When creating content for your website in Singapore or elsewhere, you should use Schema markup to enable search engines return informative results whenever users undertake a search.
Google’s continuous algorithm updates are aligned to help small businesses attract customers.
When creating content for your website, you should not only think of people who will read it. You also have to consider the spiders. Admittedly, it may be hard for major search engines to crawl your web content and pinpoint the topics that you are trying to present.
With Schema markup, it’s easier to clarify your website content to the spiders.
This tool includes markups for SERPs, which explains to site crawlers what your continent is all about. When combined with SEO strategies, you will effortlessly enhance your search engine results via a logical presentation of vital data.
How Does Schema Markup Work?
This tool resulted from a partnership between Yahoo!, Google, Yandex, and Microsoft. Content gets regularly posted with multiple layers. Generally, content posted on your website features many properties. Some of these properties are visible while others are not.
Nonetheless, these properties ought to be added for your site to gain visibility.
Your website content includes titles, headers, sub-headers, the article body, and author name.
Even within a single copy, several words may have different meanings. If you are talking about fish in a piece of content, for instance, your article may undoubtedly be referring to the gill-bearing animals that live in water.
Nonetheless, search engines can stumble while considering the different interpretations of that word. Schema markup will come into play in such a situation. It will provide a semantic description of the word in view of providing clarification to the search engines.
Once this interpretation is provided, you can write about fish in your web content worrying that Google will falsely believe that your content is about the act of retrieving something from water or a hidden place.
The clarification that is provided by Schema markup entails getting into your content’s HTML code before adding specific codes whose role is to interpret the meaning of your text. Contrary to what you may think, extensive code work isn’t required to maximise this. With Schema, you can make the most of content posted on your website without necessarily having advanced coding skills.
How Effective is Schema Markup?
Apart from articles, Schema can be used to interpret and clarify events, people, recipes, products, videos, reviews, and local businesses to search engines. According to market analytics, websites that use Schema rank higher than those without markup.
There is no better way for you to tell search engines what your web content is all about. Even without Schema, your site will get indexed and returned in search engine results. With this tool, however, some of your content will get indexed and returned differently. This will in turn boost your digital marketing campaign in Singapore.
The markup will tell search engines what your content means. This way, the search engines will provide results with better information for users who are searching for keywords that are related to your content.
Using Schema on Your Website
Every website owner in Singapore wishes to see his/her website rank better. Similarly, it’s everyone’s desire forfor their websites to perform better in SERPs. Schema markup is one of the most useful tools for realising these objectives.
To effectively use Schema to make your website feature prominently on SERPs, you must first choose the type of data that you want to markup. After that, paste in the URLs of pages or articles that you wish to markup before clicking on the “Start Tagging” icon.
The page will immediately load in the Schema markup tool besides providing you with the workspace required to undertake the next phase of markup, which is tagging items. Your web page will be displayed on the left pane while the data items will get displayed on the right pane.
The type of elements that you wish to mark up should then be highlighted and selected. If you are marking up an article, select its name so that you can add the “Name” markup. Once you are done highlighting, choose “Name” from the tool tip.
You should continue adding items to markup by using the list of data items as your guide. Likewise, highlight other items in your article to include them on your markup list.
When adding markup items, you may not be able to tag each item on the list. You should add items that you can and leave out the rest. Once you finish adding markup items click on the “Create HTML” icon.
The page that will load after that will display your page’s HTML containing the relevant micro-data inserted in spots that you chose.
After seeing the HTML of your page, you can add Schema to your web page. To do this, go to your source code of CMS and add the highlighted into the appropriate spots. Use the yellow markers found on the scrollbar to establish the Schema markup code.
The Structured Data Testing Tool will help you find out how your page looks like once the markup gets added. By clicking on preview, you will be able to see how your article will look like to users whenever they search keywords that are related to it.
How to Optimise Schema Markup
To gain richer results when using Schema, you should only use Schemas that are popular.
Find out which Schemas are best suited for your line of business. You can find this information from the Organization of Schemas website.
There are dozens of markups that you can use to make your site rank prominently on SERPs. Nonetheless, you should only find and use those that you need.
5 Primary Types of Shema Markup and Benefits
Schema markup will add tremendous value to your website by helping search engines best understand the pages. There are different types of schema markup but the most widely used are;
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Local Schema Markup
If you run a local business, it’s imperative to invest in robust local SEO strategies to connect with local customers effectively.
One sure way of achieving this goal is by using local schema markup. This type of schema will have your business details such as a physical address, social profile, customer ratings, and hours of operations.
