Schema App Review Schema Markup Archives End-to-End Schema Markup and Knowledge Graph Solution for Enterprise SEO Teams. Fri, 17 May 2024 17:42:10 +0000 en-CA hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 https://ezk8caoodod.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SA_Icon_Main_Orange.png?strip=all&lossy=1&resize=32%2C32&ssl=1 Schema App Review Schema Markup Archives 32 32 8 Benefits of Schema Markup and Why It’s Important for SEO https://www.schemaapp.com/schema-markup/benefits-of-schema-markup/ Wed, 22 Feb 2023 07:43:16 +0000 https://www.schemaapp.com/?p=8332 Do you feel like your business gets lost on Google’s search engine results page (SERPs) even though you’ve invested heavily in search engine optimization (SEO)? If so, consider elevating your SEO strategy by leveraging Schema Markup. Schema Markup, also known as Structured Data, is a standardized vocabulary that helps search engines like Google understand the...

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Do you feel like your business gets lost on Google’s search engine results page (SERPs) even though you’ve invested heavily in search engine optimization (SEO)? If so, consider elevating your SEO strategy by leveraging Schema Markup.

Schema Markup, also known as Structured Data, is a standardized vocabulary that helps search engines like Google understand the information on your web pages.

What are the Benefits of Schema Markup?

When your pages contain Schema Markup, it allows search engines and AI powered machines to gain a deep, semantic understanding of your website content, which offers a host of SEO related benefits for your business.

Schema Markup also enables search engines to display your content as a rich result under certain circumstances. These rich results are displayed prominently on the SERP and include extra information about a page, like ratings and reviews of local businesses.

Example of a Review Snippet

However, as rich results come and go, the one thing that remains consistent is the semantic value of Schema Markup.

Here are some of the top benefits of Schema Markup.

1. Help Search Engines Better Understand Your Content

Humans are great at inferring the meaning of online content. Google, on the other hand, has to teach its tech to understand your content using machine learning.

That’s why search engines need extra help interpreting the meaning and intent of your site content. You can assist them by adding semantic Schema Markup to your web pages.

Schema Markup is a standardized vocabulary developed by Google, Yandex, Yahoo, and Bing. As such, these search engines can easily interpret the Structured Data on your page, allowing the algorithms to present users with content that better aligns with their search intent. It also helps search engines be more efficient because their machine learning and algorithms are built to understand Schema Markup.

2. Build a Knowledge Graph and Re-Use It Within Your Organization

At Schema App, we do more than just generate Schema Markup. We utilize our semantic technologies to generate connected Schema Markup to build a reusable marketing knowledge graph. This knowledge graph can then be used to inform search engines or train your LLMs using structured information about your business.

When you implement connected Schema Markup, you are defining the objects in your content as individual entities with their own properties and relationships to other entities. Once defined, these entities can be connected with the people, places, things and concepts that other authorities have described like Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Google’s Knowledge Graph. Your Schema markup can even enhance your Google Knowledge Panel in search.

Building a knowledge graph using Schema Markup enables search engines to better understand the connections between your content, your organization, and other entities on the web. Search engines can use this information to infer new knowledge with greater context and accuracy.

At Schema App, we implement semantic Schema Markup and entity linking to assist customers in developing their knowledge graph. This knowledge graph enables search engines to effectively match your page with user search queries, driving higher qualified traffic and boosting click-through rates.

3. Be AI-Search Ready

Search engines are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to provide users with more relevant answers to their queries. By implementing Schema Markup, you can enhance search engines’ understanding of your content. This, in turn, enables them to accurately match your content with your target audience, ensuring a more precise and effective user experience.

In Google’s podcast titled, “Structured Data, What’s it all about?”, Ryan Levering shared how machine learning and structured data go hand in hand. When you take into consideration that machine learning is the building block for AI, an action you can take to prepare for more AI in search (such as Bard and ChatGPT) is to adopt structured data to inform the machine learning about your content and have it be fully understood.

