Schema works. It really does – for both local SEO and national sites. There is no reason that sites should not be implementing markup from Schema.org, for events, products, books, recipes, organization information, and a plethora of other data types. The use of Schema markup for organizations that properly implements your business NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) can help local businesses looking to gain exposure in local search, as well as national brands.
SearchMetrics released the results of a new study yesterday that delved into the the web-wide use of Schema rich snippets, (“only .03 of domains include schema integrations”) and how they affect Google search rankings. They state that “domains using integrations from schema.org have a higher SEO Visibility on average” – which I can corroborate from personal experience with local business SEO.
Implementing Schema
Schema is simple to place on your website. There are many schema generators out there, my personal favorite is one provided by Schema-creator.org. All you have to do is fill in the fields with the corresponding information, and past the code that is generated into your site. Raven provides a popular schema plugin for WordPress and Magento offers a plugin for Schema.org as well.
Schema is not the only markup language out there, but, as this study shows – the implementation of this markup language is clearly effective in translating the content and information on your website into a search-engine friendly format that allows for greater potentials in the crawling and indexing of your keywords and pages. There is simply no reason why it shouldn’t be used on every site.
