistants can also be found quickly so your answer will be used.

Final Thoughts

Implementing schema is crucial to helping your website stay relevant. The JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFA methods can be used, but it’s vital to have valid structured data. Use Google’s Markup Helper and verify your website using a schema validator to ensure that your website is optimized.