On-page SEO
Schema Markup
What is Schema Markup?
Schema markup is code added to a web page that describes its content using the shared Schema.org vocabulary, so search engines can understand what the page is about rather than inferring it from text alone. It labels things like an article's author and publish date, a product's price and availability, a local business's address and opening hours, or the steps in a recipe.
Schema.org was launched in 2011 by Google, Microsoft (Bing) and Yahoo, with Yandex joining shortly after. Markup can be written as JSON-LD, Microdata or RDFa; Google recommends JSON-LD because it sits in a single script block and does not have to be woven into the visible HTML. Schema markup is one form of structured data, and the terms are often used interchangeably.
Why it matters for SEO
Schema markup is what makes a page eligible for many rich results, such as product prices, review stars, breadcrumbs and event listings, which take up more space in the results and can lift click-through rate. It also gives search engines and AI systems unambiguous facts about entities on the page. Markup must match what users can see on the page; marking up content that is not visible violates Google's structured data guidelines.
Example
A recipe blog adds a JSON-LD block to its lasagne page declaring "@type": "Recipe" with a name, totalTime of "PT1H30M", recipeIngredient as a list and an aggregate rating taken from the reviews readers actually left on the page. Google can then show the cooking time and rating directly in the results, and the page qualifies for recipe carousels.
Free tools for Schema Markup
Put the theory to work
LazySEO researches keywords, writes SEO articles and publishes them to your site on a schedule.