Multilingual websites offer content in multiple languages—for example, a U.S. healthcare organization can provide users with both English and Spanish versions of its site. On the other hand, multi-regional websites target users in different countries or regions, often adapting content to local preferences and regulations.

Some websites combine both approaches, serving as multilingual and multi-regional platforms. For instance, an eCommerce site operating in the USA and Canada might offer content in English, French, and Mandarin, tailoring the language to each region’s demographics.

While implementing Schema Markup on monolingual single-domain sites is relatively straightforward, managing Schema Markup for multilingual and multi-regional domains presents unique challenges.

This article will explore the challenges of implementing Schema Markup across diverse multilingual and multi-regional sites and the solutions to these challenges.

Common Issues When Marking up Multilingual Sites

1. Schema.org documentation is currently only available in English

One of the most frequent questions we encounter is, “Does Schema Markup support languages other than English?” The answer is a resounding yes. While Schema.org Types and properties are represented by English words and the Schema.org documentation is written in English, the content you map to those types and properties can be written in any desired language.

This means you can still mark up your pages if you have a site in a different language from English. For example:

{
   "@context": "https://schema.org",
   "@type": "Article",
   "headline": "Comment économiser de l'énergie à la maison",
   "author": {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Marie Dupont"
      },
   "datePublished": "2024-06-14T17:50:16+00:00"
}

This example shows French content mapped to the property represented by the English word “headline”.

The real complexity arises when you must accommodate different formatting conventions across languages and regions manually or even using a plugin.

Why is it difficult for website owners to implement Schema Markup on their own?

Many site owners are unaware that you can still apply the Schema.org vocabulary to non-English pages and often neglect to add Schema Markup to their multilingual sites. This oversight can lead to missed opportunities for enhanced search engine understanding and visibility in the SERP.

Even when site owners apply Schema Markup to non-English pages, they may still face limitations if they’re using a plugin. Most Schema Markup plugins are black boxes and do not give site owners the flexibility to adjust the markup. If your website has additional complexities, plugins might not be able to mark up your site accurately.

Some plugins may also not recognize the language on your site, so you might be required to author your markup manually. Implementing and managing this across thousands of pages can be tedious and requires Schema Markup expertise to execute.

Schema App offers an automated and dynamic solution

Unlike typical plugins that struggle with scale, formatting, and language variations, Schema App’s dynamic markup deployment capabilities can help you easily manage complex, multi-domain, and multilingual sites.

The Schema App Highlighter is a Schema Markup generator that deploys dynamic Schema Markup to thousands of similarly templated pages. If you have a product detail page in seven different languages, the Schema App Highlighter can deploy accurate markup to all those pages regardless of which language the page content is written in. It can also recognize special characters and include them in the markup on your site.

With our solution, you also get a dedicated Customer Success Manager who can provide content and formatting recommendations to ensure your content is optimized for Schema Markup implementation.

Ensuring Schema Markup is properly implemented and formatted for each language and region is crucial for presenting your content to the right audiences, maintaining rich result eligibility, and providing consistent user experiences across your websites.

2. Handling Currency Formatting for Different Regions

Another issue many site owners face with marking up multilingual and multi-regional domains is currency formatting.

Schema.org can accommodate any currency format and gives users the ability to specify a “price” and a “priceCurrency” separately. However, if you are looking to target a Product rich result, you will want to follow Google’s more specific formatting requirements.

Using a comma (,) instead of a period (.) as a decimal separator will result in errors in the Rich Results Test (e.g. €100,50 should be written as €100.50). This may go against grammar rules but is critical for being Rich Result eligible.

Furthermore, websites may use periods or commas as digit group separators to support readability. We recommend omitting all digit group separators, but more importantly, avoid using periods as digit group separators. For example, the number one thousand should never be represented as 1.000, as Google will parse the period as a decimal separator and interpret the value as one (1).

Many European countries use a comma (,) as a decimal separator and a period as a digit group separator in their prices. Using this formatting in your markup can lead to several issues, including:

• Ineligibility for rich results like Product Listings
• Misinterpretation of price data by search engines

Challenges Scaling Different Currency Formatting

These nuances to differing currency formats are challenging at scale because you must manually update your Schema Markup on each page to accommodate price formatting and ensure machines understand that your price-based content is a price value.

Converting it to the format Schema.org accepts is necessary for machines to read it and incredibly tedious for anyone doing it manually across thousands of pages.

