Schema Markup.... Have you heard of it?!

We all know that SEO is an important part of any businesses digital presence. Ensuring your are optimised as best as possible is any digital marketers dream. There is now a way of improving your SEO as well as improving the appearance of your link on the SERPs.

I have never heard of Schema MArkup, and thought it was some made up phrase when I first heard of it. However, reading an article by Ratcliff (2014) I have been brough up to speed with one of the latest SEO techniques.

Schema Markup is basically making your link on a SERP look more aesthetically pleasing and interesting. This could be done by adding a picture related to the search term, a rating of this page or location based information. It is all about making your link more useful for the searchers and making your webpage look that much more helpful than the rest.

Schema is a preferred markup from the likes of Google and Bing, and a study by searchmetrics found that only 0.3% of domains were using the Schema markup integrations. This means that if you do start using it, you will stand out from the crowd.

Another benefit that Schema markup gives you, is that it can communicate with a search engine what it is EXACTLY what your page includes. For example, if someone searches for 'gravity' and your website includes information about the film not the natural phenomenon, then it will tell the search engine that your website should come up when the film is searched, not the phenomenon.

Looking at an article by Adam Thompson, he also looks into the schema markup situation. He explores and states that apparently using Rich snippets, like schema, can increase click through rates by around 30%, leading to 30% more traffic to your site. It seems that adding the schema in, could definitely improve your SEO activities. However, it isn't guaranteed that it will improve your SEO.

In summary, Schema Markup can benefit not only you, but your customers as well as they receive a better quality of information at their disposal, which leads to a better informed decision.