However, we’ve seen a lot of changes in rich results and the overall search experience this past year. The uprising of generative AI-powered search engines, accompanied by the volatility in rich results, has prompted our team to dive deeper into the semantic value of Schema Markup and entity linking as it pertains to search today.

In this article, we will share the value of entity linking, the tools enabling you to do it at scale and the results we’ve seen from implementing entity linking with our Enterprise clients.

Growing Importance of Entities in Search

Over the past decade, search engines have shifted from lexical to semantic search to improve the accuracy and relevancy of their search results.

As a result, how we think about search engine optimization also has to change. We have to move away from adding keywords to a page and go towards identifying entities on a page to help search engines and machines understand and contextualize the content on our pages.

Entities are a single, unique, well-defined, distinguishable thing or idea. An entity can be anything from a person to a place to a concept, and they possess defining characteristics or attributes (i.e. colour, price, name). But they need to be described in relation to other things to have meaning. For example, Schema App is an entity that can be described by its name, location, website URL, founders, employees and more.

Your website content contains entities related to your organization, and you can help search engines identify the entities on your page using Schema Markup.

When you implement Schema Markup on your page, you are identifying and describing the entities in your content, which helps search engines better understand your content.

While having entities defined on your site is good, you can go one step further and improve your markup by doing entity linking to build a connected, robust content knowledge graph.

A content knowledge graph is a collection of relationships between the entities defined on your website, defined using a standardized vocabulary like Schema.org. It enables search engines and other machines to gain new knowledge about your organization through inference.

What is Entity Linking?

Entity linking is the act of identifying entities mentioned in text, and linking them to corresponding entities that have been defined in a target knowledge base.

In the context of Schema Markup, entity linking is the act of linking the entities on your site to the corresponding known entities on external authoritative knowledge bases such as Wikipedia, Wikidata and Google’s Knowledge Graph using Schema.org properties. Examples of connector properties include sameAs, mentions, areaServed, and more.

External authoritative knowledge bases can differ by vertical or content type. For example, if you are in the medical or finance industry, there may be a governing body or glossary that best defines the entities within your content.

Entity linking can help you define the terms and entities mentioned in your content more explicitly, thus enabling search engines to disambiguate the entity identified on your site with greater confidence and provide users with more accurate and relevant search results.

For example, if your page talks about ‘London,’ this can be confusing to search engines because there are several cities in the world named London. You can help search engines disambiguate which London you are referring to in your content by linking to the same known entity described on Wikipedia, Wikidata or Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Suppose we are talking about the city of London in Ontario, Canada. In that case, we can use the sameAs property to link the entity on your site to the known entity on Wikipedia, Wikidata and Google’s Knowledge Graph. Doing this entity linking makes it explicit to search engines that the content on the page is about ‘London, Ontario, Canada’ and not ‘London, England’.

  "mentions": {
    "@type”: "Place",
    "name": "London",
    "sameAs": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q92561",
    "sameAs": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London,_Ontario",
    "sameAs": "kg:/m/0b1t1",
}

Entity linking is even more vital if your organization is in an industry where being specific is essential (such as defining a medical condition or a specific financial instrument like new construction financing).

Approaches to Entity Linking

You could take two main approaches to entity linking: a general approach and a more strategic one.

General Approach to Entity Linking

You could take a general approach and identify any entity on your site, check if it is a known entity on an external authoritative knowledge base, and, if it is, link that entity to the known entities.

For example, if you are a technology company, your product pages might mention entities like SOC2, Solution, and the United States. Using the general entity linking approach, you can link these entities to the known entities on external authoritative knowledge bases.

Strategic Approach to Entity Linking

Alternatively, you can take a more strategic approach and identify a specific type of entity on your site (for example, locations mentioned on your site or a particular term mentioned on your site), check if it is a known entity on an external authoritative knowledge base, and if it is, link that entity to the known entities.

For example, you can use a place-based entity linking approach to explicitly identify the place entities mentioned on a page and link them to the known entities on Wikipedia, Wikidata and Google’s Knowledge Graph.

If your website has different location-based landing pages for your offering, you can implement place-based entity linking in your Schema Markup. Doing so would help search engines understand the locations that your organization is servicing and enable your page to perform better on ‘near me’ and other location-based searches.

The entities you target with entity linking should be purposeful. Instead of linking all the entities on a page with corresponding known entities, you should focus on linking the most essential ones for clarity.

How we do Entity Linking at Schema App

At Schema App, we believe that entity linking is crucial to developing a robust content knowledge graph. It can add value to your SEO efforts and prepare you to get further insights from your content. So, how can you do entity linking within your markup?

You can manually link the entities on your page to the known entities on external authoritative knowledge bases. However, this solution is not dynamic nor scalable, so keeping the data updated and accurate can be resource-intensive and time-consuming.

The Schema App team developed the Omni LER feature to apply entity linking in a scalable, dynamic manner to solve the scale and accuracy of entity linking.

Omni Linked Entity Recognition (LER) is the automated process of identifying entities mentioned in texts and linking them to the corresponding entities on authoritative knowledge bases (like Wikipedia, Wikidata and the Google Knowledge Graph).

Today, Schema App’s Omni LER feature uses natural language processing to identify entities within a block of text automatically and embed them within the Schema Markup based on the Schema Markup configuration in the Schema App Highlighter.

In the future, we’ll introduce a controlled vocabulary feature to help our customers identify which entities they want to map to for entity linking. This evolution will give organizations even more control over the topics and entities they want to be known for and how they want to define those entities.

Entity Linking Experiments and Results

The impact of entity linking on SEO has yet to be explored widely. This prompted our team to experiment with entity linking to see if it has any measurable impact on SEO metrics.

Using our Omni LER feature, we implemented entity linking on over 60 enterprise customer accounts in healthcare, finance, B2B technology and other industries.

We ran general and place-based entity linking experiments on a variety of pages (i.e. blogs, location pages, medical pages, etc.) over three months and measured the impact on search performance. Here’s what we saw as the results.

General Entity Linking Experiment

We took the general entity linking approach on pages with long-form content, such as blogs. The Omni LER feature within the Schema App Highlighter identified the named entities in the text and embedded the known entities in the markup using the mentions and sameAs properties within the schema markup for the page.

For example, one customer had a blog article about rashes caused by amoxicillin. We used the “mentions” property to identify ‘Amoxicillin’ as an entity on the blog post and further clarified the entity by nesting the equivalent entities defined on Wikipedia and Google’s Knowledge Graph for Amoxicillin.

The Omni LER feature also identified other entities on the page, such as ‘Benadryl’, ‘Keflex’, ‘Mononucleosis’ ‘National Institutes of Health’, and linked these entities to the known entities on Wikipedia, Wikidata and Google’s Knowledge graph under the relevant schema markup property.

After implementing entity linking on that blog article, the customer saw a 336% increase in click-through rate for the query ‘Amoxicillin rash’ and a 390% increase in click-through rate for the query ‘Rash from amoxicillin’. The number of queries for that blog also increased by 86.75%.

Across our customer set, we saw an overall trend where the clicks and click-through rates increased for relevant keywords while the number of irrelevant keywords dropped for each page.

Placed-based Entity Linking Experiment

In a second experiment, we took the placed-based entity linking approach on location-based landing pages. This customer had a set of location-based landing pages to cater to their audiences in different states across the US.

We implemented placed-based entity linking on 11 test pages and kept 4 control pages to compare the results.

On the test pages, we added spatialCoverage and audience property in the markup to identify the state this page pertained to (in this example, it was for the state of California) and then further clarified which ‘California’ we were referring to by nesting the equivalent entities defined on Wikipedia, Wikidata and Google’s knowledge graph using the sameAs property.

After running the experiment for 85 days, the test sites saw an increase in the number of queries containing the state name and ‘near me’, leading to a 46% increase in impressions and a 42% increase in clicks for non-branded queries.

By clarifying the locations serviced on the site, this customer’s pages showed up for more location-based queries.

Do Entity Linking at Scale

Based on the early results we’ve seen, entity linking can help search engines disambiguate the entities mentioned on your site and help your pages show up for more relevant search queries, increasing the clicks and click-through rate to the pages. It is a great way to stand out in search and drive more qualified traffic to your site.

Entity linking can also help your organization build a more descriptive content knowledge graph. You can learn more about content knowledge graphs through our free ‘Content Knowledge Graph Fundamentals’ course.

If you want to implement entity linking at scale or build a content knowledge graph for your site, contact us.

The post Measurable Impact of Scaling Entity Linking for Entity Disambiguation appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Mastering Schema Markup takes time and requires technical knowledge that most SEO teams lack the capacity to acquire and implement. As a result, they are unable to see results from this technical SEO strategy.

At Schema App, we don’t just provide the platform for you to generate and deploy your Schema Markup. We also provide high-touch support services to support you from strategy to results.

What does our high-touch support service entail? 

Our high-touch support services are offered through our end-to-end Schema Markup solution for enterprise SEO teams.

In the beginning stages of our partnership, you will be assigned a Customer Success Manager (CSM) to your account during the onboarding session. This person is the point of contact throughout the engagement for all things related to authoring markup, deployment and troubleshooting, measuring results, and continued strategy on how to develop the semantic value that structured data provides to your website.

Your CSM will guide you through the Schema App process outlined below and you should know that this is a cyclical and ongoing process.

As things change with Google or your website’s content, this process is repeated throughout your engagement to ensure you continue to see value in your Schema Markup strategy and stay prepared for the future of search.

Every enterprise customer is allotted a minimum of one hour of high-touch support per month. After your initial strategy and scope implementation, your CSM will utilize your high-touch support hours to provide ongoing Schema Markup-related support.

Initial strategy and scope implementation

1. Creating your Schema Markup Strategy

One of the first things your Customer Success Manager will do is create your Schema Markup strategy.

