If you’ve spent some time dabbling in SEO, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of schema markup. Schema markup is something your average website user may never see; it’s microdata, code that is meant to be read and interpreted by search engines in order to determine whether your content is relevant to any searches.
Schema markup has always been an important part of a holistic SEO strategy. But according to an article from Search Engine Land, schema markup usage is up 4x from 2022 among top ranking ecommerce sites as they prep for holiday sales. So, why the big increase? Why is schema more important to big ecommerce companies now than it was only a year ago? According to the article we cited above, there could be two big reasons:
Artificial Intelligence
Google recently introduced SGE, which uses generative AI to answer user search queries. The generative AI is trained on existing web content, and then develops a seemingly new response when a user asks a question. It is thought that having detailed schema markup impacts a website’s “reputation” with search engines, something that many ecommerce businesses likely presume plays a role in how SGE generates its responses, and how it recommends certain products or services.
In other words, schema markup makes your website seem more credible, and the more credible your website is, the more likely it is that your content could appear in some form as part of an SGE response.
Helpful Content System Update
Google will soon be rolling out a helpful content system update, with the goal of promoting “hidden gems” on Search, and targeting content that seems like it’s prioritizing ranking in search results over actually helping or informing people.
Again, this relates to credibility. Providing schema markup allows search engines to better understand the content you’re producing, and minimizes any risk of that content being misinterpreted, or worse, flagged as low-quality.
If you run an ecommerce website, big or small, all signs point to an increased emphasis on schema markup by big brands and search engines alike. So, call up your web developer, because we have some suggestions!
We recommend first updating the most important pages of your website with schema markup that contains any vital information about the business, including contact and location information – FAQ schema works well for this. You can make your way through product pages with product schema, or event pages with event schema.
Schema markups aren’t just for big e-commerce businesses, either. For example, service schema can be quite useful for service businesses of any size, and local business schema can be valuable for smaller businesses looking to optimize their website for local SEO.
There are literally hundreds of schema markup types, so don’t be afraid to explore and find what works for your business. Remember, the main goal of schema markup is to inform search engines and make sure your content gets in front of relevant users. Keep your schema markup informative and easy to understand, and you’ll be golden.
--
Relevance Advisors is here to help your ecommerce business thrive. Interested in learning more about schema markup? Contact us today, or sign up for our newsletter to receive marketing tips and tricks, as well as information on digital marketing trends.