By using semantic Schema Markup to develop your knowledge graph, AI can tap into this resource and be grounded in more context. This provides them with a richer understanding of your brand and its associated entities.

By developing your knowledge graph, you are creating AI search-ready content.

4. Control How Your Brand Appears in Search

Adding Schema Markup to your web pages lets you exercise greater control over your brand’s appearance in search, empowering you to shape and manage your brand image. One of the key advantages of implementing Schema Markup lies in its capacity to establish a robust control point within your Knowledge Graph, by enabling you to communicate essential information about your organization and entities directly to AI search engines.

Without structured data, search engines rely on algorithms to infer details about your business, which can lead to inaccuracies and misunderstandings. However, with Schema Markup, you take the reins, grounding and informing the AI systems with precise, structured data. By doing so, you mitigate the risk of search engine “hallucinations” – where the algorithms misinterpret or misrepresent your brand.

Imagine your website displays two prices for the same product: one for members and another for non-members. Left unchecked, AI search engines might not recognize the difference, potentially displaying incorrect information in the SERP.

This lack of differentiation can severely impact the trustworthiness and clarity of your brand. However, by clearly indicating which pricing you want displayed using Schema Markup, you can accurately communicate these distinctions, guiding search engines to present the correct pricing information to the users.

Schema Markup is your safeguard against such discrepancies, ensuring your brand and products are accurately represented and preventing any potential confusion for users.

5. Help You Stand Out in Search With Rich Results

When Google understands your Schema Markup, it can use this data to show your content as a rich result (also known as rich snippets) on the SERP.

A standard search result will deliver a title, URL, and meta description. However, rich results include captivating images that draw users’ eyes to your search result and web page.

Before - After Schema Markup - FAQ Rich Result

In total, Google has more than 32 different types of rich results. You can classify your content as local business content, recipes, articles, event pages, and more. If you’re promoting an event, you can improve its visibility by adding Event Structured Data, making your page eligible to appear in the event experience section on Google.

Once you add Schema Markup to your page, you can use Google’s rich results test to see which rich result your page is eligible for. We also suggest using the Schema Markup Validator on Schema.org to detect any mistakes in your Structured Data.

If you want to ensure that your Schema Markup efforts align with your overall branding strategy, here are some examples of rich results you can consider using.

Review Snippets

Review snippets provide prospective customers with reviews and ratings from your past customers and help improve your brand’s credibility in search results.

Example of a Review Snippet

Product

Product rich results reveal sought-after details like pricing, availability, etc. You can generate more leads and increase interest in your product offerings by providing consumers with this information on the SERP. Beyond the fundamentals, you can also expand your Product rich result to include price drops, ratings, reviews, shipping details and more.

Example of Keen's Product Rich Result with Review Snippet

6. Drive Business Results

Schema Markup is an SEO strategy that can provide your company with measurable results and a strong return on investment.

You can use tools like Google Search Console and Schema Performance Analytics to closely monitor how your newly marked-up pages are performing.

When implemented strategically, Schema Markup can:

  • Help ensure that your content appears in search results for highly relevant queries. This means that the traffic you receive is more likely to be interested in your products or services, which leads to increased CTR and an overall higher likelihood of conversion and engagement.
  • Make your search results more appealing and informative to users, leading to higher CTR. Rich results can provide users with additional information about your content, such as star ratings, prices, and product availability, making them more likely to click your link.
  • Be particularly beneficial for local businesses. By marking up local business information, you can improve your visibility in local search results and map listings, driving foot traffic to your physical locations.

Achieving robust results with Schema Markup isn’t unusual. At Schema App, we’ve seen customers across a wide range of industries achieve great results with this SEO strategy.

For instance, SAP saw a 400% growth in clicks from rich results after working with our team, and Sharp Healthcare enjoyed an 843% increase in clicks in just nine months.

As more businesses recognize the benefits of Schema Markup, implementing it can give you a competitive edge. Your content will stand out in search results and provide a more comprehensive, informative, and trustworthy experience to users.

7. Attract Job Applicants

You can incorporate Schema Markup into job postings to help attract quality talent. By applying Structured Data to your job listing pages, your job posting will be eligible for display among Google’s job search experience results.

