Beyond this, implementing Schema Markup can also result in a reusable content knowledge graph for organizations looking to train their internal LLMs, gain a semantic advantage in AI search, and manage their internal data more efficiently.

Let’s take a look at what Schema Markup is and the value it adds to healthcare organizations like yours.

What is Schema Markup?

Schema Markup, also known as structured data, is metadata based on the Schema.org vocabulary that you can add to your website to help search engines better understand and contextualize your web content.

When you implement Schema Markup on your site, you use the Schema.org vocabulary to describe the entities on your web page and how they relate to other entities on your site and across the internet. This helps search engines clearly understand what your web page is about and enables them to provide users with more accurate and relevant search results.

For example, your healthcare organization might have a physician page with content about the physician’s medical specialties, practice location, ratings and reviews, and contact information. When you apply Schema Markup to that page, you express this information in machine-readable format using the Schema.org types and properties. This helps to disambiguate your content topics and support search engine comprehension.

Common Schema Types for Healthcare Providers

In the Schema.org vocabulary, types are how you categorize the various entities on your page, and properties are attributes or characteristics that provide additional details and contextual information about a given entity.

Healthcare organizations can use more general types such as Organization, Physician, MedicalClinic, and more. However, the Schema.org vocabulary contains a Health and Life Sciences extension of over 200 Types and 160 properties specific to the medical space.

These include everything from terms for describing diseases and injuries, such as AnatomicalStructure and MedicalSignOrSymptom, to systems of medicine, such as TraditionalChinese and WesternConventional.

In addition to those listed above, here are some other examples of types of content that you can use to explain information about your healthcare organization:

• MedicalOrganization – Home page
• Hospital – Hospital pages
• IndividualPhysician – Physician pages
• MedicalCondition or MedicalProcedure or MedicalTest– Medical Services pages

The main purpose of implementing Schema Markup is to help search engines understand and contextualize the content on your site. Therefore, it is best practice to choose the most appropriate type and properties that best describe the content on your page.

In some cases, adding Schema Markup can also enhance the appearance of a search result on Google’s search engine results page (SERP). This is known as a rich result.

Common Types of Rich Results for Healthcare Providers

A rich result is a visually enhanced and information-rich search result displayed in the SERP, achieved through structured data. Rich results can include star ratings, reviews, and other details, making your healthcare organization’s search appearance more attractive and informative.

Pages with rich results tend to see an increase in click-through rates, higher-quality traffic, and appointments booked, offering measurable results.

Google has specific eligibility and structured data guidelines for each rich result. Aligning your markup with these criteria enhances your chances of achieving various rich results. Here are some common types of rich results that healthcare websites can achieve through structured data.

Review Snippet

Patient engagement is important for any health organization. 94% of healthcare patients leave online reviews about their experiences. Many physician or location pages tend to include reviews and ratings. By nesting the appropriate Schema Markup on your physician or location pages, these pages can achieve a review snippet.

Review Snippets can help organizations display their credibility and build trust during the search journey. When our customer, Sharp Healthcare, achieved Review Snippets for their Physician pages, the CTR for those pages increased by 119%.

Job Posting Rich Results

Hiring talent is top of mind across most healthcare organizations, and Schema Markup provides innovative opportunities around healthcare recruitment.

Healthcare organizations can use Job Posting Rich Results to showcase their job openings directly on Google’s search results, providing key details like job title and location. This boosts visibility, attracts qualified candidates, and streamlines the hiring process.

Our customer, Baptist Health, saw an 1194% increase in CTR when the job posting rich result was awarded.

Product Rich Results

If your healthcare organization sells products such as CPAP machines or flu shots, you can leverage Product Rich Results to display key product information such as price, reviews, and availability directly on the search result.

This provides users with clear and immediate details, which can help them make quick decisions and increase your web conversions.

Recipe Rich Results

If your organization publishes healthy recipes on your site, you can make that content eligible for a Recipe rich result by marking them up with Recipe structured data.

These are just some of the rich result opportunities that healthcare organizations can leverage to stand out in search. However, the value of Schema Markup far exceeds rich results.

Why is Schema Markup Important for Healthcare Providers?

Search engine advancements have transformed the conventional approach to healthcare, with a growing number of patients seeking relevant health-related information directly on the SERP.

Schema Markup is a powerful yet underutilized SEO strategy that can help healthcare organizations stand out in this competitive search landscape and provide answers directly in the search results when prospective patients need it most. Beyond achieving rich results and bringing pertinent information about your organization to the SERP, Schema Markup supports several other healthcare organizations’ SEO initiatives.

Enhanced Search Visibility

Schema Markup helps search engines better understand the content on a healthcare provider’s website. This improved comprehension can lead to higher accuracy in search results. This can improve the provider’s visibility to individuals searching for relevant healthcare information.

