Schema Markup. How to increase your Click through Rate in 2021?

Before we discuss what schema markup is, let me ask this question.

What is the purpose of publishing content on the web?

To share your knowledge with others.

It could be recipes, a book review, or a video. You want to tell the world your opinion.

After you publish such content, what should ideally happen?

People should come to your blog to read it. But how would they know, if your content is not on the search engine’s result page?

(We commonly use the word ‘Search Engine’ even though around 90% of the traffic goes only through Google)

Hence, the objective should be to rank your content on the first page of the google result. If not, your content won’t be visible to anyone.

How to Rank Higher on the Google Results?

By optimizing your content.

There are On-page, Off-page, and Technical optimization methods you should look into to increase the ranking of your page.

But we’re not going to discuss that in this article.

This is about Structured Data / Schema Markup. A technique you can use to increase your chance of getting clicked. That’s what our ultimate desire, isn’t it?

Now, I should explain what Schema Markup is, but before we dive into that let’s what rich snippets are.

Rich Snippets

When you do a google search, what do you see on the results page?

1) URL of the title.

2) Title description of the page.

3) Meta description of the content.

This is called rich snippets.

What if there is a way to give some additional background information about that page?

Yes, there is a way.

It is called Schema Markup.

Schema Markup

Let’s say, you’re posting a chicken curry recipe on your website.

When someone searches for chicken curry, they would see 10 results on the page. Your page is one among them.

What would the person usually do?

They’d scan the rich snippets. They’d read the meta-description and if they feel relevant, they’d click that link.

Here, if you can include a few more information on your rich snippets wouldn’t that be a choice maker?

You’ve added

1) Duration to prepare the recipe

2) A picture of the recipe

3) The rating of the recipe given by other people.

When the person who’s googling see this background information, wouldn’t they be impressed?

He/she’s getting the extra information about the recipe. He/she’s is able to see the final image of the recipe. If the time required to prepare the recipe is short, that might also be the deciding factor to click your link.

Hence, by design, you’re offering more than what the others are offering. It increases the authenticity of your page and improves its likeness.

Look at the above example. Which result would be more attractive? 1 or 2? Obviously, 1, isn’t it?

It gives more information about the recipe in the rich snippet itself. It increases the chances of getting clicked.

I don’t post recipes. How would it be useful to me? If you have this question, let’s discuss its type.

Types of Schema Markup

According to schema.org, there are many types of schema markup options available.

• Creative works: CreativeWork, Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, TVSeries…
• Embedded non-text objects: AudioObject, ImageObject, VideoObject
• Event
• Health and medical types: notes on the health and medical types under MedicalEntity.
• Organization
• Person
• Place, LocalBusiness, Restaurant…
• Product, Offer, AggregateOffer
• Review, AggregateRating
• Action

If you’re organizing an EVENT, what could you include in your schema markup?

1) Person:

If any famous person is associated with that event/ attending that event, you can include it.

2) Rating

You can add the rating of the event from the earlier reviews you’ve received.

3) Time /Duration

You can mention the time, date, duration of the event.

4) Offers

If there are any special offers available at that event, you can showcase them here.

5) Sponsors

You can shine a light on your sponsors by adding them here.

The possibilities are endless here. Structured data offers so many options to enhance the deliverability of our content.

Look at this above example. If your article is to describe a person, you can include various information about the person in the snippets themselves. It gives the basic information about the person, hence increases the Click-through Rate(CTR).

Does Schema Markup increase your ranking?

No. Google clearly mentions that schema markup is not one of the criteria for ranking a web page.

That’s why it is mostly preferred to use when your website and web pages are already high rankings.

How to add Schema Markup to your page?

35% of the world’s websites are powered by WordPress. There is a high chance you’d also be using it to host your website.

There are many free as well as pro version plugins available to easily add the structured data to your pages.

Google also has a tool to help us with this – Structured Data Markup Helper.

But it produces its output in HTML and we’d have to copy/paste it into our website. Many people would find that confusing, hence we’re going to discuss how to use the simple plugin.

Go to your WordPress page and search for ‘Schema Markup’ in the plugins search bar, You have so many options available there. Many prefer the ‘Schema-All in One Schema Rich Snippets.’

After installing the plugin activate it. It’ll take you to the rich snippet tab on your dashboard, and you’ll have a detailed description of how to use it.

There is also a pro version available. It’ll automate the schema markup process for you.

To add the schema to your pose, there is a new column added to your WordPress – Configure Rich Snippet.

You can select the schema type here based on what your post is about. If you select the product schema type, these would be the options available to you.

You can include the details here. But keep in mind that Google clearly says that the schema markup may not work every time.

Structured Data Testing Tool – Google also has a tool, where you can paste the URL of your webpage to test whether your schema markup is working or not.

It’ll generate how the URL will display on the SERP. So that you can change anything if you want.

Conclusion

Like we’ve already mentioned, Schema Markup/ Structured Data doesn’t increase your SEO rankings. But there is a high possibility that it’ll increase your Click-through Rate (CTR). In a way, that’s our final goal, isn’t it?

You may wonder if it that important, why not everyone is using it. Even though it is a simple process, there is a statistic that says, ‘Only 0.3% of the web pages have proper Schema Markups. Empower your site with Schema Markup. Improve your CTR.

Would you like to learn how to use the RVL formula for successful content sharing, check our article here.

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