Baptist health job listings rich results

Top listings are displayed at the top of the SERP. If your listings make the cut, they’ll feature reviews, ratings from past employees, job details, and your company logo.

8. Improve Your Content Strategy

Chances are that you’re already investing heavily in creating SEO content, optimizing it for priority keywords, and engaging in other on-page SEO tactics to rank higher on the SERP. Unfortunately, your competitors are likely doing the same.

Fortunately, you can beat the competition and inform your content strategy by utilizing Schema Markup. Thinking about your content from the perspective of the rich results you want to achieve can help to generate ideas for new content or existing content. If you want your page to be eligible for a Review Snippet, you can improve your content by adding customer reviews and ratings on your site.

Start by looking at Google’s Structured Data Guidelines, then generate the required Schema Markup using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or our Schema App Editor. Once you’ve generated the markup, you can add the Schema Markup to your pages so your content can stand out as a rich result.

You can go one step further to create connected Schema Markup by linking the topic covered in your content to the Wikipedia or Wikidata page for the specific topic within your Schema Markup.

Read our step-by-step guide to learn how to develop a Schema Markup strategy for your website.

Start implementing Schema Markup today

The benefits of Schema Markup are undeniable.

When you add Schema Markup to your website, you’ll help search engines understand your content and make your pages more visible in organic search. In turn, you’ll increase your click-through rates and generate more organic traffic for your web pages.

Any business with an online presence can generate measurable results using Structured Data. However, to tap into the full potential of Schema Markup and stand out online, you must build, manage and optimize it as part of your ongoing site strategy. Otherwise, you’ll encounter issues like Schema Drift which hinder your ability to achieve rich results.

The good news is you can streamline the implementation and management of your Schema Markup by working with Schema App. We work with enterprise SEO teams to fully leverage the benefits of Schema Markup. Contact us today to learn more.

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Ecommerce Schema Markup Strategies for Successful Brands https://www.schemaapp.com/schema-markup/ecommerce-strategies-for-successful-brands-in-search/ Fri, 19 Mar 2021 12:00:28 +0000 https://www.schemaapp.com/?p=11425 The e-commerce industry is growing fast, but so are acquisition costs. As a result, many brands are focusing on organic traffic. There are benefits to having both paid and organic traffic for your brand, including the opportunity to show up more than once on a search engine results page. Yet focusing solely on paid advertising...

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The e-commerce industry is growing fast, but so are acquisition costs. As a result, many brands are focusing on organic traffic.

There are benefits to having both paid and organic traffic for your brand, including the opportunity to show up more than once on a search engine results page. Yet focusing solely on paid advertising doesn’t cut it anymore. Up to 80% of users focus exclusively on organic search results and ignore paid ads altogether.

While everyone is investing in SEO strategies, an effective—and often overlooked—advanced SEO approach is schema markup.

Schema Markup (also known as structured data) is a language created by Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Yandex to help search engines understand the content on your website. By marking up products on your e-commerce website, your content could be eligible for rich snippets in search. However, they need to be marked up correctly.

Take a look at how schema markup can make your brand stand out in search engine page results.

Product Schema Markup

Shoppers are getting smarter, and search engines are always evolving to find new ways to match user intent to results in search.

Rich results can make your product information more eye-catching so that you don’t even need to be at the top of a search engine results page to stand out. Marking up your product pages can even provide additional information in Google images.

You may already be familiar with product and rating rich results, which help your customers to see the price, availability and customer ratings of your products right on the search engine results page. Look at the difference between these two search results for a Blue Yeti Microphone. The Amazon result really stands out even though it was below the Blue result on the page.

Blue Yeti USB Microphone Search Engine Results Page Comparison

Here are the essential product markup properties that we recommend:

To be eligible for product rich results in search, Google recommends marking up individual product pages instead of a category or list of products. Read more about Google’s guidelines for product schema markup here.

Not only will marking up your product information make your page eligible for a rich result on the SERP, it also displays the information in Google Images. 