Identifying desired outcomes

During the discovery process, we work to identify each individual enterprise customer’s desired outcomes in working with Schema App. This might include:

• Increased traffic to specific lines of businesses,
• increased organic click-through rate (CTR) year over year,
• rich result targeting,
• reduced dependency on IT teams to deploy structured data or
• the development of a knowledge graph through semantic schema markup.

By clearly stating these desired outcomes, your Customer Success Manager can align the strategy with your goals.

Scoping website for appropriate Schema.org types and properties

Additionally, your Customer Success Manager will assess your domain to identify common pages and the most applicable schema Type to apply to each page. By starting with this scoping process, we create an overview of how we’re establishing your Marketing Knowledge Graph by connecting your Organization to your various locations, products, and services.

From there, we dig into your various page sets to identify how your content aligns with the many schema properties applicable to the targeted schema Type. Our guiding star is establishing thorough, healthy markup that is dynamic with your content and scales across the pageset.

2. Authoring your markup using our tools

Once your CSM identifies how to target customer pages with the most appropriate schema Type in the ‘Strategy’ stage of the Schema App process, it is time to move onto the ‘Authoring’ stage.

As part of your initial implementation scope, your CSM will also help you author your markup using our Schema App Editor and Schema App Highlighter.

At Schema App, we provide all our CSMs intensive training to ensure they become experts in the Schema.org vocabulary and our tools. Equipped with the expertise, your CSM can help you quickly author thorough semantic markup, and find applicable external entities to include. Your team will not have to worry about having to master the Schema.org vocabulary or learn how to use the Schema App Editor and Highlighter in detail. Your CSM will take care of that.

Given the capabilities of our team and our tools, we can typically create accurate JSON-LD to deploy to your page within minutes.

3. Deployment

Once authored, Schema App deploys markup to your website through a variety of integrations – with the most common deployment method being through a simple JavaScript tag. Generally, once markup is authored, you’ll see your Schema Markup live on the page within approximately 15 minutes.

If any challenges arise during the deployment process, your CSM will troubleshoot with our internal team and perform corrections where needed. If necessary, your CSM will also provide actionable advice on any setting changes required from your team to resolve these challenges as soon as possible.

Shortly after deploying the agreed-upon scope, we provide initial reporting with a ‘First Wins’ presentation, to reflect on our early successes.

Ongoing Maintenance

Schema Markup is not a one-and-done strategy. It takes effort to maintain your markup through the evolving search landscape. SEO teams often lack the capacity to stay on top of Google’s changes and keep their markup up to date. Therefore with Schema App’s High Touch Support services, your CSM becomes an extension of your SEO team.

As mentioned earlier, your CSM will utilize your high-touch support hours for ongoing Schema Markup-related support after the initial strategy and scope implementation, and there are many ways you can utilize this time.

1. Regular sync ups

You can utilize your high-touch support hours for regular sync-up calls with your CSM to maintain constant communication.

In addition to Google making constant changes to its algorithms and overall search experience, it’s also common for your website content to change after the initial implementation. During these sync-up calls, you can:

• Discuss changes made to your Schema Markup,
• Share upcoming plans for your website content,
• Receive coaching on ways to improve your content to meet your rich result requirements,
• Troubleshoot any errors you’ve identified,
• And request other Schema Markup-related support.

Your CSM will also share content recommendations, propose changes to your strategy and update you and your team on any latest documentation changes from Google during the call.

2. Optimize your Schema Markup

As part of your high-touch support hours, your CSM will also perform the work required to manage your Schema Markup. Depending on your organization’s needs, your CSM will:

• Proactively monitor how your markup is deploying and performing,
• Identify any challenges with rich result targeting,
• Provide content recommendations to your SEO and content team,
• Manage your knowledge graph,
• Add additional Schema properties or linked entities to your new or updated content, and
• Set up experiments and A/B tests to help you maximize your rich result performance.

Additionally, you can also use your high-touch support hours to get your CSM to perform a competitive analysis. Your CSM will dive into your competitors’ sites and provide you with a detailed report on the state of your competitor’s Schema Markup and suggestions on how you can stay ahead.

By performing these tasks, your CSM can ensure your markup continues to be accurate, error-free and contributing to your desired outcomes. Read our How to Manage Your Schema Markup article for more details on how our CSMs manage your Schema Markup.

3. Perform Quarterly Business Reporting

Every quarter, we also provide a Quarterly Business Review (QBR) presentation to identify trends we’re seeing through the previous quarter, how our customers are standing out in search, and what we believe to be action items for the upcoming quarter. These QBRs are an amazing opportunity to include additional stakeholders to see the value we’re delivering to our customers.

With access to industry data, we can offer insight as to where you stand in comparison to the competition and help you anticipate the effects of Google changes.

Stay Agile with Schema App’s High Touch Support Service

Our high-touch support provides invaluable benefits to SEO teams aiming to maintain agility amidst ongoing changes in the search landscape. Given this volatility, it’s crucial for your organization to proactively manage your Schema Markup to stay ahead.

We offer reporting alongside industry trends to ensure you’re prepared for the future of search, all while establishing your Marketing Knowledge Graph.

With our high-touch support service, you get:

• Access to a structured data expert who will supplement your existing SEO team and reduce your dependency on internal IT teams,
• Timely insight into industry trends to prepare your team for the future of search,
• Access to Schema App tools with demonstrated agility and scalability,
• Timely monitoring and reporting, with actionable recommendations,
• Cost savings to alleviate internal tasks like authoring, deploying, and maintaining markup, in addition to staying current on Google documentation updates.

If you are interested in learning more about our high-touch support services or our end-to-end Schema App solution, we’d love to hear from you.

Curious to discover how the Customer Success team demonstrates value to our customers? Check out our Customer Stories.

The post The Value of Schema App’s High-Touch Support appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Since our inception, we’ve been helping organizations across the globe implement connected Schema Markup on their websites to strengthen their SEO strategy.

By implementing Schema Markup, our customers can achieve rich results on search engine results pages (SERPs) and increase traffic to their sites. However, the advantages of Schema Markup extend beyond just obtaining rich results. Schema Markup is a semantic technology with numerous benefits.

In this article, we will explore what semantic technology is and how Schema App leverages it to provide meaningful context and understanding of data.

Understanding Semantic Technology

Semantic technology is a set of technologies, methodologies and standards that provide meaning (semantics) to data. It achieves this by representing relationships between different categories of entities, transforming raw data into knowledge.

By providing context, semantic technology enables machines to better comprehend and interpret data, leading to more intelligent decision-making processes.

Background and Terminology

Before jumping into how Schema App is semantic, it is essential to familiarize ourselves with key terms in the field of semantic technology.

Here is a glossary of terms that will be referenced throughout this article.

RDF (Resource Description Framework)

A framework used to express data as a directed graph using subject-predicate-object statements known as triples.

By combining these triples, vast interconnected graphs of resources can be created. This is done using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

A URI is a string of characters that identifies a resource. It provides a consistent way to identify resources across different systems and protocols.

A URL is a string of characters that both identifies a resource and where it’s located on the web. Therefore, a URL is a type of URI.

JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data (JSON-LD)

JSON-LD is a serialization format for expressing RDF data. In simple terms, it’s one way to describe the subject-predicate-object statements. It also happens to be Google’s preferred format for consuming Schema Markup/structured data.

Ontology

An ontology defines the types of entities that can exist within a dataset, and the properties that describe and connect these entities. Schema.org is an example of a loose ontology, serving as a vocabulary rather than imposing strict logic constraints like other formal ontologies.

Knowledge Graph

A knowledge graph is a structured representation of information that captures the context and connections between entities, their attributes, and the relationships between them.

Schema App uses JSON-LD to express how the Schema.org “ontology” defines the connections in your data (in our case, your content).

As a result, content on your page that states things like “this DeWalt Handsaw is from the brand DeWalt” and you can express that in JSON-LD to help search engines understand that statement.

When you connect multiple entities using these technologies, you are constructing a knowledge graph.

Search engines can then interpret the relationships between entities through these knowledge graph connections, enhancing their understanding of the content on your site. More recently, knowledge graphs are also being explored as a means of grounding LLMs to prevent hallucinations in Generative AI.

So as you can see, these technologies are powerful sources of meaning (semantics) for machines like search engines.

The most foundational resource that both uses and is, in itself, a semantic technology, is Schema.org. Schema App utilizes the Schema.org vocabulary to help our customers translate their content to a language understood by search engines.

What Makes Schema.org a Semantic Technology?

Schema.org was founded in 2011 by Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex as a way to translate messy human language into structured, machine-readable language. This language is now supported by all major search engines, improving their ability to match search queries with relevant results.

Search engines have shifted to using semantic SEO to provide more accurate and relevant results to users. Instead of matching keywords in an article to search queries, search engines now understand the meaning (semantics) of the content on a page and identify if the content matches the searcher’s intent and query.

In light of this, Schema.org was developed as a vocabulary of types and properties to clearly describe things on a site and provide context on how these things are connected to each other.

Types

The Schema.org types are organized into a hierarchy, starting with Thing and then providing more specific subtypes from there. Example: Thing, which has the subtype Person, which has the subtype Patient.

Properties

Each type has a list of available properties to further describe it. In the image below, we can see that the Person type can be further described with properties like address, alumniOf, and birthDate.

Expected Types for Properties

Most properties also have specific types they can connect to. For example, a Person can have an address property which states the physical address of where the person is located. This information can either be added as plain text, or it can be used to link to the PostalAddress type which has its own page in Schema.org.

By connecting different Schema.org types on your site through the properties, you are defining the relationships between entities described in the content on your site and helping machines understand it.

At Schema App, we apply the Schema.org vocabulary (a loose ontology) to customer content, expressed in JSON-LD (a semantic technology) so that search engines can explicitly understand connections between things (semantics!).

Machine-Readable Representations of Schema.org 

Under the hood, the individual terms on the Schema.org website also have ”machine-readable definitions…available as JSON-LD, embedded into the term page[‘s] HTML”.