Most Schema Markup plugins cannot automatically reformat pricing into the Schema.org accepted format, making this a challenge for site managers who rely on plugins to implement their Schema Markup.

Common Formatting Issues

Decimal placements in your currency formatting aren’t the only issues that could arise with multilingual and multi-regional content. Other elements that may require attention include:

• Currency symbol placement (e.g., “500$” instead of “$500”)
• Date/time formats (e.g. “2024-07-03T12:50:15+4:00” instead of July 3, 2024 at 12:50pm)

All these elements must adhere to the conventions defined by the Schema.org vocabulary (e.g. following ISO-8601 time formatting).

A Scalable Solution

The Schema App Highlighter can omit or remove commas used as digit group separators to improve Rich Result eligibility. Additionally, you can also set conditional rules in the Schema App Highlighter to account for different currency formats and ensure that your prices are correctly marked up, regardless of the currency denomination.

Check out how we helped CAPREIT overcome their currency denomination challenges.

Schema App Simplifies Schema Markup for Multilingual Sites

Manual implementation of Schema Markup on a multilingual site becomes tedious and error-prone when dealing with thousands of pages across various languages and regions.

While plugins may seem like a solution, many do not allow website owners to customize their markup or do conditional formatting for their multi-lingual sites. This can hinder your ability to achieve rich results and ensure search engines understand your content.

This is why global enterprises with complex multilingual, multi-regional sites choose to work with Schema App.

Schema App’s end-to-end Schema Markup solution gives users access to tools like the Schema App Highlighter to manage currency formatting and ensure compliance with Google’s structured data requirements. You’ll also get an assigned Customer Success Manager to manage your markup, ensure your content is optimally formatted, and offer recommendations to further optimize your pages for Schema Markup implementation.

If you’re struggling to implement Schema Markup for your multilingual or multi-regional website, we’re here to help. Contact us today to learn how Schema App can streamline your Schema Markup process and boost your global online presence.

The post How to Implement Schema Markup for Multilingual or Multi-Regional Sites appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

When content is marked up with certain schema.org types and properties, that information is eligible for rich results and other search enhancement features. The benefits of structured data are clear, but there are still several myths and misconceptions that deter users from investing in this advanced SEO practice.

This article debunks those myths so that you’ll have a better understanding of what structured data markup is and what it can do.

Myth #1: Structured data guarantees rich results in search

Structured data does not guarantee you will receive a rich result. While it enables certain search features, such as review stars and recipe cards, ultimately, Google decides whether or not to award the rich result. In order to maximize the opportunity to receive a rich result, consider following these best practices:

Google’s Required and Recommended Properties

Include all of Google’s required properties and any recommended properties that could further enhance your data in search. Different schema.org types have different required and recommended properties. Missing recommended properties means your rich results won’t be as robust; however, missing required properties means your content will not be eligible for rich results at all.

Many times the warnings from missing recommended properties are due to that content not being on the page. For example, certain eCommerce stores may not have stock keeping units ( SKU) for their inventory. This is a recommended property for product markup according to Google’s documentation, but since it isn’t applicable and therefore doesn’t exist on the page, it won’t be included in the schema markup. 

To determine whether there is a rich result opportunity within your content and which rich result opportunity you should optimize for with schema markup, try exploring the Search Gallery. Dive deeper into your chosen rich result opportunity with the links provided.

Follow the Rules of Structured Data

Make sure you’re not in violation of any of Google’s content or technical guidelines. Each rich result has different guidelines that must be followed. For example, FAQs shouldn’t be used for advertising purposes, and reviews for local businesses must be visible to users visiting the site. 

To check the health of your schema markup, we recommend the following tools:

Schema Markup Validator (SMV)

The Schema Markup Validator (SMV) is currently in beta but has officially replaced Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool (SDTT). Many SEOs still prefer the SDTT, as the SMV does not yet show warnings and only validates schema syntax, not rich result eligibility.

The service, provided by Google for the schema.org community, can validate schema.org-based structured data embedded in web pages, otherwise known as schema markup. The SMV has the ability to extract JSON-LD, RDFa, and Microdata markup, display a summary of the extracted structured data and identify syntax mistakes in the markup.

Learn more about the SMV in our news post here.

Rich Results Test (RRT)

The Rich Results Test (RRT) lets you test your web pages to see which rich results your structured data markup is eligible for.