Improved Customer Journey

Users can obtain critical details directly from the SERP, including facility location, hours, specialties, and reviews. This fosters transparency, credibility, and trust (contributing to your organization’s E-E-A-T) from the start of their customer journey. The streamlined journey leads to easy navigation to booking pages, reducing steps for user-friendly appointment scheduling.

Develop a Reusable Content Knowledge Graph

By implementing Schema Markup on your site, you can create a reusable content knowledge graph that helps generative AI search engines understand and infer knowledge from your content. This content knowledge graph can also be reused to power internal AI initiatives and ground LLMs with accurate information about your organization.

By developing your content knowledge graph, you can control how your brand is understood and presented in search.

The Challenges of Implementing Schema Markup at Scale

Despite all the benefits of implementing Schema Markup for your healthcare organization, creating and implementing a Schema Markup strategy at scale can be costly, complex, and time-consuming.

SEO teams often lack the expertise and the IT resources to deploy and update Schema Markup at scale across their websites. That’s where Schema App comes in. At Schema App, we provide an end-to-end, HIPAA-compliant, Schema Markup solution for leading healthcare organizations.

Benefits of Schema App for Healthcare Organizations

1. Measurable Results

One of the best things about Schema Markup is that it is measurable. This makes showing the return on investment from your work with Schema App easy. When you optimize your web pages with Schema Markup and start achieving rich results, Google Search Console reports on the impressions and clicks you achieve specifically from the URLs that are getting these decorated results.

When you start working with Schema App, we ask about your organizational goals and what success looks like from your work with us. We ensure that you have tangible results to show how Schema Markup is contributing to your organization’s goals.

The most common measures are impressions, clicks and click-through rates from rich results achieved on your site. Upon achieving those results, we’ll continue to optimize your Schema Markup strategy and ensure your content evolves with the changing SEO world.

How do you convert clicks to dollars?

If you don’t have a way to correlate clicks or sessions on your website to appointments booked, you can do a simpler calculation by taking your cost-per-click and multiplying it by the number of clicks you get from rich results. The result is the number of dollars you saved from paid advertising through increased organic traffic. Our customers often see an ROI greater than 10X.

# of Clicks from Rich Results X Avg CPC = Value of work done with Schema Markup & Schema App

This allows marketing teams to easily prove the return on investment in their SEO efforts.

2. Retaining Talent through Agility and Scale

In addition to the measurable ROI from clicks, Schema App offers healthcare organizations a return on investment by adding agility to their teams.
Agility is critical to any business’s success. With Schema App, SEO teams no longer need to learn Schema Markup or wait for internal IT teams to update their markup.

Our Schema App Highlighter tool allows SEO teams to generate and deploy dynamic Schema Markup to thousands of similarly templated pages within minutes. Combined with our team of expert Customer Success Managers, SEO teams can access a Schema Markup expert and make updates to their Schema Markup quickly to see results. We aim to ensure we deliver our client’s quarter-over-quarter results with speed and agility.

On top of delivering greater results, staying agile can also help with employee retention. Operational inefficiencies can hold teams back and be demotivating, resulting in lower employee retention. When your team sees their Schema Markup strategies come to life in little to no time, they are empowered by the results, which motivates them to keep performing.

3. Show Value Cross Functionally and to your Physicians

Many of our clients have already tried to do Schema Markup on their own.

SEO specialists spend countless hours trying to learn how to write Schema Markup (JSON-LD) page by page before submitting it to IT to be implemented on the page. With our Schema App Highlighter tool, SEO teams can generate Schema Markup (JSON-LD) dynamically at scale and deploy it across pages in just a few clicks. They can also reduce their dependency on their development team and get the job done quickly.

Schema Markup not only benefits SEO efforts but also supports physicians within healthcare networks by:

• showcasing reviews and ratings,
• enhancing visibility and appearance on the SERP, and
• building trust with current and prospective patients.

This, in turn, can drive more appointments for these physicians and improve reputability. This can make your physicians more inclined to stay with your healthcare organization, thus aiding physician retention.

Our partnership with Schema App reassures us that this important component of our SEO strategy is being managed. The data we have been able to get out of this is great. Providers love to see how good their marked-up listings look in search results. It’s great evidence of the work we do behind the scenes to increase visibility in our market.”

– Julie Goldstein-Dunn, Director, Experience Insights & Analytics, Henry Ford Health System

Working with Schema App

In the healthcare industry’s competitive landscape, it’s essential to stand out in search results to maintain relevance and visibility among competitors. Integrating innovative strategies like Schema Markup is key to distinguishing your brand. If you haven’t already integrated Schema Markup into your strategy, now is the ideal time to do so, especially as search algorithms increasingly prioritize semantic understanding.

At Schema App, we provide an end-to-end Schema Markup solution. We partner with healthcare networks and other organizations to help their content be better understood by search engines so they can stand out in search. Our aim is to empower organizations like yours to deliver a seamless healthcare experience to their customers with ease and scale.