If developers are interested in implementing the vocabulary for their own purposes, Schema.org provides downloadable “Vocabulary Definition Files” available in “common RDF formats” like JSON-LD, Turtle, Triple, or RDF/XML. Here’s a link to what the Schema.org vocabulary looks like as a JSON-LD file.

Schema.org has two interfaces – one for humans to navigate and understand, and another for machines to understand the content within their database. This is a great illustration of how semantic technology works to bridge the gap between human language and machine learning.

By understanding semantic technologies, companies like Schema App are better able to create applications and systems that leverage the best aspects of these technologies. At Schema App, we use these files in the construction of our authoring tools and implementation of Schema Markup. This allows us to organize customer information in a meaningful way to machines.

Schema App’s expertise in semantic technologies is evident in our numerous tools and features.

Schema App Tools and Features That Make Us Semantic

Here are some of our tools and features that make us semantic.

Schema App Editor & Highlighter

The Schema App Editor and Highlighter are two Schema Markup authoring tools created by our team. The Schema App Editor allows SEO teams to generate Schema Markup in JSON-LD and automatically deploy it to an individual web page without writing a single line of code.

All the pages optimized with Schema Markup can be updated and live on the site in minutes with this tool, making it easy to manage. The Editor contains the entire Schema.org vocabulary and creates connected Schema Markup via embedded data items to allow our customers to build out their knowledge graphs.

The Schema App Highlighter is also a no-code Schema Markup authoring tool, but it is for templated pages and dynamic content rather than individual URLs. With this tool, you can automatically apply descriptive Schema Markup at scale to thousands of pages and dynamically update your Schema Markup based on the content on your page.

What makes our authoring tools semantic?

Both the Editor and the Highlighter have the same semantic features, just applied in a slightly different way.

Using the Schema.org vocabulary

The primary feature that makes our authoring tools semantic is how they author markup using the Schema.org vocabulary to express RDF triples (subject-predicate-object statements) in JSON-LD.

These statements (aka semantic triples) can be combined to create huge graphs of interconnected resources using URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers). Earlier in the article, we saw a simplified version of the triples. The image below is a more accurate representation of the triples, where the URIs are the entities being described in the graph.

By doing so, they leverage Schema.orgs’ means of translating human-readable content to machine-readable content, supporting the extraction of meaning (semantics) from web content.

All of Schema App’s authoring tools are Ontology-driven applications. Therefore, any updates or modifications to the Schema.org vocabularies will be reflected in the tools. For example, if Schema.org introduces a new property for a specific Type, the new property will be available in Schema App’s authoring tools.

Entity Linking Features

The Highlighter utilizes an automated Linked Entity Recognition feature to identify entities on the page and link them to Google’s knowledge graph and Wikidata definitions, while the Editor employs a manually applied Entity Linking Method. Both tools then nest the entities within the Schema Markup.

By using Entity Linking Methods like Linked Entity Recognition, our authoring tools can help search engines better contextualize the topics on your site and align them with the searcher’s query.

Linked Entity Recognition

As previously stated, Linked Entity Recognition (LER) is a powerful feature that can be applied to a Highlighter template to enhance content analysis.

Once applied, this automated process identifies named entities (such as people, places, things, and concepts) in content. It then links them to external identifiers from authoritative knowledge bases (like Wikipedia and the Google Knowledge Graph). These identifiers are automatically embedded within your Schema Markup.

Through the automatic embedding of these identifiers into the Schema Markup, the entities contribute valuable semantic information to the metadata. Consequently, Google and other web crawlers gain a deeper understanding of the content, thanks to the inclusion of well-defined, linked entities. This reduces ambiguity in the interpretation of content and supports more accurate matching to user queries.

For instance, we can say the DeWalt Handsaw is from the brand DeWalt, which is the same as the DeWalt described in this Wikipedia entity.

By linking the DeWalt Handsaw to the corresponding DeWalt entity on Wikipedia, search engines can clearly understand which DeWalt you are referring to.

Advanced WordPress Plugin

Like our other authoring tools, our Advanced WordPress plugin provides markup using the Schema.org vocabulary. The plugin can automatically generate Schema Markup for pages and posts. It also provides users access to our Schema App Editor for further Schema Markup customizations.

The Advanced WordPress plugin also has the ability to map WordPress tags and categories to Wikipedia and Wikidata entities to help search engines better match content with relevant search queries on those topics.

Schema Paths Tool

The Schema Paths Tool is a free tool created by the Schema App team to help users identify the best way to connect and organize different Schema types together within their Schema Markup. This is especially useful when you’re unsure which properties are available to connect two different Schema.org Types.

The Schema App team identified a need for this within their suite of tools because Schema Markup is most beneficial when it’s highly descriptive. One of the best ways to do this is by connecting your Types with the most descriptive property. The Schema Paths Tool helps you narrow down what properties each Type has that allow them to connect to one another (as an “Expected Type”).

For example, the Schema.org Organization type has more than 50 unique properties. If you want to connect an Organization to a Service it provides, you can enter both Types into the Schema Paths tool, and then receive a list of properties that can be used to connect these Types.

The Semantic Nature of Schema App

By embracing semantic technologies, Schema App helps you develop a reusable knowledge graph which also enables machines to better comprehend and interpret website content. When search engines have a clear understanding of what your page is about, it can provide searchers with more accurate and relevant results.

Our passion for semantic technologies doesn’t end with the tools and features currently available to our users. We pride ourselves on working towards a data-centric architecture for our internal data as well (see Semantic Arts Data-centric architecture manifesto) and invest time considering the possibilities of semantic technology and how we can support them.

Interested in learning more about how our tools can support your semantic SEO initiatives? Get started here.

The post What Makes Schema App Semantic? appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

There are several ways you can implement Schema Markup on your site. 

For one, you can manually write the Schema Markup and add it to the code of your site. Alternatively, you can leverage an automated method, like a Schema Markup plugin or the Schema App solution. 

For sites using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Shopify, or BigCommerce, you can download a plugin that automatically adds basic Schema Markup to your site. However, if your web architecture or content is more complex, the plugins might not work with your site. But fear not – our Schema App solution was built to help tackle issues like this. 

Let’s take a closer look at the Schema App solution and a typical Schema Markup plugin so you can decide which solution best fits your business needs. 

What is the Schema App Solution?

The Schema App solution is an end-to-end Schema Markup solution that leverages Schema App’s semantic Schema Markup platform and High Touch Support services to deliver a customized, scalable Schema Markup for enterprise SEO teams.

The Schema App solution does more than just implement Schema Markup on your website. With an end-to-end enterprise Schema Markup solution like Schema App, you’ll be able to:

• Define the entities on your site and leverage the entire Schema.org vocabulary to generate semantic Schema Markup using the Schema App Editor and Highlighter.
• Link your entities on your page with other entities on your site and other external authoritative knowledge bases to develop a reusable marketing knowledge graph using your Schema Markup.
• Integrate any CMS and website with our Schema App platform to automatically deploy the markup to your site. 
• Measure the performance of your Schema Markup and get visibility using Schema Performance Analytics.
• Work with an assigned Customer Success Manager (CSM) who will help you customize your Schema Markup strategy as well as create, deploy, manage and optimize your Schema Markup using Schema App tools.
• Review your Schema Markup performance through a Quarterly business review meeting with your CSM. 

The Schema App solution automates the semantic Schema Markup process, creating a reusable knowledge graph that improves search and provides measurable results on your Schema Markup strategy. 

What is a Schema Markup Plugin?

Schema Markup plugins (or add-ons) are designed to help you automatically add Schema Markup to your site. A wide range of Schema Markup plugins with different functionalities are available, usually for popular CMSs such as Shopify, BigCommerce, WordPress, and WooCommerce, among others.

Some plugins focus on specific Schema types like products or recipes, while others cover a broad range of Schema types, but in general, plugins tend to cater to more basic markup types and offer limited customization options.

In all fairness, Schema App has also created plugins for WordPress, Shopify, and BigCommerce. They are a small part of our fully featured suite of tools and can connect with our Schema App Editor and Highlighter. However, we recognize that these plugins are insufficient for organizations looking to implement an advanced Schema Markup strategy. 

Let’s dig deeper into the differences between our end-to-end Schema App solution vs. a typical Schema Markup plugin. 

Key Differences Between Schema App and a Schema Markup Plugin

Here are the most notable differences between Schema App’s end-to-end solution and a Schema Markup plugin.

Compatibility with Your Content Management System

While many plugins exist, most are only compatible with a specific CMS. Therefore, if you want to avoid the headache of manually adding Schema Markup to your website, you will need a solution that is compatible with your CMS. 

If your organization operates multiple CMSs for different forms of content or lines of business, you won’t be able to use a single plugin to manage all of your Schema Markup. 

This is particularly problematic if you want to manage your Schema Markup holistically and connect the entities on your site to develop your knowledge graph.  Furthermore, if you use a complex CMS, like Salesforce Commerce Cloud, or a headless CMS, there might not be a plugin compatible with your architecture. 

Fortunately, Schema App’s solution can integrate with any CMS or web architecture.

Customization

Schema Markup was created to help search engines understand and contextualize your website’s content so they can better match your website to user queries. 

Most plugins, however, focus on helping users leverage Schema Markup to achieve a rich result by adding specific Schema Markup to relevant pages on the site. As a result, sites that rely on Schema Markup plugins are unable to capture the semantic value from implementing Schema Markup. 

There are more than 800 types and 1500 properties in the Schema.org vocabulary that you can use to describe your content; only a handful of them are used by Google to display rich results. By leveraging the full Schema.org vocabulary, you can provide more detailed and comprehensive information about your content, which can help search engines better match your pages with relevant search queries. You’re also in a good position should Google introduce new types to the search gallery.