Revise your Content for More Rich Result Opportunities

If Google is still not awarding a rich result, consider revising your content. Is there room for more information to support E-E-A-T on the subject? Does the content need to be edited down? Ensuring your content provides the best answers to the queries you’re looking to rank for may influence your ability to achieve rich results.

Myth #2: Structured data is a ranking factor in search engine page results

This is a tricky question, but ultimately structured data is not a direct ranking factor in search. Google’s John Mueller clarifies what structured data actually does:

Just because people are applying structured data in a technically correct way, does not mean that the page will perform better than it would otherwise, and, therefore cannot guarantee a higher rank. That being said, we’ve found that applying structured data—particularly for rich result eligibility—increases engagement with content which can result in increased ranking over time. 

It’s important to remember that structured data explicitly defines entities on a page and how they relate to one another, which can help convey a page’s meaning. However, this should always be secondary to creating quality content.

Myth #3: Structured data is just an SEO strategy

While structured data does improve your search engine optimization performance, it is not solely an SEO strategy. It is much more than that. 

Structured data markup translates your content into JSON-LD, a language that search engines can understand. The more that Google understands, the better it can match your content to a user’s search query. You’re actually taking control of how the data on your web pages is defined rather than just hoping that search engines will be intuitive enough to decipher your content and show the best information in search results. We’ve helped many companies, like SAP and AdventHealth, tie results from structured data markup back to their online business goals. SAP achieved more than 400% net growth in organic traffic from rich results, and AdventHealth experienced a 90% increase in clicks, a 38% increase in CTR, and a top position in the rankings across all web pages.

Myth #4: Google can figure it out without the extra work

Google is pretty smart at figuring things out, but leaving a search engine to do everything on its own may not yield the organic search results you’re looking for. Search engines can analyze your web pages without structured data markup, sure, but you won’t have much control over what information will be displayed in search. With the right content and comprehensive schema markup, Google can better understand how you want your data to be interpreted. 

Moreover, Google won’t give you certain search enhancement features without proper structured data implementation, such as recipes, jobs, and events, which can hurt your search engine optimization performance in the long run. 

The truth about structured data

Now that we’ve debunked some of the myths about structured data, here is the truth about it. Since 2014, Google’s Documentation has recommended adding structured data to your site to increase findability in search. 

“You can help us by providing explicit clues about the meaning of a page to Google by including structured data on the page. “

Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page, and schema.org is the dictionary. Schema.org is a semantic vocabulary that when used for structured data is called schema markup. By using structured data markup like schema markup, you are translating your human-readable content into a language that search engines understand. 

You can use schema markup to effectively define objects on your web pages as entities with their own properties and relationships to other entities. Once defined, you can link your entities to a search engine’s knowledge graph. Knowledge graphs represent the linking of all information across the Web, and joining that network means that Google will better understand and contextualize your content. This leads to all sorts of search enhancements, such as enhancing your Google Knowledge Panel.

While there are many benefits to marking up your content, here are some of our favourites:

1. Own the customer experience from the beginning of their journey.

Structured data gives you more control over the way your brand is represented. Being in control means you can define exactly how you want your brand content to be understood, easily test different strategies, and control where and how the structured data is distributed to your websites. 

For example, our work with Home Hardware resulted in a 190% increase in clicks quarter-over-quarter from product rich results, which have become an integral part of the company’s online presence. Now, Home Hardware can inform and engage with customers directly through search engine page results with these enhancement features.

2. Show additional information in search through rich results and enhanced Google features.

Rich results are additional information coupled with eye-catching visuals that attract your attention in search. They bring your content alive, plus they take up more real estate in the search results pages, helping you outshine your competition. How do you get these rich results? By adding structured data to your website. There are 32 rich results to help your brand stand out in organic search, all of which can be enabled using structured data.

3. Take advantage of enhanced analytics to monitor all aspects of your organic search performance.

Once structured data is on your website, you can pull any of the schema.org properties you’ve marked up into your analytics platform (like Google Analytics) to drive better decisions with the context of the content. Schema App’s Enhanced Analytics adds schema.org properties into Google Analytics to show different levels of performance for your structured data.

Learn more about the benefits of structured data beyond SEO in our article 8 Benefits of Schema Markup and Why It’s Important for SEO.

We want your schema markup to be successful! What makes Schema App so effective is that we work with you to develop a customized strategy based on your business goals. From small businesses to enterprise companies, we have solutions that can integrate with any content management system.

Discover what structured data can do for you!

The post Structured Data Myths and Schema Markup Misconceptions appeared first on Schema App Solutions.