Since September 2020, Google has been evolving the product search engine page results, showing types of pricing and illustrating pricing changes. Google requested new pricing properties in Schema.Org and we expect these properties to be included as recommended properties for products in the future.

Review Snippets for E-commerce Websites

Let your customers speak for you by encouraging them to leave reviews. Then take these reviews even further with schema markup.

Online reviews are seeing a rise in consumer trust. 97% of consumers are influenced by reviews when making a purchase, and customer reviews can increase conversions by up to 270%.  In an age where information is so readily available online, it’s important to put your brand in front of readers with as much clarity and credibility as possible.

You don’t need thousands of reviews to make an impact. In fact, BrightLocal’s 2020 local consumer survey revealed that consumers look for an average of 10 customer reviews before trusting a star rating. And that star rating? Only 48% of consumers would use a business with a rating under 4 stars. 

After receiving excellent reviews from your customers, showcase them in search by marking up your website. Adding review structured data to your web pages can make your content eligible for the Review Snippet rich result.

Example of Keen's Product Rich Result with Review Snippet

If Google finds a valid review or rating markup, your content could display a short excerpt of the reviews and an aggregate star rating in search.

Reviews demonstrate to search engines like Google and other consumers that you have a great product or service. Investing in your brand’s credibility will be rewarded time and time again. 

Schema Markup and the Customer Journey

Schema markup can have a positive impact across the customer journey, from the research phase to converting a sale. Online spending in the United States was over 21% of total retail sales in 2020, up 44% from the year before. With the pandemic and global lockdowns forcing more people to shop from home, this isn’t all that surprising. Changing consumer habits reshape marketing funnels, and a user could interact with your brand at various stages of their customer journey.

There are three basic types of search intent

  • Informational – the intent is to answer a question or to learn something 
  • Navigational – the intent is to locate a specific website 
  • Transactional – the intent is to buy something

Transactional search intent usually leads to higher e-commerce conversion rates since the buyer has already decided to make their purchase. But there are opportunities to capture a user’s attention through other types of search intent as well.

If your product is marked up properly, this information can be eligible for rich results to improve visibility in search. You want your product or service to be suitably matched to a consumer’s needs, and this is what search engines seek to accomplish as well.

Technical SEO Best Practices for E-commerce Websites

You may be asking yourself, why can’t search engines determine important product information themselves without our help?

They’re increasingly intelligent and they can continuously crawl website content. The fact is, Google can’t pull all of the vital information from product pages by itself. We can however help Google along by providing this information through structured data, product feeds, or Google Merchant Center

Google won’t display product information as enhanced search results unless it’s confident about the product information.

This is similar to the concept of E-A-T, which stands for  Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. E-A-T has become a core concept for advanced SEO, and is essential to improving a brand’s search rankings. For both rich results and E-A-T, Google needs to be confident in your brand and the information that you’re publishing. The more information that you can supply to search engines, the more confident they will be displaying your brand in search results.

Set Your E-Commerce Brand Up For Success

These strategies will help to set up your e-commerce brand for success, but the investment doesn’t stop there. To remain relevant in an ever-changing digital market, it’s important to keep informed on the trends in advanced SEO. Sign up for our newsletter to stay updated, or contact us if you want to help your products stand out in search. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best rich results for e-commerce websites?

You may already be familiar with the Product rich result, which can display the name, price, availability, etc., of your e-commerce products in search. There are many other rich result opportunities for e-commerce websites, such as frequently asked questions (FAQs), HowTo, Videos, and more! See our Guide to E-commerce Structured Data to learn more.

How do I get stars and ratings on my products in search?

The stars and ratings that you see on products in search results come from Product schema markup. To unlock this rich result in search, follow Google’s structured data guidelines, including all required and any recommended properties that will make your rich result more robust in search.

We help you think beyond the product rich result and strategize with you to stay ahead of the competition. We’ve helped some of the biggest e-commerce brands, including Keen Footwear, Home Hardware, and Ariat, become leaders in the online shopping industry by setting new standards above the existing baseline.