Most plugins do not allow you to customize your markup with the full Schema.org vocabulary. This is even more problematic if your organization operates in the Healthcare or Finance industry, where you need to use specific Schema.org types to describe your products and services (e.g. CreditCard, LoanOrCredit, MedicalProcedure, etc.)

Schema App, on the other hand, allows you full customization of your Schema Markup. Our Schema App Editor and Highlighter contain the entire Schema.org vocabulary and all its extensions, allowing you to provide search engines with the utmost clarity on your content. 

Developing a Knowledge Graph

Search engines are becoming more semantic, which means they need to understand the meaning and intent of a piece of content to determine its relevance to a user’s search query.

Therefore, it is essential for you to implement semantic Schema Markup to develop a content knowledge graph and help search engines understand and contextualize the entities on your site.

If you’re interested in developing your organization’s content knowledge graph, relying on a plugin may not support your goals. Plugins have significant limitations and cannot produce the high-quality knowledge graph necessary for advanced semantic, AI, or internal initiatives.

This is due to a number of reasons.

Connecting Entities

When you use a plugin to generate your Schema Markup, there’s a good chance that the plugin will not connect the entities on your site in a semantic way.

For example, the entity Schema App is an organization, and the Schema App home page captures all the relevant information about the organization. Therefore, we can define Schema App as an organization using the Organization markup on the Schema App home page.

The entity, Schema App, has also published a series of blog posts. We can markup the blog pages with BlogPosting markup. One of the properties in the BlogPosting type is publisher, which is Schema App. We can link Schema App, the entity, to the blog post to reflect the fact that Schema App is the publisher of the blog post.

This means that the entities on your site are not connected in the form of a knowledge graph.

Furthermore, plugins are also unable to link the entities on your site to known entities on external authoritative knowledge bases like Wikidata or DBpedia, which means that you can’t help search engines disambiguate the entities mentioned on your site.

When working with Schema App, our solution supports linking your entities both internally and externally. The Schema App Highlighter and Editor allow you to connect the entities you’ve identified on different pages within your site.

Our Omni Linked Entity Recognition feature will automatically identify known entities in your content and embed links of the corresponding entity found on Google’s Knowledge Graph, Wikipedia, and Wikidata in your markup using the sameAs property.

Including URIs in your markup

A Uniform Resource Identifier is a string of characters that identifies a resource. It provides a consistent way to identify resources across different systems and protocols.

For your entity to be identifiable and retrievable, it must have a distinct URI so that:

• machines and search engines can identify the unique entities on your site and
• know which entities you are referring to when you connect your entities on your knowledge graph.

Many Schema Markup plugins do not generate Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for the entities identified on your site because URIs are not required to achieve a rich result on Google. However, URIs are important if you want to utilize your Schema Markup to build your content knowledge graph.

When you mark up your site using the Schema App Highlighter or Editor, it automatically generates an HTTPS URI for any entities you defined in your Schema Markup.

When you include URIs and connect the entities on your site using Schema Markup, you are effectively building a reusable content knowledge graph. It can help search engines present more accurate and relevant search results to users who are searching for things with specific attributes.

Beyond search engines, your content knowledge graph is also a critical enabler for generative AI adoption, as mentioned by Gartner. Knowledge graphs can be used to ground and train LLMs for internal AI initiatives.

Therefore, organizations can kill two birds (SEO and AI) with one stone by implementing semantic Schema Markup and developing their knowledge graph.

Access to a Schema Markup Expert and Resources to Manage Your Schema Markup

When using a Schema Markup plugin, you must maintain some basic knowledge of Schema Markup. You will need to develop your own strategy, determine what type of markup you need to get rich results and monitor the efficacy of your efforts.

With Schema App, your assigned Customer Success Manager will help you manage your entire Schema Markup process and provide you with the Schema Markup knowledge needed to develop and optimize your strategy. 

Your dedicated Customer Success Manager will assist with all of these critical tasks and provide personalized Schema Markup support that aligns with your organizational goals and growth objectives. The end result is a Schema Markup strategy that makes a measurable impact on your business. 

Measuring Performance

Plugins do not typically track the performance of your Schema Markup, nor do they provide insights for improving it. You can use Google Search Console to assess how your Schema Markup is performing, but you will need to analyze the data on your own, and you will be limited to the rich result enhancement reports available in GSC.

With the Schema App solution, we kick off our partnership by asking you your desired outcomes. We aim to help you achieve those objectives through your Schema Markup strategy. You’ll also have access to Schema Performance Analytics, which provides more granular data on your Schema Markup performance than Google Search Console. 

Your assigned Customer Success Manager will track the performance of your strategy and perform quarterly business reviews to ensure your strategy is aligned with your desired outcomes.

Final Thoughts on Schema App vs. Schema Markup Plugins

As you can see, there are a number of differences between the Schema App solution and a typical Schema Markup plugin.

Of course, pricing between the two also differs. Plugins range anywhere from $0 to $200 USD annually, while the Schema App solution has a custom pricing model.

Plugins are suitable for organizations just starting out with Schema Markup and have fewer types of content on their site. However, as your content grows, you must be more intentional with your Schema Markup strategy to maximize its semantic value.

Schema App’s solution pairs the scalability of a plugin with the expertise of an assigned Customer Success Manager, providing you with a Schema Markup experience tailored to your unique business needs. To learn more about our end-to-end solution, contact us today.

The post Schema App vs. Schema Markup Plugins — What’s the Difference? appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Example of a Product rich result.

Schema Markup has been around since 2011 and is now considered a must-do SEO strategy. As search engines shift to become more semantic and competition heats up, Schema Markup provides organizations with a measurable way to stay relevant on the SERP and differentiate themselves from other competitors in the market.

However, implementing a semantic Schema Markup strategy is often challenging and costly. Some organizations lack the expertise and internal resources to manage their markup. Other organizations have complicated web architectures or multiple domains, adding further complexity to the implementation process.

Fortunately, you can overcome the challenges of managing Schema Markup by partnering with Schema App. Our team provides an end-to-end scalable Schema Markup solution to help enterprise SEO teams execute their Schema Markup strategy with scale and agility.

Not sure if Schema App’s end-to-end Schema Markup solution is right for your organization? Here are five distinct benefits of our Schema Markup solution:

Benefit 1: Ability to Manage Schema Markup at Scale

Managing your Schema Markup on a page-by-page basis is incredibly complicated and time-consuming. This approach is not nearly scalable enough to facilitate implementation across a large-scale site.

For instance, let’s say that you wanted to add Review Schema Markup to all of your company’s location pages. To accomplish this, you would have to write the Schema Markup for each location page, and then add it to the individual pages manually. If you change the content on your page, you’ll also need to go back and update the Schema Markup to avoid Schema Drift.

As a Schema App customer, you would gain access to our Schema App platform, including our Highlighter. The Schema App Highlighter allows users to create semantic Schema Markup templates for pages with similar layouts (i.e. blogs, location pages, etc.) and deploy Schema Markup to those pages in a scalable manner.

When you first become a Schema App customer, you will be assigned a Customer Success Manager (CSM) who will help you customize your Schema Markup strategy and create your templates on the Highlighter accordingly.

After setting up the templates, the Highlighter will dynamically generate and deploy Schema Markup based on the content on your page. Your team can make content updates to the page without manually updating the markup.

When you create a new blog post, for example, the Highlighter will automatically deploy the appropriate Schema Markup to the page if it fits the template. This avoids the need for teams to take the time to add Schema Markup to these new pages each time.

Adding to this scalability, once your entities have been identified using Schema Markup, our Omni Linked Entity Recognition (LER) can link the known entities on your page to external authoritative knowledge bases.

Benefit 2: Develop a Reusable Knowledge Graph to Future-Proof for AI

Many organizations implement Schema Markup to help their pages stand out on search through rich results. They use plugins to automatically add Schema Markup that offers easy implementation. However, plugins restrict Schema Markup to a surface-level approach without establishing connections among entities on the site or linking them to external knowledge bases. This impedes the creation of a robust knowledge graph.

In doing so, they miss out on the semantic value of implementing Schema Markup. The main purpose of doing Schema Markup is to help search engines understand and contextualize the content on your site so that they can provide more relevant results to searchers.

Knowledge graphs are important for understanding the relationship between your entities and disambiguating what your content is about.

At Schema App, we go beyond the mere generation of Schema Markup; we leverage our semantic technologies to connect the entities on your site using Schema Markup and help you develop a reusable content knowledge graph. This involves not only defining entities but also establishing connections on and off the site, using features such as Omni LER.

The outcome is a comprehensive RDF knowledge graph that informs search engines about your business. This graph consolidates all your Schema Markup into a single, accessible marketing data layer.

On top of informing search engines, you can go on to re-use this knowledge graph to ground your Language Model Models (LLMs) with factual information about your business in a structured manner. This puts you in control of how your brand content is being interpreted by these intelligent systems.

Benefits of a Content Knowledge Graph

Implementing semantic Schema Markup and entity linking helps build your content knowledge graph, which:

1. Enhances search engines’ understanding of your entity relationships, optimizing content relevance and query accuracy in the SERP.
2. Facilitates effective matching of pages with user queries and driving higher qualified traffic and click-through rates.
3. Positions your content to be AI-search ready, improving search engines’ understanding and ensuring a refined user experience as AI becomes integral to delivering relevant answers.

Benefit 3: Access to Schema Markup Experts

Schema Markup is one of the most technical strategies in SEO. On top of learning the Schema.org vocabulary, one would also need to be able to implement the code and manage the markup on an ongoing basis to succeed.

So, while most SEO teams undoubtedly understand the benefits of implementing Schema Markup, they are unlikely to have the time or expertise to do it well.

It’s essential to view Schema Markup as more than a one-off SEO task; it’s an ongoing business strategy shaping your brand’s search presence.

Therefore, it’s crucial to have a dedicated, knowledgeable resource like Schema App managing your Schema Markup strategy on an ongoing basis and ensuring that it aligns with your business objectives.