The post The Value of Schema Markup for Healthcare Organizations appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

At Schema App, the ambiguity around the use of the Physician type has long been an area of contention for many of our healthcare customers. Therefore, this article will hone in on the issues around Physician Schema Markup and how the new clarifying subtypes will resolve them.

The Issue With Physician Schema Markup

Prior to Schema.org’s version 24 release, the Physician type was intended to represent a doctor’s office. It was a subtype of MedicalBusiness via both Organization and Place, and MedicalOrganization via Organization, as shown in the hierarchy below.

• Thing > Organization > LocalBusiness > MedicalBusiness > Physician
• Thing > Place > LocalBusiness > MedicalBusiness > Physician
• Thing > Organization > MedicalOrganization > Physician

This hierarchy emphasized the categorization of Physician markup as a business with a physical location.

However, naming the type “Physician” caused confusion regarding how to use it properly. As a result, the Physician type was usually applied to describe an individual physician rather than a physician’s office with a physical location.

You can read more about the issue in this GitHub ticket.

Changes to Physician Type in Schema.org v24

Therefore, Schema.org made a few changes to the Physician type in v24 to provide users with greater clarity in their categorization.

1. Redefined the Physician type

The Physician type is now defined as ‘an individual physician or a physician’s office considered as a MedicalOrganization’.

2. Removed Physician as a subtype of LocalBusiness

The Physician type is now exclusively a subtype of MedicalOrganization.

3. Added usNPI property to the Physician type

The Physician type now also includes the usNPI (National Provider Identifier) property, a unique 10-digit identification number issued to healthcare providers in the United States by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

4. Introduced two new Physician subtypes: IndividualPhysician and PhysiciansOffice

Schema.org added IndividualPhysician and PhysiciansOffice as subtypes of Physician to disambiguate between these two interpretations of the Physician type.

Note: Schema.org version 26.0 later went on to restore PhysiciansOffice as a subtype of MedicalBusiness, after accidentally omitting it from the v24 update.

You can read more about it in this GitHub ticket.

5. Added occupationalCategory property to the Physician type

The occupationalCategory property is used to describe a job, preferably using a term from a taxonomy such as BLS O*NET-SOC, ISCO-08 or similar. This means you can specify whether a Physician (or its subtypes) has a specific occupational category like obstetrics or pediatrics.

6. Added new practicesAt property to the IndividualPhysician subtype

We will expand on this more in the section below.

But before that, let’s learn more about the two new Physician subtypes and how to use them.

Using the IndividualPhysician Subtype

The IndividualPhysician subtype should be used to describe an entity that is an individual medical practitioner.

The IndividualPhysician subtype still has properties available for things like:

• address
• hospitalAffiliation
• availableService

However, it also has the new ‘practicesAt’ property, which is unavailable to either Physician or PhysiciansOffice.

The practicesAt property should be used to indicate the MedicalOrganization (i.e. hospital, clinic, pharmacies, etc.) where this individual physician practices. If you have the MedicalOrganization entity defined on a different page of your site, you can connect both entities using this property.

Using the PhysiciansOffice Subtype

The PhysiciansOffice subtype should be used to describe an entity that is a doctor’s office or clinic.

It has the exact same properties as the Physician type, so you can still associate the PhysiciansOffice with a location using the address and hospitalAffiliation properties.

Should you Update Your Physician Markup?

In summary, the changes made to the Physician type in v24 will allow users to describe their content with greater specificity and help search engines better understand and contextualize the content on a page.

If you would like to continue using the Physician type to describe the entity on your page, you can do so since the new subtypes have almost the exact same properties. However, being specific with your Schema Markup is essential for search engines to disambiguate the entities on your site, thus allowing them to provide users with more accurate and relevant search results.

Therefore, we recommend updating your markup if you want to:

• Clearly distinguish between an individual physician vs a physician’s office,
• Leverage the practicesAt property, which is only available under the IndividualPhysician type.

The Schema App platform already supports Schema.org V24 if you want to try out the new Physician subtypes and properties. If you are a Schema App Enterprise customer, chat with your Customer Success Manager if you have questions about using these new types and properties.

If your healthcare organization is in need of healthcare schema expertise, we can help!

At Schema App, we provide an end-to-end Schema Markup solution for healthcare organizations and other enterprise SEO teams. Contact us to learn more about our solution.

The post Schema.org V24.0 Release: Changes to Physician Schema Markup appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

FAQ rich results will only be available for “well-known, authoritative government and health websites”. Other sites won’t receive FAQ rich results “regularly” (which is not the same as saying “ever”). We have yet to see what Google considers an authoritative site or health site, but this is one of the many questions we endeavour to answer in the coming weeks.

How-to rich results, on the other hand, will exclusively appear on desktop and no longer be visible to mobile users. That said, with Google’s mobile-first indexing, websites should still include HowTo markup on both their mobile and desktop site to achieve the How-to rich result on desktop.

Even though this change will not have an impact on search rankings, websites that leverage FAQ and How-to rich results will likely see a decline in traffic and impressions from these rich results on the Google Search Console performance report.