Not to undermine the relevance of having an optimised Google My Profile (formerly known as Google My Business), but without this markup, it won’t be easy to connect with potential customers who prefer using organic listings to connect with service providers.
Creating a local schema for your business websites will enhance its visibility in organic local SERP results. Information such as physical address will ensure that your website is only displayed to customers in your service areas.
Local customers are more likely to click on websites of a brand close to their location than a business that is 30 minutes or 1 hour away.
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Article Schema Markup
As the name suggests, article schema markup is meant to help search engine bots better understand your posts’ structure and content. It markup the article’s main title, headline, URL, meta description, featured image and published date.
4.4 million new articles are published online daily.
This schema markup will help your articles rank highly on the organic search engine results page (SERP) and enable you to stand out from the mammoth of new articles published daily.
Articles that are ranked highly enjoy more traffic than the lowly ranked articles.
Use this schema markup to show your article’s relevance in search results to the keyword used by the searcher. Searchers are more likely to click your article link if it has a compelling meta description, attractive featured image, and publishing data that is still fresh and relevant.
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How-To Schema Markup
In 2020, 41% of adults relied on voice search to lookup information at least once per day.
More than 50% of smartphone users use voice search technology. Based on these facts, it’s imperative to optimise on-site and off-site content using question-based and conversational keywords.
A majority of the companies now create more “how-to” articles to answer common questions asked by their target audience. Schema markup allows you to markup articles explaining how readers should do something.
Use it to increase the chances of your articles winning a featured snippet.
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Product Schema Markup
Competition for customers’ attention is at an all-time high. eCommerce stores need to continuously develop ways of grasping and retaining the attention of their target customers to remain profitable.
One guaranteed way of achieving this goal and competing effectively with renowned brands such as Best Buy, Amazon, eBay, and Walmart is by leveraging product schema markup. These big retailers use this schema to enhance their search results. They use it to offer additional information about the products on sale, such as price, star ratings, and in-stock vs. out-of-stock.
Customers decide to purchase the product or move on to other retailers by just glancing at the search results. For example, they know if a product is in stock and its quality based on the star rating displayed in the search results.
The point is; to pull out all the stops to secure the all-important click from a qualified lead against other online stores displayed in SERPs for your target keywords.
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FAQ Schema Markup
This article wouldn’t be complete if we failed to appreciate the impact FAQ schema markup has on website organic traffic. A comprehensive FAQ article will show your brand is an authority by answering the common questions customers type on Google.
A “how-to” article has the potential of winning one featured snippet or answer box, but an FAQ can win more than one answer box if properly structured. Go the extra mile and use a FAQ schema markup to help bots interpret the article and qualify it for answer boxes.
Ideally, this schema allows you to insert all the questions and their corresponding answers on your page. That way, Google is able to understand the contents and decide whether they should be awarded featured snippets.
Check the “People Also Ask” section on Google SERPs to know which questions you should cover in the FAQ article. Strive to offer more detailed answers to the questions to outrank the already indexed articles.
Is Schema Markup a Google Ranking Factor?
No, schema markup is not one of the factors Google uses to rank websites. However, using any of the above schema markups will increase the chances of your articles and website ranking highly by Google.
Google doesn’t require web admins to use schema markup, but that also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it. Schema markup will enhance your search results, thereby encouraging searchers to click on your results.
An increase in interactions and clicks signifies that your content is relevant to the searchers. Google will notice that and give them a validation to rank your website page higher than the competitors.
Overview of Rich Cards and Knowledge Graphs
Rich Cards and Knowledge Graphs are the two most common types of structured data today. You can use schema markup create. Here is a detailed overview of each and how they can influence your website.
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Knowledge Graphs
The more information you offer to the target customers, the more likely they will convert. Knowledge graphs display essential information about brands in a simple format and directly on the search results. They offer information such as phone numbers, social media profiles, physical addresses, support email addresses, and more.
There is no guarantee that inserting structured data on a website page will win you a knowledge graph. However, having it will help search engines get a clear perspective of your business and increase the chances of winning a knowledge graph.
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Rich Cards
Rich cards refer to rich results displayed in SERPs for events, articles, recipes, and other types of content. Usually, a rich card has the main title, image, and content description. Like knowledge graphs, rich cards will increase the visibility of your website in SERPs.
Because it’s utterly impossible to ignore a rich card, expect an increase in click-through rate and organic traffic to your website when Google awards you a rich card. The cards have a list-like format that is commonly referred to as a carousel.