Learn more about how to start marking up your ecommerce website.

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How to Create “Review” Schema Markup https://www.schemaapp.com/schema-markup/creating-review-schema-markup-using-the-schema-app-editor/ Fri, 28 Feb 2020 21:54:11 +0000 https://www.schemaapp.com/?p=9562 If you have review content on your website, adding review schema markup to those pages makes you eligible for a rich result on search, called a review snippet, which can help your site reach the right users and support their decision-making directly in the SERP. If you don’t yet have this type of content on...

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If you have review content on your website, adding review schema markup to those pages makes you eligible for a rich result on search, called a review snippet, which can help your site reach the right users and support their decision-making directly in the SERP.

Advent Health Doctor Review Snippet

If you don’t yet have this type of content on your website, we recommend adding it so you can leverage the power of schema markup.

Before You Implement Review Schema Markup

As you scroll through search engine page results, you can visibly see which websites are utilizing the power of structured data and which are not. Star ratings and reviews help your brand to stand out from the competition by showing additional information about your organization, products or services.

Review snippets are short excerpts of a review or rating from a review website. When Google finds valid reviews or ratings structured data markup, your content will be eligible to show a rich result that includes stars and other summary information from the markup.

These reviews could also show in your Google Knowledge Panel.

Showcase your credibility in search by letting customers and users write reviews. Then, mark up these reviews with Review structured data. Not only will your website be eligible for enhanced Google features in search results, but search engines will better understand and contextualize your content.

Building Your Knowledge Graph With Structured Data

When you mark up your content with structured data, you are also creating connections between your data and a search engine’s knowledge graph. As you define objects as distinct entities with their own properties and relationships to other entities, you can link your entities to Google’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 site.

Beyond rich results, structured data markup can also help you enhance your Google Knowledge Panel. Knowledge panels are the information boxes that appear in search engine page results. They pull this information from markup on your website or other sources that search engines trust like Wikipedia.

Schema markup gives you more control over how your content appears in search results, and in your Google Knowledge Panel.

Currently, Google supports ratings for the following schema classes:

Google also supports reviews for the following schema.org classes:

Required and Recommended Properties

Google maintains documentation to explain exactly what is required for “Review Snippet” markup. We’ve captured the required fields below, as listed when this post was published. You must populate the required properties for your content to be eligible for display as a rich result. Recommended properties add more information to your structured data, which could provide a better user experience.

https://schema.org/Review

Schema Property Priority Mapping Notes
author Required Person/Organization: The author of the review. The reviewer’s name must be a valid name.
itemReviewed Required Thing: The item that is being rated.
itemReviewed.name Required Text: The name of the item that is being reviewed
reviewRating Required Rating: The rating given in this review.
reviewRating.

ratingValue

Required Number/Text: a numerical quality rating for the item, either a number, fraction, or percentage.
datePublished Recommended Date: The date that the review was published, in ISO 8601 date format.
reviewRating.

bestRating**

Recommended Number: the highest value allowed in this rating system.
reviewRating.

worstRating**

Recommended Number: The lowest value allowed in this rating system.

https://schema.org/AggregateRating

Schema Property Priority Mapping Notes
itemReviewed Required Thing: The item that is being rated.
itemReviewed.name Required Text: The name of the item that is being reviewed.
ratingCount* Required Number: Specifies the number of people who provided a review with or without an accompanying rating.
reviewCount* Required Number: Specifies the number of people who provided a review with or without an accompanying rating.
ratingValue Required Number/Text: a numerical quality rating for the item, either a number, fraction, or percentage.
bestRating** Recommended Number: the highest value allowed in this rating system.
worstRating** Recommended Number: The lowest value allowed in this rating system.

*Note: at least one of ratingCount or reviewCount is required.
**Note: only required if the rating system is not a 5-point scale (1 = worst rating, 5 = best rating)

FYI: For the most current guidelines on required and recommended fields, reference the Google Developers Reference Guide.