You will partner with a team of experts and a dedicated CSM, ensuring effective Schema Markup management from strategy to results.

To start, your CSM will create a customized Schema Markup strategy to fit your organization’s desired outcomes. Next, they will bring your strategy to life by setting up, authoring, and deploying your Schema Markup on the Schema App platform.

As an extension of your SEO team, your CSM will also monitor your Schema Markup strategy regularly and provide content recommendations and improvements to it during your monthly High Touch Support hour. This ensures that you maximize your return from our solution.

Here’s what our customer, Laura Losito from Sonova, has to say about their Customer Success Manager.

Our customer success manager is very responsive and helpful whenever we find errors in Google Search Console or see a decline in certain metrics. She’s always able to assist and willing to investigate the issue and provide explanations or solutions.

Read the Sonova Audiological Care Business case study to learn about the value and services provided by a Schema App CSM.

Benefit 4: Reduce Dependency on IT and Increased Agility

One of the primary reasons enterprises struggle to implement an effective Schema Markup strategy is the limited bandwidth of their IT team.

To deploy and update the markup, SEO teams often require support from IT. If the IT team has other competing priorities, they often delay the implementation and management of Schema Markup.

With our Schema App platform and Customer Success team, your SEO team can operate with more agility. After the initial integration process, your SEO team can rely on their Schema App Customer Success Manager to make any updates to the markup using our Editor or Highlighter tool.

They’ll no longer require the assistance of the IT team to implement and manage their Schema Markup strategy.

Ultimately, that will prevent markup implementation delays and help your SEO staff manage your new strategy more effectively.

Benefit 5: Measurable ROI

According to a 2021 survey, 84% of marketing professionals feel pressured to demonstrate their ROI to justify marketing spending. While paid digital advertising offers an easy-to-measure ROI, the results are often lackluster.

Although measuring the ROI of SEO is widely considered quite difficult, many view SEO as one of the most effective marketing tactics.

Schema Markup offers a perfect balance between the two, as you can clearly measure the impact of it on your business objectives and achieve an exceptional ROI.

When you incorporate Schema Markup on your site, you will start achieving rich results on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). Results of rich results can be measured through Google Search Console as well as our Schema Performance Analytics (SPA) platform. On SPA, you can view detailed reports about the impressions, clicks and click-through rates (CTR) you generate from those rich results and more.

One of the reports in Schema Performance Analytics shows the CTR for a URL or group of URLs when it achieves a rich result and when it does not achieve a rich result. Most often, URLs with rich results yield a higher click-through rate and contribute to higher conversion.

By using these ROI measurement methods, Schema App clients can see a positive return on their work with Schema App.

The Value of Schema Markup Beyond Rich Results

It’s important to note, however, that the value of Schema Markup goes beyond rich results. Your content should be tailored to your audience’s needs and not produced solely for the purpose of achieving a rich result. Instead of only focusing on rich result eligibility in your Schema Markup strategy, focus on the semantic value of implementing Schema Markup and identifying and connecting your entities within a knowledge graph. This is where you will see the true return on investment.

Read our customer stories to see how we’ve helped clients across different industries gain measurable results from implementing Schema App.

Schema App: The Ideal Solution for Schema Markup Management

Our Schema Markup solution can help you accelerate your Schema Markup, provide measurable results, and yield a strong ROI. Our customers, like SAP, CAPREIT, Avid Technology, and Baptist Health have all seen significant growth in organic traffic through our Schema App solution.

Not only have they been able to get measurable results, but they have also increased their agility as search evolves and used our expertise to execute their Schema Markup strategy with confidence.

If you need help implementing a semantic Schema Markup strategy at scale, we can help. Get in touch with us today.

The post 5 Benefits of Hiring Schema App to Manage Your Schema Markup appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

At Schema App, our Customer Success Team is constantly navigating and pivoting through these changes to help our customers maintain and grow their visibility in search. As such, we’ve gathered some key insights from our team on their learnings from 2022 and what they expect to see for Schema Markup in 2023.

Insight #1. Google is investing a lot in Structured Data

In 2020, Google invested heavily in COVID-related Structured Data changes. In 2021, things were quieter and we saw fewer activities.

This year, Google introduced significant updates to their Structured Data documentation and 2023 is likely to maintain the same momentum.

Machine learning complements Structured Data

In April 2022, Google released an episode on their Search off the Record Podcast called “Structured Data: What’s it all about?”.

In the episode, Ryan Levering shared how Google uses Structured Data to complement their machine-learning work. Structured Data is currently provided by users to help Google understand the content on a page and improve the accuracy of its search results. Levering has emphasized that “it’s always good to empower people who are giving you data, to have control over that.” Rather than rendering Structured Data obsolete, machine learning will fill the information gaps or “enhance coverage of the feature” on Google search.

According to Levering, Google will also “…continue to flesh out the Structured Data usage in terms of adding more features and looking into more ways [they] can use it in cooler things that are not just visual treatments but actually help with more understanding on the page”. This is reflected in the changes we saw in 2022 and foreshadows what is to come in the new year.

Notable changes from Google in 2022

Changes in Video rich results

In June 2022, we observed a decrease in clicks and impressions for Video Rich Results on desktop. This trend was also noticed by other SEOs. At the same time, we noticed a change in how the Video Rich Results were being presented on the SERPs.

Data provided by Schema App / Schema Performance Analytics

The Video Rich Results showing up on the ‘All’ search results page only featured Youtube videos. Upon clicking on these results, users would be directed to the video’s Youtube page rather than the site where the video was embedded. Learn more about the changes in Video rich results here.

Volatility in FAQ rich results

In April 2022, 65% of our clients experienced a drop in clicks on their FAQ rich results and saw their results recover again in May. This happened again in August 2022, only for the results to recover again in late October.

Data provided by Schema App / Schema Performance Analytics

Despite the disruptiveness of these fluctuations, you should not “abandon certain rich result targeting should performance start to drop”, says Kevin Veilleux, a Customer Success Manager at Schema App.

“As we saw with Videos and FAQ, there’s value in staying the course”.

Major developments in Product search results

This past year, Google also made waves in Product search. Google is enabling more Products to be shown on the SERP, which comes as no surprise as their competition with Amazon heats up in the eCommerce space.

Expanding eligibility for Merchant Listing Experiences with Product Structured Data

In September 2022, Google announced that businesses can now be eligible for Merchant Listing Experiences by adding Product Structured Data to their web pages. At the same time, they added more recommended Product Structured Data properties such as colours, size, and material for merchant listings.

New Merchant Listings report on Google Search Console

On top of expanding the eligibility for Merchant Listing Experiences with Product Structured Data, Google also introduced a new Merchant Listing Report on GSC. This new report will help merchants identify Structured Data errors, warnings and valid pages for free listing experiences in search.

New Pros and Cons enhancement for editorial Product review pages

Product reviews are a helpful resource in the buyer journey and Google added a new ‘Pros and Cons’ enhancement to the product review snippets. Businesses can add Pros and Cons Structured Data on their pages with product reviews to be eligible for this new enhancement.

2022 was a busy year for Structured Data and we see this as a signal of its growing importance in Google’s search environment. What does this mean for SEO teams in 2023? It means, it’s time for SEO teams to start prioritizing Structured Data as part of their SEO strategy.

Insight #2. Invest in your SEO Structured Data strategy as soon as possible to stay ahead of the competition

According to research by the HTTP Archive, the usage of Structured Data has increased in 2022, in comparison to 2021. Of the websites they surveyed, they found that the use of JSON-LD on homepages increased from 34% in 2021 to 37% in 2022 on mobile devices. This upward trend of Structured Data usage reflects the growing popularity of Structured Data as an SEO strategy, and we predict this trend to continue in 2023.

The HTTP Archive’s research also showed that WebSite, Organization and Local Business were three of the most used Schema.org types in 2022. Even though more sites are implementing Structured Data, many of them are implementing it on a basic level.Image by HTTP Archive

Google has over 32 rich result opportunities and there are many other types of Structured Data that have yet to be utilized en masse. There is no better time to invest in a more complex Structured Data strategy to stay ahead of this growing trend.

At Schema App, we’ve seen other Schema.org types and their Rich Results like FAQPage, Product, and Reviews performing well for our customers.

You can also opt for other eye-catching interactive rich results like Aggregate Ratings, HowTo and Video. These untapped opportunities could help your organization stand out in search against your competitors and drive click-through rates and conversions on your site. 

How to get started with a Schema Markup strategy

Before you start, you have to set a goal for what you want to achieve and the metrics you want to move. If you want to drive clicks, impressions or CTR for pages that are essential to your business, Schema Markup can help.

1. Identify the key pages on your site that you want to target with rich results. (i.e. your location pages, product pages, physician pages, etc.) You might want to start by testing out a few pages for a specific rich result.
2. Check if the content on your page fulfills Google’s required Structured Data properties for the targeted rich result. If it does not, review Google’s required Structured Data properties and add the required content to make your page eligible for the targeted rich result.
3. Once you have the required content on your page, apply Schema Markup to make your page eligible for the targeted rich result. You can add Schema Markup to individual unique pages using our Editor tool, or at a larger scale using our Highlighter tool.
4. After applying the Schema Markup to your page, test your results to ensure the markup is eligible using Google’s Rich Results test tool.
5. To measure the results, use Google Search Console or Schema App’s Schema Performance Analytics tool to compare the performance of your optimized pages to the rest of your site, or compare the performance of the optimized pages before and after the implementation of Schema Markup to see how it has contributed to your desired outcome.

Learn how to develop a Schema Markup strategy for your website here.

Insight #3. Diversify your Schema Markup strategy

As we saw in 2022, there can be a lot of volatility around Google’s rich results. In June, we saw Video rich results on desktop disappear for many of our customers, causing a change in site traffic. In August, we saw FAQ rich results settling to new levels following the Helpful Content Update.

