You may be familiar with schema markups (or structured data) if you keep up with the latest developments in digital marketing methods. The idea has been around for a while, but it’s easy to overlook for busy entrepreneurs working in smaller and medium-sized enterprises. Because increasing visibility in a crowded geographic market is crucial, and using schema markup on your site can help. The use of schema markup improves the readability of content for search engines. If you’ve looked into schema before and discovered you needed to start writing code, you could have lost interest or given up. However, you must learn how to code to add schema markup to your website. Some tools can do the heavy lifting for you, but it helps to have some coding knowledge.
Read on to learn how to boost your local SEO with schema markup and how easy it is to apply.
Can You Explain Local Schema Markup?
Let’s define schema markup and structured data before going along the way.
To enhance how search engines understand and portray your website in search engine results pages (SERPs), you can add schema markup (schema or structured data) to your site’s code. Schema.org was developed by a rare alliance of search engine giants to ensure users receive the most relevant results from their queries. This alliance consists of Google, Microsoft, Yandex, and Yahoo! If you aren’t a programmer, the schema markup code may look like gibberish. Have no fear. Code like that directs search engines like Google to the location of specific information (such as an address, phone number, or business name) checkout technology news. Schema markup is relatively easy and has many useful applications, especially for small enterprises operating in a highly competitive industry.
Why Do We Need Schema Markup?
Using schema markup, you may tell search engines how your website’s data is structured and organized. The backend code is what tells search engines stuff like “This is our address,” “This is a recipe,” and “This is a video.” Giving search engines this extra information will help them crawl, evaluate, and rank content more effectively, bringing users more relevant results. The search engine results page (SERP) will look like this if you use schema markup to specify that a given page is a recipe:
- This is how results from a search that employs schema markup will appear. By consolidating reviews, ratings, and cooking times, users can quickly zero down on the most intriguing food results.
- The most often used schema markups are the following:
- The “Organization Markup” part of a website typically features the company’s logo, address, and contact information.
- The Person Markup tool allows you to highlight a person’s name, birthdate, school, employer, and family members.
- Information such as a store’s location, hours of operation, phone number, and menu items can be found here.
- Markups are unique to content types such as recipes, how-to guides, languages, dietary preferences, medical device applications, and countless more.
There are so many markups out there that it’s easy to get confused. You don’t have to commit them all to memory. Whether you run a single- or multi-location enterprise, you should pay the most attention to the Local Business and a few other informative schema markups.
What makes them so important? Let’s look into this.
The Role of Schema Markup in Local Search Engine Optimization.
A company’s brick-and-mortar storefront or regional office may fare better in search engine results for users in the immediate vicinity if it employs local SEO strategies. Successful strategies include increasing Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) uniformity, optimizing for key phrases and city names, and focusing on local link creation. A local yoga studio owner probably doesn’t care about winning the global search phrase “yoga studio.” You’d get calls from people thousands of kilometers away. People need to be able to find your yoga studio by searching for “yoga studio your city>.”
Is local SEO helped by using local schema markups?
Absolutely. Along with claiming your Google My Business account, using schema markups correctly might be one of the most effective techniques to get discovered in local search results. Think back to the last time you used a search engine; maybe you were looking for a new plumber or a good Thai takeout place. You use a search engine like the rest of the world to look up places to eat and drink near you. Nearly half (46%) of Google searches are for regional or neighborhood businesses. When searching for a local business, searchers aren’t only looking for blogs or whitepapers; they want practical information like an address, phone number, and even hours of operation. By improving the rich snippets and making it easier for your organization to be included in the knowledge graph, local schema markups can increase your page’s exposure in search engine results pages. In return for Microsoft’s usage of schema markup, Google will provide a sidebar with details on the company’s CEO, stock price, and most popular products.
In conclusion, adding schema markups can make it much easier for Google and your site visitors to locate the key information they need about your organization, which can increase both click-through rates and organic visibility.
