In this third and last part of our “Intro to Schema” blog series, we’ll discuss the marketable features of using Schema – snippets. Schema is supported by most major search engines and reward pages the potential to rank higher in search rankings by giving webmasters more opportunities to contextualize their pages.
More context on what the page is about can help search engines better score pages for their content, leading to more accurate searches and user satisfactions. Search engines build upon their user satisfaction with snippets that highlight certain marketable traits with more information like a review.
Let’s Talk About Snippets
As mentioned in our “Intro to Schema” blog, major search engines worked together to create Schema to make their searches more accurate for users. Not only will pages with Schema have a greater chance of showing higher in a search engine’s listings, they can also show more information through snippets.
Google’s Knowledge Graph Card
You may have noticed a panel on the right side of a listing with information about an organization like their headquarters, stock price, and a link to their Wikipedia article. This information is pulled by Google’s Knowledge Graph engine using many sources. Marketers can implement Schema into their pages that influence the information displayed on the card like links to their other social media profiles.
Ratings and Reviews
Show off your positive customer reviews! This Schema is most popular with eCommerce and service industry organizations. Keep in mind that this Schema is highly transparent with users by averaging scores to a percentage and showing the number of total ratings. If the ratings and reviews aren’t positive, then you may want to work on bringing these up before implementing this Schema. The ratings and reviews will also show on other listing tools like Rich Cards.
Breadcrumbs
Not quite like the story of Hansel and Gretel, but the idea of guiding users to other pages on your site is the same. Marketers can implement a secondary navigation scheme within their search listing using a breadcrumb Schema. The second page is noted by the (>) character next to the primary page’s link. This type of Schema works best for organization whose site offers multiple product or service pages.
Featured Snippet
This is the large block of text that appears above a search listing. As you may imagine, this is the best spot to show your page because it is the first result and it comes with a large box for an exhaustive description. Like the Knowledge Graph Card, the information is typically gathered by Google’s engine. Marketers can implement Schema into their pages that help influence the descriptions shown on the snippet.
Using Schema effectively can help give your pages the boost they need to win a higher placement on the search listing. Schema was created to give organizations the chance to define their pages for crawls, ultimately leading to more accurate search results and a greater customer experience.
Pushing your pages to the top of the search listings can be resource intensive. It also doesn’t help that search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to favor new ranking factors over others. Start seeing results with your SEO by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful SEO strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.
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