We expect Google to continue experimenting/changing/introducing new things in 2023, which necessitates the need for more diverse content for rich result targeting,” says Veilleux.

Organizations that have more diversity in their rich results are less impacted when an algorithm change targets a specific type of rich result. Here’s how you can start diversifying your Schema Markup strategy.

1. Monitor your rich results on Google Search Console

To start, you need to know which rich results you are currently achieving. Most of this information is available on Google Search Console, or through Schema Performance Analytics for Schema App enterprise customers.

Once you know which rich results you are currently achieving, explore Google’s search gallery to see other rich results your content could be eligible for.

2. Maintain thorough markup

Google’s required and recommended Structured Data properties only make up a small percentage of the properties available for Schema.org types.

At Schema App, one of our best practices is to markup page content with all the relevant properties available through Schema.org, not just what Google has listed as required or recommended. By ensuring markup is as descriptive as possible, Schema App supports semantic SEO beyond attaining rich result eligibility.

This year, when authoring the Schema Markup for our customer’s Product pages, we marked up their images even though it wasn’t a required property for Product rich results. Shortly after, Google expanded the eligibility for Merchant Listing Experiences with Product Structured Data and image was a required property for it. As a result, our customer was instantly eligible for Merchant Listing rich results.

By marking up as many properties as you can, you are optimizing all eligible content on your page to maximize your opportunities for rich results both now and in the future.

Insight #4. Content and Structured Data go hand in hand

SEO is a team sport and results happen when you work together. Schema Markup strategy can be challenging for SEO teams when they’re siloed off from content and unable to make additions or updates.

For your Schema Markup strategy to succeed, your content needs to:

1. Match the intent of search queries, and
2. Align with Google’s required and recommended Structured Data properties for your targeted type.

Content must match the intent of the searcher

The quality of your content is a key factor to a successful Schema Markup strategy. With Google’s recent Helpful Content Update, we see Google drilling down into the quality of the content. If your content does not meet the needs of the searcher, Google will not award you with a rich result.

We saw this firsthand after Google’s rolled out the Helpful Content Update in August. After the update, content previously receiving FAQ rich results lost the feature because the “questions” were actually statements or headings that did not match user queries.

Align your content with the Structured Data requirements 

Content is at the core of your Schema Markup strategy. Letting your content team know what content needs to be on a page for your SEO team to mark up is the best way to ensure alignment. That way, every piece of content produced is more likely to drive clicks and conversions.

How to align content with Structured Data

1. Make sure your content team knows Google’s content requirements for rich result eligibility

If your content team is looking to drive more traffic to Blog posts, make sure they know what Google’s required and recommended properties are. They should also keep these required and recommended properties in mind when creating other types of new content on an ongoing basis.

2. Use Google’s rich result documentation as a guideline for what constitutes “high-quality content”.

“The required and recommended properties are a “cheat guide” for what might be important and relevant to end users AND Google’s algorithm,” says Ruby Ross, Customer Success Manager at Schema App.

When developing new content, looking at Google’s required and recommended properties can give you a good idea of what Google has decided is important for users to know, and align your content with that.

Insight #5. Experiment with Structured Data

Google is constantly experimenting and updating its algorithms to best meet the searcher’s needs. This year, we saw many updates to the SERP and Google’s Structured Data documentation. These changes reaffirm that you shouldn’t take a set-in-and-forget-it approach to Structured Data on your site (read our article on schema drift). You have to be ready to deploy the necessary changes when Google makes an update.

Our Highlighter tool’s dynamic deployment enables our customers to easily apply markup changes at scale within minutes to keep up with Google’s changes. It also means you can easily experiment with new types of Schema Markup and properties at scale.

Experimenting with new types of rich results can help your organization diversify and proactively adapt to Google’s changes. At Schema App, our Customer Success Team runs experiments with our customers every quarter. The experiments vary based on our customers’ desired outcomes and strategies.

Examples of the experiments include:

• Experimenting with different rich results on the same page set to see which rich result performs better
• Experimenting with adding rich result-eligible content to drive traffic to high-priority pages (i.e. FAQs for BlogPosts)
• Experimenting with different properties for a single rich result (e.g. Pros and Cons, or lowPrice vs. highPrice for Product)

These experiments help our customers uncover opportunities, diversify their rich results, and optimize their Schema Markup strategy to maximize their results.

Insight #6. Schema Markup is a safe bet during a recession

The recession is looming over many marketing teams as we wade through tighter cash flows and smaller budgets for the new year. However, maintaining market share and keeping up with the competition is more important than ever.

Measurable ROI

In times like these, marketing teams should invest in strategies that have a measurable return on investment. Schema Markup is one of them.

When you add Schema Markup to your pages and achieve rich results, you’ll want to see the clicks and impressions that you’ve achieved specifically from the URLs that are getting these rich results.

We created the Schema Performance Analytics (SPA) tool with this in mind. With the SPA Page Level Report, users can see the performance of URLs with Schema Markup and calculate if the increase in traffic drives more revenue for their business.

As Schema Markup becomes a growing trend, there has never been a better time to experiment and invest in this strategy. You can justify the investment by starting small and measuring its impact on your business results.

Point of Differentiation

Implementing a Schema Markup strategy for your site also serves as a point of differentiation if you operate in a competitive industry.

Based on an analysis across our entire customer set, pages with markup from Schema App have a 40% higher click-through rate than pages without. The click-through rate for pages achieving rich results is notably higher than those without. In 2022, we also saw the click-through rate for pages with FAQ, Videos, and Q&A rich results performing exceptionally well.

If your competitors aren’t using Schema Markup, your brand and pages can stand out on the SERP and get more traffic onto your site. Investing and experimenting with Structured Data at a time when teams are more risk-averse can help your organization gain greater visibility on the SERP and beat the competition.

Conclusion

Needless to say, our Schema App team has learned a lot from 2022. As we enter 2023 with uncertain economic conditions, understanding what is working, what is delivering value and what you can scale is vital.

Schema Markup is a scalable SEO strategy that delivers measurable results and returns. If you haven’t invested in Schema Markup, 2023 is a good time to start. If you have budgetary constraints, you can always start small and expand when you see results. Your SEO and content teams should also be working cross-functionally to ensure every piece of content you invest in aligns with the Structured Data best practices to maximize clicks.

If you are looking to start or take your Schema Markup strategy to the next level, we can help! Get in touch with our team today to learn more about our scalable end-to-end Schema Markup solution.

The post Schema Markup SEO in 2023: What To Expect appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Schema App empowers your digital team with the control and agility to drive results in a changing SEO world, by leveraging structured data without having to rely on I.T. resources. Work with and learn from schema markup experts to take your website to a new level with structured data, and showcase the unique value of your organization in search.

Businesses who reach out to us are typically looking to solve the following three problems that hinder their digital performance:

1. Lacking Schema Markup Expertise
2. Inability to Scale Schema Markup
3. Insufficient I.T Resources for Agility

Lacking Schema Markup Expertise

Schema markup is an advanced, technical, and relatively new search engine optimization method.

This structured data vocabulary was released in 2011 through a collaborative effort by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Yandex, and the language is always changing and expanding. Schema.org is the dictionary for schema markup, and with thirteen new versions released over the past two years, it’s clear that search engines continue to invest in this advanced SEO practice.

The benefits of structured data extend beyond improving your SEO performance:

• You’re actually translating your content into a language that search engines understand. 
• You’re connecting your organization and information on your site to a search engine’s knowledge graph by defining objects in your content as distinct entities, which streamlines Google’s ability to match a user’s search intent to information on your website. 
• You’re taking control of how the data on your web pages is defined, rather than just hoping that search engines will figure it out and show the best information in search results.

Learning a new language and how to properly map, connect, and nest data items is hard and  takes a lot of skill and knowledge, for which most SEO teams cannot dedicate a full-time position.

Schema App: Your End to End Solution for Structured Data

Schema App offers a technical solution with high-touch support to enable your team through the whole process. Beyond the initial setup and creation comes the need to edit, maintain, and scale your schema markup. A common misconception is that schema markup is static once it’s created. The truth is your structured data should be evolving and changing over time, just as your website content and online business goals evolve. Let our solution do the heavy lifting for you, so you can focus on other areas of SEO, like strategy.

Inability to Scale Schema Markup

The biggest challenge for businesses who already have a structured data expert on their team is creating and managing schema markup at scale across hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of pages on your website. Hardcoding schema markup into your website page-by-page is not sustainable, and your digital team is going to be spending hundreds of hours doing so. At Schema App, our solutions allow us to easily create, manage, and deploy customized schema markup at scale across thousands of pages to suit our customers’ needs. 

To maximize results from schema markup, your website should have useful, informative content that is comprehensively marked up with structured data. That’s why your Customer Success Manager will provide expert content recommendations to unlock new opportunities for search enhancement features like rich results. The Schema App Highlighter can even update your schema markup dynamically to keep up with content changes across your website, meaning you won’t miss out on any opportunities to connect with your customers as your business grows.

Insufficient IT Resources for Agility

Even if your schema markup expert has found a way to create structured data internally at scale, our bet is that implementing this is going to require some assistance from your development team. If your dev team is anything like ours, they’re usually running at max capacity. Customers come to us to remove the dependency of deploying or editing their schema markup from their development team, enabling their SEO team to just get the job done! 

Schema App is a SaaS solution, so the setup, and updates are made in our application, which empowers your SEO team to make updates as the content evolves, vs being dependent on your dev team.  Also, once templates or sets of pages are set up, anytime you add to that page set, BAM! It’s optimized. 

Our solution, paired with our expert Customer Success teams, means that updates can be made quickly. We’re quick to execute based on customer needs and feedback—no need to jump in line for your next dev team sprint cycle. Simply reach out to your customer success manager and create a plan together for when changes are going to happen so that we can be ready to update your configuration in Schema App’s solution; your schema markup will evolve with your website. Or maybe your company is considering a website migration or redesign; we can pivot your schema markup strategy to help mitigate traffic lost through your transition. 

