Remember, Harry Porter’s lightning bolt scar on the right side of his forehead? Everywhere he went, be it Hogwarts, Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, wizards and witches stopped dead in their tracks, whenever they got a fleeting glimpse of the mark on his forehead.
Their thoughts loud and clear, “Isn’t he the famous Harry Porter, the Boy who Lived?’
If anything, the
Which means, implementing Schema Markup improves your chances of getting higher click-through-rates for your eCommerce website as it enables your site to stand out amongst a sea of competitors in Google Searches.
What is Schema Markup?
A brainwave of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, Schema Markup is basically a microdata vocabulary which when embedded within your source code helps search engines identify the most relevant, informative data for the visitors.
For this, it uses a set system of codes that instructs search engine bots to display accurate content (snippets) on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
The biggest plus is that unlike the earlier times, Schema Markup allows SEOs to exercise some kind of control over how their website ranks in the search results. Not to mention, even visitors benefit as they can easily decide whether or not to click on a particular site in the SERPs.
If you know about rich snippets, it would be easier for you to understand what I am talking about.
An example of how schema markup helped a hotel company enumerate its event schedule in SERP
If search engine bots thoroughly crawl and interpret your site’s content, Schema markup would most likely help boost the
Schema Markup powered images
It’s like a sign post stating “this content describes this (movie, person, place, video, etc.)”. And when your content is marked up, we can use that data to make richer search experiences. And while this might sound like a win for us, it’s also a big win for you. And to clarify a point often misunderstood, marking up your content does not itself lead directly to higher rankings. Site A won’t outrank Site B simply because Site A uses Schema or any other markup language.
When we enable rich experiences in our SERPs, often powered by data which has been marked up, however, click rates on that content often outpace tradition CTRs. The benefits of this are obvious.
– Bing’s ex-employee Duane Forrester
So, Forrester makes things plain and clear that schema markup doesn’t guarantee that snippets would show up in search results, but then makes it highly possible.
Some interesting facts about schema markup and how it helps eCommerce site’s boost their search engine results
As you know that usually the content of your website gets indexed and returned in search results. However, the schema markup takes the search results up a notch by ensuring that some of the content that’s indexed is shown in the search results in a more compelling way ensuring better click through rates for your site.
Let me explain:
Let’s say the word ‘OpenXcell’ appears in my article. The search engine sees and indexes this name and shows up as ‘OpenXcell’ in the SERP results. Now, if I embed a schema markup around this name that says ‘OpenXcell a leading app development company from India’ then the search engine would produce much better search results. It’s because by way of schema markup you’ve just told the search engines what OpenXcell actually stands for, a crucial information known as the rich snippet in
Schema Markup is an effort from the
“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” – Seth Godin
More importantly, the fact that only 1% of the internet marketers and eCommerce websites are implementing it does not take away from its importance. On the contrary, this is the best time to use it to ensure that your eCommerce site stands out amongst competitors in the rankings.
Schema Markup is currently available for:
- Articles
- Restaurants
- Events & products
- Software applications
- Local businesses
- Movies
- TV episodes and ratings
- Book reviews
12 Types of Schema Markup for Ecommerce
- Product name
- Product image
- Product description
- Brand
- SKUs
- Price
- Currency
- Availability
- Reviews
- Ratings
- Special Offers
- URL
Some key facts to bear in mind
- It’s not a ranking factor, but it could affect your
SEO results - It’s meant only for the most important part of your content
- It helps display useful, relevant data to visitors
- If you’re using WordPress, use the Schema Creator plugin by Raven.
- If you are not using WordPress, Use Google’s schema generator
How to get started with schema.org
Though Schema Markup ensures that you online research fetches complete details of the product, including the place and price, reviews and more, but then the implementation part is not that easy.
The initiative that started in 2011 and implemented in November 2012, exclusively for eCommerce sites is still not finding favor among non-coders.
So, if schema.org reads Greek and Latin to you, there are several tools that can get you started.
A few schema markup tools for beginners
- Schema.org website
- Google’s Schema.org FAQs
- CMS plugins like WorldLift for WordPress
Conclusion
Using schema markup leaves no room for misinterpretation by the search engines. It shows them exactly the information contained on your page and what each snippet is. But then again, it doesn’t promise that you’ll see these snippets in search results, but it does make it highly possible.
So, do you plan to implement schema markup for your site? And if you have already implemented the same, how is your expereince? Let me know your opinions in comments.
