To make your brand more prominent on the SERP, Schema markup is one of the most tried, tested, and powerful local SEO techniques to bridge the gap between web content and the search engine(s). It’s obvious for search engines to identify your content if it clashes against the rules and rankings whereas to make such content show up online is a huge challenge for digital marketing teams, especially SEO experts.
To mitigate the issue, local SEO and schema markup was introduced that go hand-in-hand. The details shared below will give you a full understanding of schema markup, local SEO, and how both can boost up small businesses in the highly competitive online world. If yours is a digital marketing agency in Dubai to offer exceptional SEO services, the details below should definitely help in winning a lot of organic traffic for better visibility and business boost.
A Bit About Schema Markup
Search engines, in general, display results by understanding user queries and offering them exact match outcomes. In order to better understand the context and content of exact search intention as well as a means to feed Google algorithm with new knowledge, leading search engine giants such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex, in 2011 launched schema markup.
It’s a structured data markup code which when included in the website’s HTML code can help search engines in understanding the crux or core context of the web content and thus provide users with more relevant results against their search queries. In addition, web pages with schema markup are easily recognized by search engines and displayed as rich snippets.
Different Schema Types
All necessary corporate details such as name, contact number, address, email, map location and more have to be included on the website. For the search engines to understand all these details, schema implementation is the best option. There are three different formats to help you add schema to the data that are Microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD. Let’s look into each for a better understanding!
- Microdata
A set of tags to support vocabulary used in the HTML code which helps search engines, browsers, and crawlers (bots) to better understand the content and context of the website is termed as microdata.
- RDFa
Resource Description Framework in Attributes or RDFa is a particular genre of data format that identifies web content through metadata from the HTML, XML, and XHTML language or dialects.
- JSON-LD
JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data or JSON-LD uses a particular JavaScript code for placing the schema markup code in the webpage content thus making it easy to understand and identify by the search engines. It’s one of the most commonly used types of schemas to be found in more than 24% of websites.
Importance of Schema for Local SEO Website
When implemented accurately, schema markup can accomplish a lot for your local SEO website but, you’ll have to maintain a full-fledged, impressive profile on various online platforms such as social media, local directories as well as Google My Business (GMB) Listing. That said, schema markup helps in communicating the differences and unique factors in all the content types to the search engine which is one of the basic reasons to use it as a booster for local websites and businesses. Some other amazing reasons to use schema are:
- Offer Extensive Rich Snippets
Rich snippets are known to display extra information on the SERPs as compared to a normal snippet which makes it important for the schema to be optimized accordingly thus making relevant web content visible against search queries. Digital marketing and SEO research concluded that rich snippets can drive 40% greater traffic than without it.
- Boost Organic Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
It’s astonishing that properly optimized rich snippets with the right schema use can increase organic CTR by nearly 680% which makes it a powerful tool in capturing particular users or demographics.
- Skyrocket Local Website SEO
Because schema allows search engines to recognize genuine content based on the context and the appropriate search queries, getting quality rankings especially for niche-based queries and other such data also boosts SEO for local business websites.
Implementing Schema on Local Business Website
Indeed, the online world is highly competitive and for small businesses and local websites to survive, driving potential and organic traffic is the only best way to win. In doing so, your website should also have good visibility and ranking on the SERP with title and meta-description matching exactly to the user’s search queries. Proper data structuring such as images, name, address, contact number, email, reviews, and so on can give you better visibility as extensive rich snippets are based on relevant search queries.
Top-Rated Schema Plugins for SME WordPress-based Websites
With WordPress, placing schema markup for websites and relevant pages becomes extremely convenient. The biggest pro fact of website development using WordPress is access to a whole lot of amazing plugins for you to choose from based on particular needs. Have a look at some of the best to help you create schema markup for your website pages that allow search engines to make your site pop up on the first page against the search queries:
- Schema Pro
- All-in-One Schema Rich Snippets
- Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP
- WordPress Review Plugin
- WP SEO Structured Data Schema
These plugins are picked based on their ratings, review, and cost-effectiveness however, there’re custom plugins available to choose from offered by some of the best website development and SEO companies in Dubai.
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