This announcement garnered strong reactions from the SEO community, as many mourned the loss of some of their best-performing (and content-heavy) rich results. In response to some of the tweets, John Mueller referenced “the tragedy of the commons”, and other SEOs remarked on the overuse of FAQs, in particular, as “spammy”.

Independent of abuse / over-use, things can change on the web / with users / with focus shifts, and it’s important to clean up from time to time. (And it’s a good reminder to read up about the tragedy of the commons :-)).

— John Mueller (official) · #MaybeABot (@JohnMu) August 8, 2023

But Mueller also recommended SEOs “really focus on structured data to make your pages eligible for a specific treatment in search. Additional structured data can be useful to understand the content better, but [he] wouldn’t assume there’s a visible effect / ranking change.”

What Schema Performance Analytics is Showing

We are monitoring the industry data from Schema Performance Analytics on a daily basis to see when the changes announced take place.

We have seen varied results after August 8th. We have seen drops in FAQ performance in some of our clients.

As of August 14, we’ve seen a decline in FAQ performance on mobile for customers in the Healthcare Industry, while FAQ performance on desktop remains stable. Stay tuned for more updates on FAQ performance.

Schema App Perspective on this Change

Here are our key takeaways from this change:

1. Focus on targeting a diverse range of rich results.
2. Continue adding connected schema markup to support machine understanding.
3. Create quality content that prioritizes a human audience.

These three recommendations are already considered best practices here at Schema App and what we already work on with our customers.

Focus on targeting a diverse range of rich results

At Schema App, we’ve seen lots of fluctuations from various rich results over time. As such, we always recommend diversifying the rich results in your portfolio.

Google’s goal is to provide searchers with the best quality results, and we’ve seen them make countless changes to the algorithm or the SERP to inch closer to that goal.

Whenever Google makes a change like this, we’ve been able to detect the drop in performance and test solutions to help our customers overcome them. For example, FAQs not being granted unless questions matched keywords exactly or videos needing to be the main content of the page to achieve a Video rich result. Our approach to this announcement is no different.

FAQ rich results have historically performed well for many of our customers. It brought more website content to the SERP and allowed the inclusion of HTML to improve the readability of the answers and embed hyperlinks. We will continue to monitor FAQ rich results to see who Google awards this rich result to and look for opportunities for our customers to qualify for it.

In the meantime, our customer success managers will work closely with our customers to identify other rich result opportunities and ways to improve their content to achieve a wider range of rich results.

Continue adding connected Schema Markup to support machine understanding

At its core, Schema Markup is a code that helps machines better understand the content on your page.

As Google and Bing accelerate their AI search capabilities, they will need to overcome the challenge of AI hallucinations to achieve a reasonable level of efficacy. By adding Schema Markup to your site, you can provide search engines with reliable, structured content that they can use to train and hone the accuracy of their Large Language Models.

Google might have eliminated the FAQ rich result but there is still an opportunity for your organization to appear in their Search Generative Experience (SGE).

If you want Google to provide an accurate answer regarding your organization in their new AI search experience, adding robust, semantic Schema Markup on your site is necessary. Doing so will allow your organization to generate a marketing knowledge graph from the content on your site. AI search engines can then use this knowledge graph to provide users with more accurate information about your organization.

Conclusion

We will be sharing more insights on the situation as Google rolls out the changes to FAQ and How-To rich results in the next week. Our team is also actively testing various alternative solutions to ensure our customers continue to see great results from implementing Schema Markup.

If you have more questions, please reach out to your assigned customer success manager or support@schemaapp.com.

The post Changes to FAQ and How-to rich results on Google appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Throughout the month of December, Schema App partnered with our Healthcare clients to identify how these new requirements impact their schema markup and how Schema App can help.

What are the requirements? 

The new Bulletin defines additional requirements for “tracking technology vendors” who are tracking individually identifiable health information (IIHI), such as medical record numbers, home or email addresses or individual IP addresses.

“Regulated entities disclose a variety of information to tracking technology vendors through tracking technologies placed on a regulated entity’s website or mobile app, including individually identifiable health information (IIHI)19 that the individual provides when they use regulated entities’ websites or mobile apps. This information might include an individual’s medical record number, home or email address, or dates of appointments, as well as an individual’s IP address or geographic location, medical device IDs, or any unique identifying code.20 “

How does this apply to Schema Markup?

Schema Markup is code on your website that helps search engines understand the content on your website. Search engines like Google crawl a website, read the code and reward the page by displaying it as a rich result on the search engine results page. 

Many healthcare organizations use Schema Markup to achieve rich results and stand out in search. At Schema App, we help health networks add the Schema Markup to their website. 

Example of a Review Snippet Rich Result awarded to a healthcare organization. 

How does this HIPAA change apply to Schema App?

Schema App is an end-to-end Schema Markup solution provider that integrates with your website to create, manage and deploy your Schema Markup at scale. 

