1. Implementing Schema Markup at Scale

When Gusto partnered with Schema App, they leveraged the Schema App Highlighter to generate and deploy dynamic Schema Markup for different page sets across their CMSs through Javascript.

Within weeks, they started achieving Review Snippets, Product rich results, FAQ rich results and How-to rich results on their targeted pages.

By achieving these rich results, they gained more impressions and clicks to their pages. Rich Results showcased Gusto’s pricing, ratings, reviews, and other relevant content directly in the search results, engaging the users at the start of their search journey.

Working with Schema App enabled Gusto to implement Schema Markup on their site in a programmatic manner despite their complex web architecture. Furthermore, Gusto was assigned a Customer Success Manager to help them manage their markup and make swift changes whenever necessary.

Founded in 1987, Avid Technology has continued to evolve its business to meet the current needs of its users. Like many other successful businesses, Avid had an e-commerce store and shifted from a one-time payment model to a subscription model for its digital media creation hardware and software. 

However, Avid’s journey wasn’t an easy one. Its e-commerce platform was built at a time when there wasn’t great support for subscriptions and had poor search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities. As a result, the company had a hard time communicating key information about its product to search engines. 

For example, its software subscription products would always be in stock because it’s software. However, Google didn’t seem to understand that and would often show Avid products as “out of stock” on search. 

This was one of the many issues that Matthew Heeb, Director of Digital Optimization at Avid Technology, had to solve. With a ton of tech debt and a website that wasn’t configured well for SEO, Matthew and his team focused their efforts on improving the technical side of their SEO. 

Furthermore, Avid knew that it needed to implement a Schema Markup strategy to help search engines clearly understand the content on its site. 

Scalability

He found an article online that provided a step-by-step guide to adding Schema Markup to Avid’s use of Google Tag Manager. However, this solution would require the company to manually add the Schema Markup to each individual page on its site and update the Schema Markup if it were to change the content on any pages. 

At that point in time, the Digital Optimization team at Avid consisted of Matthew and one other team member. With thousands of pages across multiple sites, he knew that they couldn’t implement the Schema Markup at scale with what limited resources they had. 

Complex web architecture

Furthermore, Avid was using SiteCore as its content management system (CMS) and even though it was a great CMS, it wasn’t configured with SEO in mind. There were also no other plugins that Matthew and his team could easily use to add the Schema Markup on their site.

Upon further research, Matthew chanced upon Schema App and found that the Schema App solution checked the two key criteria. 

• Scalable – Schema App could deploy Schema Markup to all pages automatically
• Works with their e-commerce store – Schema App’s tools could integrate with Avid’s CMS and deploy the Schema Markup to its website

The cherry on top of the cake was the fact that they would be assigned a Customer Success Manager from Schema App who knew a lot more about Schema Markup and was going to help Avid build and manage its Schema Markup strategy. 

None of us are Schema Markup experts. Schema App wasn’t just selling us a tool. They were giving us someone that was a Schema Markup expert to help us build our strategy and that was a huge benefit.

As a global innovator, SAP wanted not only to drive up its traffic but also to become a market leader. The cloud software company knew that a digital content distribution strategy rooted in machine understanding would accelerate its success today and in the future. 

The vision was to engage their target audience through paid, organic, and voice search across any device and platform of choice while minimizing development costs and expediting time to market.

Errors in Existing Schema Markup

SAP’s websites had existing Schema Markup on many of the pages, but the quality of the Schema Markup was poor. Some pages had the wrong Schema.org type, while others had multiple Schema.org types with no indication of the primary type. These errors could potentially:

• Confuse search engines about page content
• Make the pages ineligible for rich results
• Affect quality and volume of traffic to the sites

Finding the Right Schema Markup Solution

Adding Schema Markup to a webpage can be time-consuming and tricky.

SAP was looking for a scalable way to add Schema Markup to their page. They also wanted a Schema Markup solution that provided guidance on strategy, maintenance, success metrics and training for their entire website.

In search of a solution, SAP started its journey by testing different solutions. They ultimately found the Schema App solution to be the most mature solution, with the right tools in the toolkit to address any platform and template needs.

SAP partnered with Schema App to implement one of the first-ever global Schema Markup pilot projects on a B2B site.

Access to Schema Markup Expert

To start, Schema App removed all the incorrect Schema Markups on SAP’s sites. The Schema App Customer Success Team then developed a full Schema Markup strategy by identifying the appropriate Schema Markup for priority pages and identifying opportunities in SAP’s content. Once the strategy was finalized, it was time for deployment.

Tools that Enable Agility & Scale

The Schema App Highlighter was used to quickly deploy customized Schema Markup across SAP’s Answer Center by adding a single Javascript tag in Adobe Dynamic Tag Management (DTM). The Schema App WordPress plugin was also used to optimize the articles on DigitalistMag.com. As a result, SAP was able to deploy Schema Markup to over 3 million pages in 2 days without having to write any code or effort from IT.