What is schema markup?
Schema markup is a great way to help your site stand out from your SEO competitors. Here's why you need Schema and a Schema guide on how to add it to your web pages.
Schema markup, available at Schema.org, is a form of microdata. Once added to a website, it creates an enhanced description (commonly known as a rich snippet) that appears in search results. Search engines - including Google, Yahoo and Bing - first began collaborating to create Schema.org back in 2011. Schema markup is particularly important for how a search engine interprets the context of a query and determines the quality of a search result. Schema can provide context to an otherwise ambiguous web page.
Scheme and your ranking
There is no evidence that microdata has a direct effect on organic search. Nevertheless, rich snippets make your landing pages more visible in SERPs. This improved visibility has been shown to improve click-through rates.
However, one disadvantage of using microdata is that you have to mark each element of your web page. As you can imagine, this can quickly become messy. Before you start adding Schema to your landing pages, you need to figure out the 'element type' of the content on your web page. For example, does your web content focus on drinks?
RDFa - Schema
Overall, RDFa is an extension to HTML5 and was designed to help users mark up structured data. RDFa is considered a W3C Recommendation, which means it is a web standard, and it can be used to link structured data. This is especially useful if you want to add structured data that extends beyond the boundaries of Schema.org.
Don't worry. RDFa is not very different from microdata. Similar to microdata, RDFa tags are incorporated with the already existing HTML code into the text of your website.
Hopefully, any fears you might have had when you heard the word "Schema" or "Structured Data" have been greatly allayed. Work can seem boring. But given time and effort you will be sure to reap the benefits of your work.