The only data point that Schema App uses to deliver the service listed in the IIHI is the IP Address. However, Schema App does not store this individually identifiable information.

Why do we use IP Addresses? 

All web browsers include the user’s IP address to request web resources, such as an image, JSON-LD or Javascript, so that those resources can be delivered to the requester and rendered as a website. This is how web pages the user requests are routed back to the client user.  

Schema App is a web resource, and therefore requires the user’s IP address to deliver the JSON-LD to the browser. 

Once the JSON-LD is delivered to the web browser, Schema App anonymizes the IP addresses and stores the anonymized IP Address for 30 days for troubleshooting purposes. These anonymized IP Addresses are stored in our cloud provider (AWS) and are only accessible by administrators.

Since the IP Address is anonymized, no IIHI is stored by Schema App. For more information, please refer to our privacy policy.

Approaches our Healthcare clients are taking to navigate these HIPAA changes

Our clients are using various approaches to comply with this new HIPAA requirement.

• Reducing the number of tags in Google Tag Manager and/or moving to manage Javascript on their CMS/Webpages directly. You can learn how our Javascript Integration works in detail here.
• Asking Schema App to sign a Business Associate Agreement. If this is required for you, Schema App will review your BAA.
• Considering vendor server side / CMS integrations. At Schema App, we have custom integrations with Adobe Experience Manager, Drupal, WordPress, Shopify, and BigCommerce. If yours is not listed, contact us for a suitable integration solution.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Schema App does not store any IIHI information in our database and is therefore compliant with HIPAA’s new rules. 

Our team at Schema App is actively helping our healthcare clients navigate these changes. If your organization is currently deploying Schema Markup through Google Tag Manager with Schema App, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager to explore alternative integration methods. 

If your healthcare organization is looking to leverage Schema Markup to bolster your digital marketing efforts, we can help. Get in touch with us to learn how we can help your organization stay ahead of the competition and stand out in search.

The post Schema App’s Response to New Requirements from HIPAA appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

On Thursday, July 21st, we hosted a webinar on ‘Structured Data for Physicians: Maximizing Rich Results’ to discuss the importance of optimizing structured data and how Baptist Health successfully leveraged structured data to double their click-through rates.

During the webinar, we also discussed:

• The value of optimizing your physician pages with structured data
• The content you need to achieve physician rich results
• How structured data helps optimize clicks & appointments

If you missed out on our live webinar session, you can watch our webinar recording below!

The post Structured Data for Physicians: Maximizing Rich Results [Webinar Recap] appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Applying schema markup allows you to define entities across your site and link them to other entities across the Web. You’re creating data points for search engines, helping Google connect the dots about you, your company, and the people who work there. Well-defined entities can also be included in Google’s Knowledge Graph, which is a knowledge base of entities and the relationships between them. 

For medical clinics and health systems, you have the opportunity to create entities for your physicians and connect them to the medical organizations or clinics they work for through schema markup. These connections create context, streamlining Google’s ability to match relevant search queries with your services and medical practitioners. Your content can also be eligible for rich results and enhanced search features like star ratings or frequently asked questions.

To be eligible for these rich results, you need to mark up visible content on your web pages and follow Google’s structured data guidelines. When you achieve a rich snippet, Google will display additional information from your markup through richer features beneath the standard page title, meta description, and URL. 

What is really exciting are the opportunities for combining multiple rich results into one striking snippet. 

Schema markup takes your content beyond the standard search result, adding enhanced search features to help your brand stand out from the competition. For many customers, their health journey begins in search. The additional information included in your structured data presents customers with the opportunity to learn more about your services directly in search results. According to BrightLocal’s 2020 Local Consumer Review Survey, 89% of consumers look at reviews in the healthcare industry, and 87% of consumers believe reviews are important for the industry. 

How you can achieve multiple rich results for your physician pages

Let’s take a look at how the physician rich result has evolved over time, and how each search enhancement contributes to the power of this striking snippet.

Stage One: Title Tag, Meta Description, Page URL

Without structured data, your search engine page result will display the page title, the meta description, or other information chosen by Google, and the page URL.

Stage Two: LocalBusiness (Physician) Schema Markup

When using Google to search for a local business, you may have noticed profiles displaying on the right-hand side, called the right rail, of search engine page results. These are Google Local Knowledge Panels. Local knowledge panels are information boxes that appear when Google interprets a search query to have local intent and recognizes a well-defined entity which is already connected to Google’s Knowledge Graph. Google Business Profile is the catalyst for a local knowledge panel to show in search results. 

Structured data is not a direct trigger for Google Knowledge Panels, but it does feed and enhance them. Adding schema markup to your web pages means that your website can be an authoritative source of information for Google’s Knowledge Graph, rather than relying on a Wikipedia page (which you don’t own) or a LinkedIn or Twitter profile (which you only semi-own). Schema markup gives you more control over how your brand and website appear in search results. 