How to Create Review Structured Data:

Step One: Create a Review Data Item

  • In the Schema App Editor, use the class tree to search for “Review”. Once selected, click “Create”.
  • Assign the data item a name and a URL.
  • Once created, the page will refresh and the data item will be in Edit mode.
  • You are required to have an author, item reviewed, and review rating. Date published is only recommended.

Step Two: Create a Person/Organization Data Item

  • Type the name of the person or organization who wrote the review into the “author” field and click “Convert to Data Item”.
  • You’ll be prompted to add the URL of this new data item, as well as its schema.org property type. Make sure to adjust the type depending on whether an individual wrote the review (i.e. person) or if it was provided by an organization.
  • Once selected, the Editor automatically appends a “#anchor” tag to the end of the URL.
  • The base URL should always reflect the page on the site where the Review resides.
  • Once you have the correct URL, anchor tag, and property type, click “Create”.

Additional Fields

If there are additional required and recommended fields for this new data item, make sure to include them here.

Step Three: Create an Item Reviewed Data Item

  • If you’re creating a review data item from within a product data item, then you do not need to have the item reviewed field populated. This is an example of a nested review. We recommend making the connection between a product and review in this way.

Step Four: Create a Review Rating Data Item

  • Type a name for the “review rating” and click “Convert to Data Item”.
  • When there, double check that the URL is pointing to the page the review is on and that the #anchor is correct.
  • Click “Create”.
  • The only required field is the review rating. If the rating is not on a 1-5 scale, then also popular the best and worst rating fields.
  • Click “Done”.

Other fields to populate

  • If you have a publish date listed for your reviews, use the calendar for the “date published” field.
  • Other fields to popular include: review body, publisher, image, etc. These will depend on the content that you have on your site.

How to Create Aggregate Rating Schema Markup:

If you have more than one review, Google recommends you create an Aggregate Rating.

  1. Create an “AggregateRating” data item in the Schema App Editor. Use the class tree to search for “Aggregate Rating”. Once selected, click “Create”.
  2. Double-check that the URL reflects where the rating is shown on your site and that the anchor tag is correct.
  3. Now you will have the required and recommended fields. In this case, no further data items are needed as they are easily populated with integers.
  4. For the item reviewed field, simply create a new data item for whatever is being rated and reviewed.

Nested Data Items vs Singular Data Items

You can create an aggregate rating data item from within your “thing” data item for the item being reviewed. In this case, you wouldn’t need to populate the item reviewed field, just as was the case with the review markup above.

The connection between the “thing” being reviewed and its reviews and aggregate rating needs to occur in only one direction. This is why we suggest you nest the reviews and aggregate rating within the “thing” data item.

Watch our Review Schema Markup video tutorial that walks you through your review schema markup process. We hope you find it helpful!

For more information on how to create Review Schema Markup, see our Knowledge Base support article.

Testing Your Review Schema Markup

Schema Markup Validator

Export the JSON-LD and run it through the Schema Markup Validator (SMV) to view any errors or warnings. Again, this serves as an alert to either correct the markup or to highlight gaps in the content. Many SEOs preferred Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool (SDTT), as the SMV only shows errors in schema markup syntax and not rich result eligibility; however, Google officially deprecated the SDTT and officially replaced it with the SMV on August 9th, 2021.

Schema Markup Validator Screenshot

Rich Results Preview Testing

To validate and preview your structured data, use Google’s Rich Result Test. This tool will indicate if your page is eligible for rich results. Please note that Google’s Rich Result Test is only valid for certain supported rich result types.

Rich Result Test

Deploying Your Review Schema Markup

Depending on your content management system, there are many deployment options to ensure robust, comprehensive, and error-free schema markup.

If you are a Schema App customer, explore your deployment options in the Integrations menu of the Schema App platform. We’ve grouped different methods of deployment into the following categories:

1 – Plugin / Add-ons:

2 – Add a tag once and you’re done:

3 – APIs:

If you didn’t see the integration option you were looking for, get in touch! We can deploy markup to any content and any content management system.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you implement Review Schema Markup on a website?