When AdventHealth was planning a massive rebrand that would consolidate over 800 websites using approximately 35 different content management systems, we helped them mitigate the risk of a drop in organic traffic during the rebranding and ended up driving the following results:

• 90% increase in clicks 
• 40% increase in impressions
• 38% increase in CTR
• Top position in the rankings

We have seen significant increases in how our physicians are being found. Physician bio clips increased 90% from 150,000 clicks to about 285,000 clicks and we saw a 38% increase in the click-through rate of the search results as well”

—Brandi West, Executive Director, Digital Brand & Content Strategy I Digital Marketing, AdventHealth

We’re here to work with our customers as they change and grow, and our integrations mean your team can do it without IT!

Return on Investment of working with Schema App

Schema markup is an SEO strategy that has just started to gain appreciation from digital marketers in the last few years. The level of complexity associated with creating schema markup has likely kept some brands at bay. Early adopters are reaping the benefit of future-proofing their brand in search, especially as it becomes apparent that Google is investing more in structured data and increasing the reach of what applications it may have in the future.

Schema App has been at the forefront of automated schema markup technology since schema.org’s unveiling back in 2011. Our founders launched Schema App’s powerful suite of tools to create and maintain structured data at scale without having to write a line of code. You not only save budget on software maintenance, but also on hiring a new team member to manage your schema markup internally. With structured data, you’re able to measure the impact of your SEO efforts without increasing the cost of paid. With Schema App, we ensure that your return on investment goals are being met with a customized schema strategy and high-touch support from our team of experts.

Advanced SEO technology at a fraction of the cost

We aim to be 30% of the cost of doing schema markup internally. Your digital team will be empowered with advanced search engine optimization techniques without having to rely on I.T resources. How long does it take for your development team to take a concept through delivery? We take 2-3 weeks to get things live, on average. 

The savings from dedicating development resources are already worth the investment, but what about software maintenance? Research shows that maintenance of software typically contributes to 75% of cost of ownership. Let us handle the technology, giving back more budget, time, and resources for you to invest in other areas of your business.

Effectively measure the value of your search engine optimization

How do you currently measure the value of your investment in search engine optimization? Schema markup is like striking SEO gold for your website. Your SEO team will have the opportunity to work with structured data experts who do this day in and day out. Through innovative content recommendations, enhanced analytics to inform decisions through powerful data, and scalable technology, we establish a true business partnership between our team and yours. 

Save time learning complexity by partnering with world-class experts. On average, our customer success team spends 640 hours learning structured data before they can set up and do strategy. That’s an estimated 640 hours of dedicated, focused learning!

With Schema App, you’ll be adding robust, specific markup without needing to invest hundreds of hours from your internal team in learning. Our customer success managers will help you lead the industry by  leveraging our up-to-date knowledge on the most recent schema.org enhancements and rich result opportunities. We work cross-functionally with different areas of your organization to help you maximize your results from structured data.

Compliment paid traffic acquisition with a boost from organic clicks and impressions.

You’re enabling your team to measure the value of their search engine optimization without increasing the cost of paid. Our goal is to help you move your existing business metrics, not create new ones.

Our customers typically achieve more than 10% more clicks and impressions from schema markup. If your website on average receives around 150k clicks from Google search Console on a monthly basis and your average cost per click from paid Google Ads traffic is $1.34, your average monthly value from schema markup is over $20k. 

If you’re curious about calculating the value of implementing schema markup using your own benchmarks, reach out to our sales team to explore the ROI opportunities for your website.

Let us know if you’re interested and we can get on the phone this week.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should someone choose to work with Schema App as opposed to implementing schema markup themselves?

Expertise, scale, agility. Removing the dependency from your team to learn, maintain, and stay updated with structured data trends will allow them to shine and contribute back more to the company in the areas they’re truly specialized in.

Why aren’t all brands already using schema markup?

Schema markup is an SEO strategy that has really just started to shine and gain appreciation from digital marketers in the last two years. The level of complexity associated with creating schema markup has likely kept some brands at bay, but early adopters are going to reap the benefit of future proofing their brand in search especially as it becomes apparent that Google is investing more in structured data, and increasing the reach of what applications it may have in the future (hint: visual and predictive search).

We help you go beyond the fundamentals of search engine optimization, leveraging structured data to showcase your unique value in search. In a rapidly changing SEO environment, we introduce agility to your digital team, saving you time and resources for managing other aspects of your business portfolio. We deliver to your online business goals using our structured data expertise and advanced technology.

The post How To Sell Schema Markup Services To Your Company appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Search engine optimization is a long-term investment, but during periods of change in user behavior SEO can also be your greatest short-term ally. Remember that SEO doesn’t just increase traffic to your website; it also drives higher-quality traffic. Users finding their way to your site are interested in what you have to offer because of how you’ve communicated your business in search, underlining how SEO helps you identify more qualified leads for your business. 

For example, many patients begin their healthcare journey in Google search. When choosing a provider, they want to know things like the area served, the contact hours, how to book an appointment, and any medical specialties.

With structured data markup, you have more control over what information appears in search engine results pages, and how it appears. This additional information is displayed through enhanced Google search features like rich results, that allow you to stand out from your competition.

What is Structured Data Markup?

Structured data markup is metadata that can be added to the backend of your website. In SEO, this usually refers to Schema.org, a specific structured data vocabulary created by Google, Microsoft, Yandex and Yahoo! back in 2014. This standardized vocabulary is always being updated with new types and properties to categorize and connect data.

The fact that Google continues to invest in schema markup demonstrates that it’s an investment worth making for your website. It essentially provides an enhanced description of your content that allows search engines to relay additional information in search through engaging rich results and other Google features.  The more that Google understands, the better it can match your content to a user’s search query.

When getting started, it helps to think of structured data as a way of defining entities across your web pages, and connecting them in a graph. Your homepage will be your primary entity, or entity home, so it’s best to add markup to that page first. Typically, you’ll want to mark up your homepage as either an Organization, LocalBusiness, or a more specific subtype. Our Ultimate How-to Guide for Local Business Schema Markup can help you establish which type to use, and which properties are most useful for describing your homepage. 

One of the benefits of LocalBusiness schema is that Google uses the information in your markup to enhance your local Google Knowledge Panel, which is the information box that appears on the right side of desktop search results, and at the top and throughout the search engine results page (SERP) for mobile devices.

Schema Markup Enhances your Google Knowledge Panel

If you’re a small or medium-sized business offering local or essential services, keeping your Google Business Profile (GBP) up-to-date is so important during times of change. Marking up your website with LocalBusiness structured data can also enhance your Google Knowledge Panel. Most consumers don’t become customers immediately, which is why increasing your findability and viewability in search engine page results will help you nurture that customer journey from start to finish. 

It’s important to note that there are many subclasses of LocalBusiness schema, including AnimalShelter, ChildCare, Dentist, ShoppingCenter, and more! See the full list in our guide. Try to be as specific as possible when defining your type of  business, but if there isn’t an existing type at schema.org LocalBusiness will do just fine.

Demonstrate your credibility by letting customers leave reviews, and then mark up that content with Review structured data while following Google’s structured data guidelines. Here are some important technical guidelines for Review schema markup to keep in mind, pulled from Google’s documentation:

• Mark up an aggregate evaluation of an item with AggregateRating schema
• Refer to a specific product or service by nesting the review in the markup of another schema.org type, like Book or Recipe, or by using a schema.org type as the value for itemReviewed
• Your reviews and ratings should be immediately available to users from the marked up page
• Reviews should be about a specific item, not a category or list of items
• Don’t aggregate reviews from other websites
• For a LocalBusiness or Organization, your markup is not eligible for star review features if the entity being reviewed, aka your local business or organization, controls those reviews. In other words, don’t review yourself and mark those reviews up with structured data! 
• Your ratings should be directly sourced from users
• Don’t use human editors to create, curate, or compile ratings or reviews for a local business

Learn more about creating review schema markup in our guide.

You’re building trust and familiarity with your brand, both with your customers and with search engines. Publishing quality content engages and converts more quality leads, and the more engaging touchpoints you have, the more likely quality prospects will get in touch with you.

Diversify Your Rich Results Portfolio

In the height of COVID and vaccinations, people need reliable and up-to-date information. Google introduced the SpecialAnnouncement schema.org type, the markup of which was used for urgent announcements published by locally-oriented organizations such as schools, pharmacies, healthcare providers, community groups, police, and local governments. Learn more about implementing SpecialAnnouncement structured data in our Guide to COVID-19 Structured Data.

On May 20th, 2021, we suddenly saw this type of rich result drop off. That is why we recommend diversifying the rich results that your content is eligible for. We expect medical organizations to create new content that is in line with any changes in the healthcare industry, but making sure that rich result eligibility is part of your content strategy will set you up for success in terms of your search engine optimization performance. 

Here is a list of the rich results available through Google’s Search Gallery:

To learn more about each rich result opportunity, click on the links in our list above or explore the Search Gallery here.

It is even possible to achieve more rich result opportunities through multi-type entities. A multi-type entity (MTE) is one entity that is defined using multiple schema.org types (though usually not more than two). Creating a multi-type data item allows you to utilize all the properties available to both types. You may want to create a multi-type entity for your business if, for example, you’re using the Physician Local Business type and want to add alumni information that’s only available to the Person type. To resolve this, your local business would be typed as both Physician and Person.

Diversification of rich results prepares your SEO team to switch focus from one search enhancement to another whenever there are updates to Google’s structured data documentation, demonstrating the agility a robust structured data strategy provides.

Google Continues to Invest in Schema Markup

As we mentioned above, Google continues to demonstrate their investment in schema markup by regularly updating their structured data documentation, and introducing new schema.org properties.