For any LocalBusiness schema markup, you want to use the most specific schema.org type that you can to explain to Google what your organization is and does. The physician pages on your website should be marked up with the Physician schema.org type, which is a subclass of LocalBusiness and has all the attributes of LocalBusiness schema within it.

With LocalBusiness schema markup, you want to use the schema.org type that is as specific to your business as possible. Learn more about the benefits of LocalBusiness schema markup in our Ultimate Guide.

Stage Three: LocalBusiness (Physician) + aggregateRating

You’ve probably already noticed star ratings showing up for products or local businesses in search results. Those little stars are achieved through aggregateRating schema markup. You can nest aggregate ratings into another schema.org type using the aggregateRating property, such as within an instance of Physician.

Stage Four: LocalBusiness (Physician) + aggregateRating + FAQ

Star ratings are one of the more eye-catching rich snippets you can achieve through schema markup. To build on your aggregateRating structured data, we recommend next adding FAQPage schema. Frequently asked questions are an effective way for customers to engage with your brand directly in search engine page results. Consider what questions your customers may ask, and dedicate a section for these frequently asked questions and answers on your physician page. Then, mark up these FAQs with FAQPage structured data. For physician pages, this could be their credentials or area served as seen in our example below:

Adding frequently asked questions to your website to unlock FAQ rich results is just one example of how structured data should inform your content strategy.

Physician Rich Result: What’s Next?

As you can see, structured data can be layered and nested to achieve different search appearances for your content. The schema.org vocabulary is evolving, and with Google testing how different rich results behave in search, there are many exciting opportunities ahead for schema markup. For example, during a limited time in early August of 2021, we saw Physician rich results with aggregateRating, FAQ, AND an image of the physician in live search engine page results. 

These tests may be a glimpse into what could soon be coming for certain types of content, and how they’re marked up with structured data, in search. If you’re interested in learning more about where to start with healthcare structured data, check out our article, “The Value of Schema Markup for Healthcare Organizations.” 

Why structured data for healthcare?

Schema markup explains to search engines how the physician pages on your website relate back to your healthcare organization. These connections create relevance as Google crawls your web pages, which leads to more relevant search queries being matched with services like yours. The benefits of structured data extend beyond achieving multiple rich results in search. Those benefits are visible and effective, as we’ve demonstrated above. To maximize your search engine optimization performance, it’s important to understand how structured data really works. 

You’re actually taking control of how the data on your website is defined to show the best information in search results, and not just hoping Google will figure it out on its own. This control helps medical organizations—and their physicians—retain credibility with customers and search engines alike.

Through schema markup, you can also increase your E-E-A-T, establishing your brand as a trustworthy source of information. Schema markup is all about context and relevance, and when done effectively, you can increase both the quantity and quality of leads coming through your website. For healthcare organizations, this means more appointments booked by customers who are well-aligned with the services you offer.

We help you leverage structured data to showcase the unique value of your health system in search. By working cross-functionally with different areas of your organization, we introduce agility to your team in the rapidly changing landscape of search engine optimization. We’ve worked with some of the top healthcare leaders in the industry, such as Sharp Healthcare, AdventHealth, and Baptist Health—executing business results using our expertise and technology.

The post Healthcare Schema Markup: Evolution of the Physician Rich Result 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.

According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, which surveys over 30,000 people across 31 countries and analyzes activity across Microsoft 365 platforms, over 40% of the global workforce is considering leaving their current employer this year (2021).

The Great Resignation is very real and widespread across many industries, with healthcare and high-tech being some of the hardest hit. From March 2020 to March 2021, high-tech companies saw a 4.5% rise in resignations, and healthcare saw a 3.61% increase in the same time period. Stress, anxiety and burnout were impacting healthcare workers long before the pandemic. The added stresses and challenges of an ongoing global health crisis continue to impact nurses and physicians, with 75 to 80% of physicians in North America experiencing burnout. 

As employees quit their jobs, businesses experience productivity losses. While your team may encounter short term instability during unprecedented times, future-proofing your digital strategy with structured data can reverse some of those negative effects. During a period like The Great Resignation, you have to focus on things you can control and that are measurable, like using structured data to inform your content and SEO strategy. Structured data consistently helps you stand out at the beginning of the customer journey by creating multiple touchpoints in search results through different Google search enhancements.

Managing your digital presence through times of change—whether in user behavior, Google algorithm updates, or as people are leaving their jobs—can be challenging. With structured data, your digital team will be empowered with the control, data, and agility to maximize results from search.

Structured data supports recruiting

If you are looking to fill a position or find new prospects, adding structured data to job postings will improve your chances of finding qualified candidates. JobPosting schema markup will make your job postings eligible for a special user experience in search results. You can also integrate with Google using a third party job site. See the following example for nurses near Buffalo, NY:

Job applicants are able to filter by different criteria, such as location or job title, leading to more engaged and qualified candidates for your posting. This additional job posting avenue increases your chances of finding more applicants, as well as displaying your company logo, ratings, and the job description. Learn more about adding structured data to your job postings here.

