Schema Markup, Rich Results & Featured Snippet SEO

Aleph Website is a digital marketing company that specializes in Top-class Web Design and Development. As part of our work, we implement Schema Markup optimizations to help our customers get featured snippets that result in increased organic traffic!

This article explains what is schema markup, and how to use it, as well as gives a few examples that will help you understand the importance of learning Schema Markup and incorporating it into your digital marketing efforts!

What is Schema Markup?

Schema Markup is a special script that tells search engines what the web page contains, using a ‘TYPE’ tag. Each TYPE is associated with a set of PROPERTIES that Search Engines can identify and parse.

Online content can be categorized by TYPE using Schema Markups. This is a list of the most commonly used TYPES:

• Creative Work (blog post, article, book, movie, music track, Recipe, etc.)
• Objects (audio, video, and image objects)
• Events (calendar events, TV programs, etc.)
• Health and Medical content (a special type of entity known as Medical Entity)
• Organization
• Person
• Local Business
• Place
• Product
• Offer
• Review
• Action

Schema Markup is served as “rich results” or “featured snippets” that provide value to the user searching for a specific answer, thing, person, object, article, etc.

Schema Markups contain entity descriptions that help identify the topic of the web page and its relation to other pages covering similar and relevant topics. As a result, Schema Markup is considered an advanced form of SEO optimizations, right along with Entity SEO.

How Can I Use Schema Markup?

The Schema Markup script is an HTML Script tag injected either into the body or head script of the web page.

The main source of all schema markup scripts can be found on Schema.org.

There are 3 possible HTML tags that can be used:

1. Microdata
2. RDFa
3. JSON-LD

The most popular Markup is the JSON-LD. It is widely used and very easy to understand.

JSON-LD Schema Markup Example: Image Object

Let’s imagine you are writing an article about a specific object; e.g. The Hubble Space Telescope. In this article, you are describing this object and providing valuable information and descriptions that Users online would like to know.

When searching for, an array of image objects served as featured results:

It is easy for a web page like Wikipedia to appear with images in search results. This is because of the Domain Ranking and Authority of the Wikipedia domain. However, for a new domain, it is necessary to mark up the object so you can serve Rich Results with some images.

Here’s how the HTML Tag would look:

• <script type=”application/ld+json”>
• {
•   “@context”: “https://schema.org”,
•   “@type”: “ImageObject“,
•   “author”: “Jane Doe”,
•   “contentLocation”: “United States”,
•   “contentUrl”: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/HST-SM4.jpeg/300px-HST-SM4.jpeg.jpg”,
•   “datePublished”: “20012-05-25”,
•   “description”: “The Hubble Space Telescope“
• }
• </script>

Comprehensive Schema Markup

Since there are many content types and markups, it would be complex and annoying to do markups for all types of content. That would mean that you, as an SEO specialist, are creating 50 different markups for each web page. This is not sustainable, and it is precisely the reason why markups are bundled up!

Instead of using multiple markups, we can use 1 markup that contains all the types relevant to a particular web page.

Some comprehensive schema markups are:

• Organization Schema Markup (contains information such as working hours, address, email, phone number, etc.)
• About Schema Markup (contains information such as Owner info, description of the business, company details, etc.)
• Article Schema Markup (contains title, description, image tag, video tag, etc.)

Benefits of Using Comprehensive Web Page Schema Markups

As you can see, these markups are very useful to make a distinction between your Homepage and About Page, or Blog Posts. Search Engines use these markups to rank your content where it can provide solutions to users. The benefits of using comprehensive schema markups are many! They include:

1. Search Engines effectively categorize your content so you rank for the right keywords and entities
2. You get a knowledge graph with your organization’s information
3. Appearance in Local Maps, Google News, Google Discover, and Shopping Search Features
4. Appear in Featured Snippets by providing answers on your Blog Posts
5. Get featured in Top Stories Snippets
6. Promote your business and consume the SERPs space with your own Brand
7. Establish TOPICAL authority for search queries online

Article Schema Markup

One of the most popular schema markups is the Article Schema Markup. Once again, Schema.org is the place to go when you want to learn about the specifics of Article Schema Markup.

Let’s go back to our Wikipedia Hubble Page.

Using Schema.org Validator, or Google Rich Results test we can see what type of markup is used:

You can see that the type is ARTICLE, and the Entity type is a THING. The Search Engine uses this information to deliver Thing Results that connect to all the web pages covering the same subject.

Schema.org also reveals the Article markup. When we open the markup we can find the following information:

From the markup, we see how the THING (Hubble Telescope) is connected to the IMAGE and the URL, as well as the NAME. That’s the information required to be able to rank properly and generate the featured snippet. Instead of using multiple markups for image, URL, name, and so on, we can simply inject the Article Markup and we get all of the above pooled into a single Knowledge Graph:

What Google Says About Schema Markup

Google can deliver rich results without schema markup. However, this is only possible when the web page is entirely unique (offers answers that no other domain does), and/or when the domain authority is VERY high (above 50 DR in SEM Rush).

AmP Pushes Content even further

Google advises using AMP for web pages to get featured in Top Stories Snippets.

Invariably, Google encourages all webmasters to use schema markups and other enhancements to improve loading speed and overall user experience:

Special enhancements include:

• Breadcrumbs (for content hierarchy)
• AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
• Logos (company symbol)
• Sitelinks search box (quick navigation), etc.

Special Schema Markups

There are schema markups that are special and need to be added manually as they are (rarely) a part of a comprehensive markup.

FAQ Schema Markup

The perfect example of this markup is the FAQ Schema Markup. It is understood that FAQ Pages differ from Article Pages. In some instances, we might be able to add FAQ to Articles manually. You are able to see if the FAQ Markup is active from Google Search Console:

Useful Tools for Schema Markup

We already touched upon a few tools, but we will make sure to reiterate them here so you have a good toolkit when working with Schema Markups. Aleph Website focuses on empowering you and that’s why we are giving away our secrets. Here we go:

1. Google Rich Results Test

Google Rich Results Test is the most accurate measurement tool to identify and test your schema markups. Simply past the URL and the tool will list all rich results directly. One of the perks of using this tool is that it helps you IDENTIFY MISSING FIELDS (WARNING DETECTED):

and it gives you a great PREVIEW:

2. Schema.ORg Validator

Schema.org Validator is, more or less, the same as Google Rich Results Test. The difference is that it can detect other markups usually connected to the Theme used on the web page:

3. Merkle Schema Markup Generator

Merkle Schema Markup Generator is a tool used to quickly generate basic schema markups for any site and any page.

Here’s an example of how it can be used to create the popular Article markup:

4. WordPress SEO Plugins

WordPress plugins for SEO usually offer a wide range of schema markups for your pages

With Yoast SEO, you can quickly embed the following markups:

Another SEO plugin that we have outlined for you is SEO Rank Math. A pretty comprehensive tool, not just for schema markups, but does a heck of a job-generating awesome schema markups:

With these Schema markup templates, you don’t need to use Schema.org and write manually your markups. Instead, fill out the boxes and get an automatically generated snippet!

Conclusions

Schema Markups are very important for ranking higher and getting extra organic traffic. Aside from that, they help you establish a strong reputation online.

Aleph Website Team is here to help you if you need a consultation and help in determining what are the best markups to use for your business:

As part of our work with clients, we provide schema markup services and full SEO packages that help you rank for both branded and non-branded keywords.

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