We always get excited about new schema markup properties, because that means more opportunities for our customers to maximize their results from structured data! Your schema markup should stay updated and in line with the visible content on your website, so as not to violate any of Google’s structured data guidelines.

There have already been two hearty schema.org releases this year, but in 2020 we saw eleven releases, so we are expecting many more to come before the end of 2021. Some of our favorites from this most recent release include a number of terms proposed by the Bioschemas project, additions around ecommerce returns and job postings, and the addition of startOffset to the SeekToAction schema.org type for Videos. Read more about this latest release in our news post.

Keeping an eye on new schema.org releases and updates to Google’s structured data documentation will help you diversify your rich result portfolio, as you never know when the next opportunity for your content to stand out in search will come along. Having the foundation in place across your site gives you a head start. Sign up for the Schema App Newsletter to receive regular updates to the schema markup vocabulary and Google’s structured data guidelines.

Example of Healthcare Client being Agile with Structured Data

Here’s an example. One of our healthcare clients is currently restructuring their service lines and simultaneously using structured data to inform their content strategy by targeting different audiences in different geographic locations. This is one way structured data can make your SEO team more agile. 

Through structured data, they’re implementing a number of pending schema.org types and properties that were introduced to support medical content. This follows our best practice of diversifying your rich result portfolio by remaining informed of any updates to the schema.org vocabulary.

SEO is especially important for healthcare organizations, as their success relies on how easily users can find them online. In August of 2018, Google rolled out a core update named the “Medic” update, which disproportionately affected sites in the health and wellness vertical as part of a large-scale impact across all verticals. Structured data has become even more strategic for healthcare organizations as they try to regain any SEO ground lost from said update.

How the Schema App Highlighter Increases Your SEO Agility

At Schema App, one of our key values is agility. Technology is advancing quickly, but the ability to be agile means we are prepared for anything at any time. That’s why we created the Schema App Highlighter, a world-class, scalable structured data authoring and management platform. 

One of the best parts about the Highlighter is that you don’t need to write a line of code! The tool does it for you at scale and with accuracy. Because the Highlighter is dynamic, any changes made to your content will be reflected in your structured data automatically, and any changes to Google’s Documentation will be reflected in our tools. If you make any changes to your website structure, the Highlighter can accommodate this with ease. You’ll also be working with a schema markup expert from our Customer Success team, who is always up to date with Google’s changes to structured data so you don’t have to be.

We have seen significant increases in how our physicians are being found. Physician bio clips increased 90% from 150,000 clicks to about 285,000 clicks and we saw a 38% increase in the click-through rate of the search results as well”

— Brandi West, Executive Director, Digital Brand & Content Strategy I Digital Marketing, AdventHealth

How does your website content currently look in search results? How do you want it to look? Structured data markup gives you more control over what content appears in search, and how it appears. A diverse portfolio of rich results will empower your SEO team to be more agile, letting them focus on strategy and when/where to add more structured data markup to your website instead of chasing after trending keyphrases for short-term boosts of traffic.

We’ve helped customers across multiple industries diversify their digital strategies with a robust schema markup portfolio, but especially in healthcare where the rich result opportunities are vast, and building trust with patients is important. If you need help getting started with your structured data markup or want to analyze the rich result opportunities on your website, set up a call with our technical experts today!

The post How to be Agile with Structured Data in a Changing SEO World appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Marking up your website with schema translates your content into a language that search engines can understand. This means more relevant results for users, and the opportunity to appear in voice search for enabled devices. One effective way to optimize content for voice search is with frequently asked questions and FAQ schema.

How to stand out in search with FAQ Rich Results

The first rule of schema markup is to only markup content that is visible on the page. Of course, there is no guarantee that using schema markup will display your content as rich results. This is why aligning your schema strategy with your content is so important. For many brands, website content is constantly changing to respond to evolving audience expectations. The Schema App Highlighter dynamically updates your markup to reflect any content changes, meaning you’re always ready to match with relevant search queries. 

Schema markup is complicated and time-consuming, especially if your website content—like your company blog or news information—is updated regularly. Schema App offers full-service enterprise schema markup solutions that integrate easily with any website.

The post FAQ Rich Results: Content Is Key For Schema Markup appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

In this article, we will outline what entity-based SEO is, how it relates to building content on your website, and how mapping entities can benefit your brand in search.

Entity-Based Search in Advanced SEO

While keywords play an important role in content SEO, they can be limiting when it comes to performing in the search engine results pages. Pivoting to an entity-based strategy means more context, robust content, and a greater return on investment.

Google describes an entity, or named entity, as a single, well-defined thing or concept. That being said, you’ll find that Google hardly ever uses the term entities, instead calling them topics. This is helpful to know from a content perspective, where entities can be thought of as topics that become well-defined by referencing other related things.

For example, Paris is the capital of France but it is also a town in Ontario, Canada. Your content could mention Paris in relation to the Nith River, which empties into the Grand River in Ontario where the town of Paris is situated.

Or your content could mention Paris in relation to the Louvre Museum in France.

How your content mentions Paris in relation to other locations or landmarks makes it explicit which of these entities the mentioned Paris is.

From a technical SEO perspective, one of the most effective ways to create strong connections is through schema markup. It’s important to note that utilizing schema by itself does not create entities. Rather, specific identifiers (@ids aka URIs) can be used to define objects as distinct entities with their own properties and relationships to other entities. LocalBusiness markup previously required an @id, defining the location as a unique entity, but Google removed the required property of @id for LocalBusiness on July 22nd, 2021.

Once defined, entities can be linked to a search engine’s knowledge graph through structured data like schema markup. Knowledge graphs represent the linking of information and data across the Web, providing context for search engines as they crawl your website.

Here is my knowledge graph. I am Martha van Berkel, the CEO and co-founder of Schema App.

Google explains knowledge graphs as containing nodes and edges, where a node is an entity and edges are the relationships between entities. I am the central entity of my knowledge graph, and my relationships with other entities make me unique from other Marthas in the world. Other entities are connected to me through my relationship to them, such as my nationality, my education, and my employment history. By linking the content on your website to resources across the Web, search engines begin to understand and contextualize the information about me.

Contextualize Your Website Content

Entity search is all about specificity, but it’s also about context. Entities make it possible for search engines, like Google, to connect the world’s information together, regardless of the language. In turn, this helps search engines deliver more relevant results to queries in search engine page results.

One effective way to contextualize your content is to link the information on your website to other entities in knowledge graphs with high E-E-A-T like Wikipedia. Of course, not all entities exist on Wikipedia pages. Other types of entities, like you, your brand or your company, can be linked to knowledge graphs like LinkedIn. This linking won’t necessarily increase your page rank in search engine optimization, but it will help to establish your brand authority in search.

Linking entities creates context, and the more context you can provide, the more relevance you’ll receive for entity-based search. So if someone searches for a product or service that your brand provides, they’ll find just what they’re looking for.

Semantic Search vs Entity Search

SEO focus has shifted from having as many keywords and backlinks as possible to rank higher in search, to understanding intent and context to drive more quality leads. A firm understanding of user intent is vital for semantic search.

Semantic search is basically a search engine’s attempt to understand natural language the way a human would. It’s how Google attempts to generate the most accurate search engine results page based on search intent and the semantics, or the true meaning, of the search query.

Semantic search helps Google to distinguish between different entities and interpret search intent based on what and how language is being used. Through well-defined entities on your website, you are creating a more comprehensive and quality resources that search engines can easily match to a user’s relevant search query.

Approach Content With Entities In Mind

Fundamentally, search engines are a resource for users to find answers. User intent is always evolving, and search engines are becoming more sophisticated to keep up. Traditional SEO practices are becoming less important as search engine algorithms get smarter.

Entities have become stronger than keywords in SEO because they provide more insight for search engines in their relationship to other words in a search query. When writing, consider and establish the relationship between the entities you’re targeting in your key phrase. The goal is to provide enough context that search engines can associate your content with their knowledge or entity graphs.

To translate your website content into entities and connect them to other entities for search engines to understand, many brands utilize the power of schema markup. Schema markup, or structured data, is the practice of marking up your website content in a language that search engines can understand, and the dictionary is Schema.Org. This markup connects the established and related entities in your content to search engine knowledge graphs.

As your website changes and you link more entities, it’s extremely important to update your schema markup. The number one rule for this type of structured data is to only markup content that exists on your web page. Enterprise solutions like the Schema App Highlighter can do all of the technical work for you, and our expert team of customer success managers will guide you every step of the way.

The return on investment in your website content and structure is evolving, and semantic search is right in the middle of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is entity-based search?

Entity-based search is a more accurate method for search engines to understand search intent, because Google is able to map your well-defined entities across verified sources like Wikipedia that make up Google’s Knowledge Graph. By linking objects defined as entities in your website content to a search engine’s knowledge graph, you are creating more context for your content and helping Google to better match your content to user intent.

What is an entity and how do they impact SEO?

An entity is a well-defined thing of concept that has its own distinguishable properties and relationships to other entities. You can use specific identifiers to define objects on your web pages as entities, and then link these entities to a search engine’s knowledge graph through schema markup. Knowledge graphs represent the linking of information across the Web, and through entity-based SEO you are creating more context and relevance for your brand. Well-defined entities help Google to easier match your content to search intent.

Search engine optimization isn’t solely about driving more traffic to your website or ranking higher on search engine results pages; SEO helps you drive more quality traffic. Consumers don’t usually become customers the first time they see your brand in search.

Schema markup creates engaging and informative touch points through enhanced Google features like rich results, building trust between your brand and consumers as they become familiar with what your organization has to offer. From eCommerce to healthcare, it’s important to maintain your brand credibility, and through entity-based SEO you have more control over how your products or services are represented in search.

If you need help getting started, we’ve helped brands like SAP and Keen Footwear to reach their online business goals through customized schema strategies! Get in touch if you’d like to learn what structured data markup can do for you.

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