Structured data supports changes in User Behaviour

During COVID-19, people have changed their search behaviour. It’s no surprise that in 2020, Coronavirus was in 3 of the top 5 Google search queries for the United States. Staying on top of what users are searching for will help you plan and execute on the content your website should provide to your target market.

Remaining on top of new content and ensuring you’re including new questions your customers may be searching for will not only drive more traffic to your website, but will support your position as a credible industry leader. Through FAQ structured data, the frequently asked questions and answers for your customers will also be eligible for rich results.

As new content is added to your FAQ pages, tools like the Schema App Highlighter can dynamically deploy schema markup to help inform users in search results without missing a beat.

Structured data keeps you aligned with Google’s changes

Paying attention to Google’s updates will ensure your website follows SEO best practices. Google made two notable changes during the course of the pandemic: Google’s Core Web Vitals update and the addition of SpecialAnnouncement rich results. 

SpecialAnnouncement schema markup empowers locally-based organizations, like medical clinics or schools, to update the public with timely information concerning COVID-19. In the height of vaccinations, this Google search enhancement, and other forms of schema markup, drove higher user engagement for medical websites. For example, AdventHealth saw an 8% increase in clicks during the first 3 months of the pandemic, directly correlating with the addition of COVID-19 structured data to their website.

You can take control with structured data

In these turbulent times, you need to maintain your web presence. If you are investing in search engine optimization, following the best practices set out by search engines, such as Google’s structured data documentation, will maximize and maintain your SEO results:

Google Search works hard to understand the content of a page. You can help us by providing explicit clues about the meaning of a page to Google by including structured data on the page.”

Structured data gives you control over how your brand appears in search

Structured data is a form of metadata that can be added to the backend of your website, giving you more control over what information search engines will display in search results.

For AdventHealth, structured data provided stability during a massive rebrand that would consolidate over 800 websites using approximately 35 different CMS platforms under a single brand and URL. To mitigate the risk of a  drop in organic traffic, AdventHealth decided to use structured data as a key strategy to help manage the transition within Google search, to lead the health industry in rich results, and to stand out as an innovative brand. 

Schema App used schema markup to notify search engines about the rebranding, while also bolstering visibility in search through FAQ markup and physician reviews on their physician pages. 

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

After the rebranding—and thanks to the addition of schema markup—AdventHealth experienced a 90% increase in clicks across all pages, a 40% increase in impressions, a 38% increase in CTR, and top position in the rankings. As a result of structured data deployed for COVID-19 announcements, they experienced an additional 8% increase in clicks. Read about their journey in our case study. 

Structured data delivers results, and at Schema App we customize your schema strategy based on your unique online business goals. 

Structured data delivers results for your digital strategy

The great thing about structured data markup is that the results are measurable and informative. Through enhanced analytics of existing schema markup, we are even able to consider different user trends to drive content decisions for a website. For Henry Ford Health System, this meant identifying groups of pages that had content regarding the same medical specialties and health topics through our enhanced analytics reporting. This resulted in insight into what their patients had been searching for and engaging with informed them of what topics they needed to produce more content for.

As things are changing, you want to focus on what is constant and what you can control. The structured data on your site is entirely in your control, as long as you follow Google’s guidelines.

Structured data empowers your digital team with agility

Having a diverse rich result portfolio means that your digital team will have the agility to pivot from one SEO opportunity to the next during times of change. For example, even though the SpecialAnnouncement rich result is driving significant traffic for our healthcare customers, the structured data across their websites was so robust that when it temporarily dropped off on May 20th, 2021, we were already prepared to shift that focus to other types of rich results like FAQs, Review Snippets, and more! 

The challenge with adding manual structured data is that it’s time-consuming, complicated, and requires IT support. Schema App is a SaaS technology solution that’s paired with flexible, high-touch support to a managed service. You don’t have to wait to get started with structured data through these changes—we’re here to help you with your unique SEO challenges!

Going the extra mile to be solution oriented and always coming up with a solution is so helpful. (You are) always staying ahead and paying attention to the details. I’ve learned so much. (You’re) really being a partner through it all, not just fulfilling a task.”

— Rachael Jones, SEO Strategist, Sharp Healthcare

Get started with structured data for healthcare

If you’re experiencing the Great Resignation and/or want to future-proof your digital presence, structured data is an advanced SEO strategy worth investing in.

For healthcare, structured data provides more control over how your organization appears in search results and creates engaging touchpoints in search for existing and new customers to connect with you, leading to more appointments booked. There are rich result opportunities for every industry that has an online presence, with innovative ways to stand out from your competitors.

Ready to get started? Set up a FREE call with one of our technical advisors today to determine the readiness of your website for structured data.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best rich results for healthcare organizations?

