In today’s fast-moving world of search, Schema Markup is a crucial tool for brands aiming to stay ahead. By setting up strong Schema Markup, brands can boost their SEO in a few key ways:
First, it helps search engines better understand, interpret, and clarify the content on your website. This means search engines can deliver more accurate and relevant results to users, which in turn drives higher-quality traffic to your site.
Second, it allows you to get rich search results, particularly on Google. These enhanced results have been shown to significantly increase click-through rates, bringing more visitors to your web pages.
However, putting together an effective Schema Markup strategy isn’t a quick and easy task. It often requires close coordination between your content, IT, and SEO teams. Without this teamwork, the strategy might fall short.
In this guide, we’ll help you figure out whether your organization is ready to implement Schema Markup and the best time to start this process.
Is Your Website Prepared for Schema Markup?
Let’s begin by discussing the basic elements your site needs before diving into Schema Markup to ensure a good return on your investment.
Before you begin, your website must have a strong technical SEO foundation. This means several things: your pages need to be easily indexable by search engines like Google, your site should load quickly, and it must be optimized for mobile devices.
These technical factors are crucial for boosting your site’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). If these areas aren’t in good shape, your investment in Schema Markup might not deliver the results you want.
Beyond technical aspects, your site should have enough content to work with. Schema Markup relies on translating existing content into structured data, so the more content you have, the better.
Google has been clear about prioritizing helpful, user-focused content, making it a key part of its ranking system. So, for Schema Markup to truly work, your content needs to be robust, informative, and, above all, focused on helping people.
In short, before diving into Schema Markup, ensure your technical SEO is solid and that you have quality content to enhance. With those elements in place, you’re ready to take your SEO efforts to the next level.
Is Your Content Prepared for Schema Markup?
Content to Unlock Rich Results
In the past, getting a higher click-through rate often came from pages gaining rich results on Google. Rich results aren’t just your standard search results—they’re more eye-catching, featuring extras like ratings, prices, or images.
Today, there are over 30 different rich results that you can aim for, each with its own rules and requirements from Schema.org. But here’s the catch: you can only use Schema Markup for the content already visible on your site. If you don’t have the right details, you can’t achieve those enhanced search results.
For example, to get a review snippet for a doctor’s profile, you’ll need information like the number of ratings, the average score, and of course, the doctor being reviewed.
Detailing Your Website’s Key Entities
Rich results aside, your website’s content should go beyond visuals and talk in detail about the key things—or "entities"—related to your business. These entities are the essential pieces of information your audience needs to know about you, like your products, services, or key people.
Your website is the best place to provide all these details. When done right, Schema Markup helps search engines grasp not only what these entities are, but how they connect to the broader web. The clearer the engines understand your content, the better they can match it to the right search queries. And when both rich results and strong content work together, your click-through rate can jump even higher.
Scaling Your Content for Big Websites
For larger websites, consistency in layout is crucial before implementing Schema Markup. If your site uses different designs for every page, it’s going to be much harder to scale. For example, if you’re using Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), keep your AEM components the same across all product pages.
This consistency makes it easier for your IT team to apply Schema Markup broadly across your site, ensuring everything works accurately.
So, What Do You Need Before Starting Schema Markup?
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A solid SEO foundation
- High-quality, useful content
- Consistent, scalable content formatting
When Should You Begin Using Schema Markup?
There’s no better time than now, but certain events make it especially important to start.
1. Your Organization Wants More Leads from Organic Search
If your marketing strategy is already solid—strong technical SEO, great content, and a website that converts well—Schema Markup could give you that extra boost.
With it, you can draw in more qualified traffic, increase click-through rates, and boost conversions, ultimately leading to higher revenue. Plus, it gives you an edge over competitors on search results pages.
At Schema App, some of our enterprise clients have seen traffic increase by 10-30% after applying this strategy. For pages with rich results, that number is often even higher. And if your team is tracking conversions, you can show measurable proof of your efforts to leadership.
2. Preparing for AI-Powered Search
The world of search is evolving with the rise of AI and large language models. Many marketing leaders are under pressure to figure out how to adapt, and Schema Markup might just be the answer.
By adding Schema Markup to your site, you’re essentially translating your content into a format that both search engines and AI bots can easily understand. You’re also defining relationships between different entities on your site, creating a content knowledge graph. This graph helps AI tools better interpret your content, and you’ll have more control over how search engines perceive your site.
So, if your organization is looking for ways to prepare for AI-driven search, now is the time to implement Schema Markup.
3. You’re Rebranding, Consolidating, or Launching a New Website
When businesses rebrand or consolidate websites, there’s always the risk of losing organic traffic. Search engines might get confused by changes in company names or URLs.
Schema Markup helps by communicating these changes directly to search engines. During the rebrand, you can use properties like "alternateName" to indicate your new brand name and "sameAs" to link the old and new names. After the transition, you can update the "legalName" property to reflect the change.
If your rebrand includes moving to a new content management system, implementing Schema Markup becomes even more important.
4. Migrating to a New Content Management System (CMS)
A CMS migration is the perfect time to start using Schema Markup. As you review your existing content, you’ll gain insights into which rich results you can aim for and what can be optimized with Schema.
While building your new site, plan for a strong SEO foundation, solid content, and scalable page templates. Once the site goes live, you’ll be ready to implement Schema Markup and start seeing its benefits immediately.
Are You Ready to Start Schema Markup?
Whether you’re preparing for AI search, avoiding traffic loss during a rebrand, or simply looking for incremental growth, implementing Schema Markup could be a natural next step for your business.
But remember, for it to work, your site needs a solid technical SEO foundation and great content. With those elements in place, Schema Markup can help you achieve rich results and build a powerful content knowledge graph, delivering a competitive edge and measurable growth.