Transcript
In this lesson, we’re going to be looking at schema markup, which is also known as structured data.
This is one of those topics that gets talked about quite a lot in SEO with some people massively overhyping it and others missing out on its benefits completely.
So, what we’re going to do in this lesson is break it down properly. We’re going to be looking at what schema markup actually is, what it can do in Google and AI, whether it improves your rankings, when you need to actually worry about it, and how to implement it correctly.
After that, we’re going to be looking at canonical tags and how they can help search engines understand which version of a page should be treated as the primary one.
Now, at first glance, these topics can seem technical and a little bit overwhelming. But if you stick with me through this lesson, you’ll walk away with a clear understanding of what they are, why they matter, and how to use them properly on your website.
Schema markup usually comes in the form of hidden code that gets added to your website. Its purpose is to make it easier for Google to understand the contents of your web pages.
For example, if Google sees a series of numbers on a page, it might not know what those numbers are intended to represent. But if you add hidden labels to those numbers, you can make it extremely clear to Google that those numbers are in fact your telephone number or the price of a product or the average rating of the reviews of a product.
And there’s loads of different ways that hidden code can enhance your SERP listing by showing more information in the SERP and making your listings appear bigger. These are known as rich results.
Another thing it can do is it can allow your content to show in additional sections of Google search as well. For example, job, event and video schema can allow your page to show in dedicated sections Google has for this content type that would have never have shown in if you hadn’t implemented the schema.
Google actually has a page dedicated to the different ways schema can affect the way your business shows up in their search results that I highly recommend you take a look at and figure out which ones match your business.
I should also note that what Google shows today may change tomorrow as Google continues to change the way that their search engine works.
Another important factor is that schema can actually help Google understand your brand as an entity by linking your website to your official profiles using something called the sameAs property.
This is basically you telling Google that your YouTube channel, Facebook page, LinkedIn page, and any other profile all belong to the same company. This helps Google to connect the dots and makes it clearer who you actually are online.
As I mentioned earlier, there are a number of sections that your website will not appear in if you have not implemented the correct schema code. However, in terms of your regular rankings in Google search results, schema is not a magic switch that puts you above your competitors.
However, it can help indirectly. For example, when it’s used in a way that makes your listing more visually attractive, it absolutely can improve your click-through rate, which as we spoke about in a previous lesson, is a ranking factor.
That being said, it’s worth me pointing out that you can write your schema code correctly. It can be completely relevant to the keyword you’re targeting and Google can still decide to ignore it.
But that doesn’t mean it should be removed from your website since it’s great for removing that ambiguity and does work as a positive ranking signal when used correctly.
In fact, one of the main ways to use schema if you’re trying to improve your rankings in the regular SERPs is to check what type of schema the websites that are ranking above you are using.
If you notice that all the top ranking websites in your niche are using local business schema, for example, you may want to implement this on your page, too.
And you can easily check which types of schema your competitors are using by running their website through the schema markup validator tool.
The first step is always to check whether your website already has the schema you’re trying to create. Because many popular content management systems automatically generate structured data by default.
You might find that your e-commerce platform is already outputting product schema or your SEO plug-in is already generating article or organization schema.
So before you start manually trying to implement anything on your website, run it through the schema markup validator and see what’s already on there.
Now, if you don’t have the schema that you need, writing it is actually a lot easier than most people think. Before AI come along, nerds like myself had to create tools to help generate schema code. And those tools still exist if you search for the type of schema you’re trying to create followed by the word generator.
But now that AI is here, it’s often easier to just use that to generate it for you. All you have to do is ask AI to generate the type of schema code you’re looking for in JSON format and give it all the information it needs about your business or web page.
Once you’ve got your schema code, make sure to run it through the schema markup validator as a code snippet before implementing it onto your website to ensure that there are no errors.
Then once you’ve validated your code, you can ask your developer to add it to your website. You’ll want to then run the URL through the schema markup validator just to ensure that it’s gone live correctly.
And then after that, it’s worth inspecting your URL inside of Google Search Console’s URL inspection tool to see which rich results your page is eligible for. You’ll see these listed under enhancements and experience.
Because AI is very different to a traditional search engine, it doesn’t use schema in the same way that Google and Bing do. Instead of enhancing SERP listings and helping you show up in different areas, it instead uses schema as another source of information about your page.
This is still very helpful as it reduces interpretation errors. AI will read your schema markup and assess your page along with the rest of the content that you have on there. This doesn’t guarantee that your company will be recommended or that your company will be mentioned positively, but it does increase the likelihood that your information is interpreted correctly and cited accurately.
Many people are overstating the importance of schema when it comes to AI. But the way to think about it is this. Schema is supportive in helping AI understand your page, but it’s not foundational.
A canonical tag is a piece of code that tells Google which URL is the main version of the page. It’s used when you have multiple URLs that show the same or very similar content.
So, for example, on most e-commerce category pages, users can filter based on the price, the color, and the brand. And the way that most systems work is that every time a user applies one of those filters, the URL changes.
To Google, those filtered pages look like separate URLs. And if you don’t have a canonical tag in place, this can cause issues with duplicate content, ranking signals being split, and even the wrong version of a page appearing in the search results.
The canonical tag solves this by clearly stating which URL is the main version of the page that you want Google to index.
This scenario also often comes up when products have variations that can change the URL and also often happens with tracking parameters, too.
Now, I should point out that like schema code, a canonical tag is a hint and not a command that Google has to listen to. Although they usually do and in most cases content management systems are going to be handling canonical tags for you.
But this is an area where mistakes can cause serious problems because if you pointless to the wrong page, you can accidentally remove important pages from the index and lose a ton of traffic, which is something that I’ve seen happen far too many times.
So, it’s always worth checking by using a tool like the detailed SEO extension for Google Chrome to easily see where your canonical tags are pointing and check that you’re not accidentally preventing a page from being indexed that you want to get indexed in Google.
So, in summary, schema markup helps search engines and AI to better understand your content. It can enhance the way that your pages appear in search results, help reduce ambiguity, and in some cases, allow you to appear in additional sections of Google.
Canonical tags, on the other hand, help search engines understand which URL should represent your content when multiple versions exist.
And in terms of technical SEO, these are two of the most important aspects to address when it comes to improving clarity.