There are many different rich result opportunities for healthcare organizations! Some of our favorites are frequently asked questions (FAQs), job postings, local business, review snippets (which you can even use for your physician pages), and articles for your expert blog. 

How can you get started with structured data?

To get started with structured data, analyze your overall online business goals and determine what challenges you are looking to solve. Then, explore Google’s Search Gallery to see what rich results your existing or future content may be eligible for. For our enterprise clients, a partnership with Schema App means that we will do the structured data markup for you, so your team can focus on strategy and defining your online business goals. We work cross-functionally with your team to ensure that we are an indispensable business partner for your organization, with advanced technology and high-touch support to a managed service. Get started today!

Where can I learn more about customers who’ve got results from structured data?

Any industry with an online presence can benefit from structured data markup. We’ve worked with industry leaders in healthcare, e-commerce, SaaS technology, and more—delivering results customized to each organization’s ROI goals. Learn more about our customers’ success stories in our case studies. 

We help you leverage structured data to showcase the unique value of your health system in search. By working cross-functionally with different areas of your organization, we introduce agility to your team in the rapidly changing landscape of search engine optimization. We’ve worked with some of the top healthcare leaders in the industry, such as Sharp Healthcare, AdventHealth, and Baptist Health —executing business results using our expertise and technology. 

The post The Great Resignation: Future-Proof your Digital Strategy with Structured Data 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.

Here is a summary of v13 from schema.org:

This release includes improvements proposed via the Pending section, in particular a number of terms proposed by the Bioschemas project, alongside other additions around e-commerce returns policy markup, job postings, and MediaReview markup.”

There are quite a few updates to the schema.org vocabulary via the Pending section, but here are the additions that we are most excited about.

Product Updates in Schema.org Version 13.0

Version 13.0 brought many additions to merchant return policies, including adding:

• ReturnLabelSourceEnumeration (lists several types of return labels for product returns, such as ReturnLabelCustomerResponsibility, ReturnLableDownloadAndPrint, ReturnLableInBox)
• ReturnMethodEnumeration (lists several types of product return methods, such as ReturnAtKiosk, ReturnByMail, ReturnInStore)
• additionalProperty and itemCondition were added to MerchantReturnPolicy
• hasMerchantReturnPolicy was added to Offer

Ways to define return fees were added, including the following properties:

• returnMethod (the type of return method offered)
• itemDefectReturnFees (the type of return fees for defect products)
• customerRemorseReturnFees (the type of return fees for returns due to customer remorse)
• returnShippingFeesAmount (the amount of shipping cost for product returns)
• itemDefectReturnShippingFeesAmount (the amount of shipping costs for defect product returns)
• customerRemorseReturnShippingFeesAmount (the amount of shipping cost for products returned due to customer remorse)
• returnLabelSource (the method by which a customer obtains a return shipping label)
• itemDefectReturnLabelSource (the method by which a customer obtains a return shipping label for a defect product)
• customerRemorseReturnLabelSource (the method by which a customer obtains a return shipping label for a return due to customer remorse)
• restockingFee (a fixed restocking fee for product returns)
• returnPolicyCountry (the country where the product has be to sent for returns)

To improve compatibility with GS1, an organization who develops and maintains global standards for business communication such as the all-familiar barcode, countryOfLastProcessing and countryOfAssembly were added for Product.

Healthcare Updates in Schema.org Version 13.0

The following additions were proposed by the Bioschemas community.

Bioschemas aims to improve the Findability on the Web of life sciences resources such as datasets, software, and training materials.”

Several new basic life science concepts were added, including:

• Taxon (a set of organisms asserted to represent a natural cohesive biological unit)
• BioChemEntity (any biological, chemical, or biochemical thing)
• ChemicalSubstance (a subtype of BioChemEntity)
• MolecularEntity (any constitutionally or isotopically distinct atom, molecule, ion, etc)
• Gene (a discrete unit of inheritance, which affects one or more biological traits)
• Protein (in the schema.org vocabulary, Protein is used in its widest possible definition: as classes of amino acid-based molecules)

Video Updates in Schema.org Version 13.0

SeekToAction

SeekToAction is a schema.org type, and is the Action of navigating to a specific timestamp of a VideoObject. startOffset was accidentally omitted from previous SeekToAction definitions, but has been added with the latest release. startOffset is the start time of the clip, expressed as the number of seconds since the beginning of the video.

InteractionCounter

InteractionCounter is a summary of how users have interacted with the CreativeWork type, such as books, movies, photographs, software programs, etc. Subtypes can be used to specify the type of interaction. 

Added:

• location
• startTime
• endTime

Read more about all changes in schema.org’s Version 13.0  here.

We always get excited by updates to the schema.org vocabulary! Not only do these updates reflect Google’s continued investment in schema markup, but as the vocabulary expands we keep identifying new ways for our customers to maximize their results from structured data!

The post Schema.org Version 13 Release: Products, Healthcare, Videos, and more! appeared first on Schema App Solutions.