The carousel comprises rich cards from different websites that offer similar or the same content. The quality of the images and star rating determines the effectiveness of a rich card in increasing site traffic and conversion rate.
For instance, a rich card showing a product with a 5-star rating will get more clicks than one with poorly rated products. Focus on getting many positive ratings from customers to make your rich cards stand out from the crowd.
Where Should I Use Structured Data?
This is one of the most common questions from our clients and readers. In a nutshell, structured data can be used on any page with the supported content. It’s impossible to have structured data on all website pages, and it’s fine since every page serves a particular purpose.
The structured data should be related to the visible content on the page. If you publish an article titled “Top 5 Drones for Filming Events”, the article should discuss the features of five different drones and not a list of links to websites that sell the drones.
Trying to trick Google bots will result in your penalty.
The bots may be directed never to award your website pages with a rich result. Here is a comprehensive article that discusses Google’s generated structured data guidelines. Note that a page may be correctly marked up but not shown in search results- there is no guarantee.
Be on the safe side by using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to confirm that your pages don’t contravene any of the guidelines.
Top 6 Benefits of Using Schema Markup on Your Website
There are many benefits of using schema markup on your website, but we will focus on the top six.
1. Win a CTA on Google Search Results
CTA button informs customers which action they should take after interacting with either an ad or content. Schema markup goes an extra mile to award sites with a CTA in Google search results, as shown below.
Pages with properly set up structured data get CTA buttons such as “Buy Now” in SERPs. Customers can purchase the product directly from the search results by clicking the CTA button. So far, most of the websites we have seen get awarded this CTA button sell books but rest assured, websites in other niches will soon be awarded similar CTAs.
2. Position your Website for Alexa, Google Assistant, and Voice Search
Voice search is gaining prominence due to the increased use of solutions such as Google Assistant and devices such as Alexa. When creating content marketing strategies, it’s imperative to optimise your content using voice search keywords. Unlike other keywords, they are question-based and conversational.
Only one result is displayed for voice search, so it’s super important to win the top position. Structured data will increase the odds of your article or website page getting to the #1 position. A “speakable” schema markup is in the offing to markup specific sections of the website and pages that should be spoken. Such sections qualify for display at the top of voice search results page.
3. Increasing Job Applicants
Finding job applicants who have the required skills and expertise online is not easy. However, you can jump this hurdle by using structured data to determine how details of job openings in your organisation are displayed in SERPs.
If you are hiring, markup your website job listing page using the correct schema. Test it to ensure that it’s correct before it goes live to increase your chances of winning a featured snippet.
Include as much information about the opportunity, such as location, type of employment (permanent or contract), and salary (monthly or hourly rate). This information will help applicants decide whether they should apply for the job. It will also save you time that you would have spent weeding out unqualified applicants.
4. Social Proof
Online consumers rely heavily on social proof when making buying decisions. Customer reviews and ratings are considered personal recommendations. Nowadays, Google displays customer reviews and ratings in rich cards and knowledge graphs.
Therefore, spring into action and mark up your service and product pages that contain review information and star ratings. Request customers to rate the quality of your services or products to get many reviews.
5. Get More Social Media Followers
Social media platforms are arguably digital marketing powerhouses.
Markup your social media accounts using SameAs schema to get Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram icons displayed on top of your Google search results. New prospects can easily follow you on either of the platforms by clicking on the icons.
6. Increase Click-Through-Rate
A high click-through rate (CTR) is one of the positive signals that show Google that your website is relevant to the searchers. Schema Markup will increase your search results CTR by making them richer. The results contain additional information such as product pricing and star ratings to help the searchers decide whether visiting your website is worthwhile.
Concisely, rich results will make your organic search listings different from the competitors, thereby increasing CTR. Your results will be more visible and appealing as it contains additional information about your service, product, and brand than the competitors.
Conclusion
Currently, Google displays 30 different types of rich results in SERPs. Mastering how to use structured data will supercharge your website performance in terms of visibility, organic traffic, and conversion rate. Get in touch with our SEO team today for more information on how to take full advantage of Schema Markup to scale up your business.
Implementing Schema markup is surprisingly easy.
Nonetheless, very few websites in Singapore have taken advantage of it. This SEO innovation is here to stay and offers you a straightforward way of using relevant micro-data to augment your search results.
Implementing this tool will give your website a competitive advantage in Singapore and beyond. With our professional website design team in Singapore on your side, your website will always be ranked high. Contact us today for more details.
