Having your WordPress website list high in the search engine result pages (SERPs) will help to send a lot more good quality traffic your way. With this in mind, it makes sense to give Google and the other search engines all they need to know that your website should be listed high.
One of the most common ways to tell Google about the content on your site is to use certain keywords that help tell them what your visitors can expect to find. Other methods include structuring text in a way that makes it easier for Google’s crawlers to read and even using a grammar checker to help ensure Google recognizes your content as being of the highest quality.
Another, perhaps more advanced method is schema markup. It’s something that a lot of people avoid because it can sound quite involved, but using it can really help to give your website an edge in the SERPS. Here we take a closer look at what it is and how to use it on your WordPress website.
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What Is Schema Markup?
Schema markup is code added to your website that helps tell Google more information about what’s inside. In particular, it gives Google more information on the context of the content in your website.
Let’s say, for example, you are selling dog toys – as in toys that dogs play with. If you use “dog toys” as a keyword, then a lot of people using that keyword will end up on your website looking for dog toys, which is exactly what you’re hoping for, right? Not always.
Without knowing the context of the content on your website, Google might also send you people looking for dog toys, as in stuffed toys styled to look like dogs for (human) children to play with.
Even though Google brought people to your website as expected – according to the keywords you specified – people looking for stuffed toys for kids are unlikely to be shopping for toys for dogs to play with. This is why it is smart to target long-tail keywords.
How Is Schema Markup Beneficial?
Schema markup allows you to provide Google with the information it needs to understand your website’s context better. In the example given above, you can tell Google that you are selling toys for dogs and not toy dogs for kids, helping to ensure the right traffic comes your way.
Not only can schema markup improve the quality of your traffic, but it can also improve the volume. How? For one thing, providing Google with what they need helps to ensure your website is listed, making you more visible, thus generating more traffic.
For another, schema markup can also help encourage more clicks on your website. You have probably heard of rich snippets – the code that tells Google to display certain text on the SERPs when your website shows? Well, rich snippets are a type of schema markup.
The extra information that rich snippets allow you to provide to readers helps them know you have something they’re interested in. When they know you have something that interests them, people are more likely to click through, bringing more traffic your way.
The benefits don’t stop there, either. That schema markup can help improve your traffic quality and help improve your click-through rate (CTR). A high CTR tells Google that your site is of good quality and delivers what people are looking for, encouraging them to list your site higher in the SERPs. A high CTR also means your website contributes to value selling, enhancing your brand.
The experience people have on your website will often reflect on your brand overall. Because schema markup helps attract the right people, they are more likely to have a positive experience.
The Different Types Of Schema Markup
There are literally hundreds of different types of schema markups, with more being added all the time, so there’s a good chance of there being a markup that suits your needs.
Here’s a brief look at some of the most commonly used types:
- Medical Conditions – This markup tells Google that the content focuses on medical conditions, helping to avoid confusion over things like terminology and medical practices.
- Products – The product markup lets Google know your website promotes or sells different types of products and can allow product details to be shown on the SERPs.
- Articles – Not only does this markup tell Google that the content is an article, but it can also provide the reader with information such as who the author of the article is.
- Reviews – Reviews are very important for many businesses, and this schema markup will allow reviews to be shown on the SERPs.
- Local Businesses – With this schema markup, local businesses will display information like opening and closing times and your location.
How To Add Schema Markup To WordPress Site?
Using schema markup can sound complex, which is one potential reason why more people don’t use it. It doesn’t have to be as complicated as it sounds, however. Different plugins and themes are available that will help to take the coding aspect out of schema markup, making it quite easy to use schema.
Yoast
Yoast is one of the best-known SEO WordPress plugins and is aimed toward helping people optimize their websites for SEO. It offers features that help analyze links within the content and the content itself to help ensure it is as Google-friendly as possible.
A free version is available, and in the free version, you will find Yoast’s markup tool. It’s not as advanced as some of the other options, but it’s certainly enough for many people.
If you have WordPress and you don’t have the Yoast plugin installed already, then you really should consider installing it. Even the free version provides some valuable tools that will help you get your website ranking above the competition.
For more info about Yoast, you can see how Yoast SEO compares to other SEO plugins. For SEO plugin with far more schema options, you can check Rank Math which also comes in a free and paid version.
Themes
WordPress users have a wide selection of themes that come with ready-made templates to choose from. Some templates also come available with certain features that are more or less useful to different people according to their needs. There’s at least one theme, called The Schema, also known as schema theme, designed to help make it easy to mark your website.
The schema theme makes it a lot easier for people to mark up their website without using any code. There is a “lite” (free) version available, although this version does not have a lot of the features the “premium” (paid) version does.
Dedicated Plugins
One of the reasons for WordPress’s popularity is the vast array of plugins available that can help website owners in so many ways. These plugins range from keeping a count of the number of visitors to your page to allowing conference calling from your website at the click of a button. It goes without saying that there are also plugins that will help make using schema markup a lot easier.
Two plugins, in particular, are the Schema plugin and the Schema PRO plugin. Both plugins offer a range of useful features, including useful schema markup tools that help make it easy for website owners to mark up the content on their site.
Testing Your Markup
Once you have spent time marking up your website, you’ll want to know if it works as you want it to. This is made easy to do with help from Google’s structured data testing tool.
The tool allows you to add in the code you want to check or the URL of the page in question and generates a report that shows you what the result will look like in the SERPs. Perhaps even better is that it’s completely free to use.
Schema Markup Guide For WordPress Thoughts
In 2021 and beyond, there is likely to be a greater emphasis on taking full advantage of schema markup. It has been easy to get away with not using it in the past because so few website owners were doing so. As more and more people start to use it, your website is at risk of getting left behind if you don’t.
Coding sounds complicated, which it can be, but that does not mean using schema markup has to be complicated. A selection of tools is available that will help make it a lot easier for you to handle your content management without knowing any code at all.
The tools also tend to come with other tools that can help you enhance your SEO and get ahead in the SERPs. What’s even better is that some of the available schema markup tools are free to use, although you will need to pay for the more advanced features.
| AUTHOR BIO:
Nicholas Rubright is a Communications Specialist at Writer – a company that uses AI to help make your text clear, error-free, and easy to understand. In his free time, Nicholas enjoys writing, playing guitar, writing music, and building cool things on the internet. |
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