  1. You should only mark up content visible on your website. Start with exploring Google’s Search Gallery to find rich result opportunities that align with your online business goals.
  2. Mark up your content with required schema.org properties, as well as any recommended properties that are applicable for your content and can add more depth to your markup.
  3. Validate your schema markup using Google’s Rich Results test.

How do you add Review Schema Markup to a page with multiple reviews?

  1. If you have an item reviewed by more than one person, we recommend using AggregateRating schema markup.
  2. Clearly refer to a specific product or service by nesting your review within the markup of another schema.org type, or by using a schema.org type as a value for the itemReviewed property.
  3. Make sure that users can clearly see the marked-up reviews and ratings on the page.
  4. Add the required schema.org properties to your data item, and any recommended properties that will make your schema markup more robust, where applicable.
  5. Validate your schema markup using Google’s Rich Results test.

With Schema App, you have the opportunity to work with schema markup experts who can help you develop a customized structured data strategy, maximizing results from your markup!

Do you need help creating Review Schema Markup for your website?

 

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Structured Data Markup for Google Merchant Center Feed https://www.schemaapp.com/schema-markup/schema-markup-for-merchant-center/ Mon, 22 Oct 2018 12:58:02 +0000 https://www.schemaapp.com/?p=6973 This article outlines how to implement schema markup for your product pages using your Google Merchant Center data. If you haven’t already done so, you may want to consider creating a Google Merchant Center account. You’ll be able to manage your appearance across all Google e-commerce products, upload product information (like pricing & pictures), and be...

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This article outlines how to implement schema markup for your product pages using your Google Merchant Center data.

If you haven’t already done so, you may want to consider creating a Google Merchant Center account. You’ll be able to manage your appearance across all Google e-commerce products, upload product information (like pricing & pictures), and be displayed in Google Shopping searches.

What is Google Merchant Center?

Google Merchant Center is an online dashboard where you can manage your shop and product appearance and make it available to shoppers across Google. You can upload and maintain product information and your online listings where needed, including pictures and pricing that can be displayed in Google Shopping searches. Google Merchant Center also integrates with other Google services like Google Business Profile, allowing you to reach potential customers at different stages of their buyer journey.

What is Google Shopping?

Google Shopping isn’t technically an online marketplace. It’s more of an ad platform where you can advertise your products, providing shoppers an opportunity to browse physical products based on a search query. Google Shopping is also known as a Comparison Shopping Engine (CSE), where shoppers search for, compare and shop for physical products across different retailers.

Fun fact! When Google Shopping was released in 2002, it was called Froogle.

Structured Data Markup for Google Merchant Center

You can use structured data to mark up your organization and your products so that search engines can reliably retrieve up-to-date information from your website and display these details in search. In Google Merchant Center, this structured data markup can be used to update your product data, simplifying the creation and maintenance of your product feeds.

What is structured data?

Structured data, also known as Schema Markup, is a type of code that can be added to your website, making it easier for search engines to crawl, organize and display your content in search.

When you mark up information on your website with structured data, you are basically explaining to Google what your data means. Through structured data or schema markup, you can define objects in your data as distinct entities with their own properties and relationships to other entities. Once defined, entities can be linked to a search engine’s knowledge graph through schema markup. Knowledge graphs represent the linking of information and data across the Web, providing context for search engines as they crawl your website.

For e-commerce, structured data markup unlocks great opportunities to display products and store information in search results so customers can engage with your brand before even entering your website.

Structured Data Markup for Products

It’s recommended that you add new schema markup to your product pages to help Google reliably retrieve up-to-date information, and enable click-driving search features like Automatic Item Updates, Google Sheets Merchant Center add-on, and Product Rich Results. This ensures that you’re set up optimally and simplifies the creation and maintenance of your product feed in search.

Product entities and review snippets are two of the most important considerations for any brand with an e-commerce presence. Customers want to know the most up-to-date information about your products and/or services, and like to see what other customers have to say about your brand through reviews. Having an aggregate star rating and reviews can improve click-through-rates and conversion rates – when they’re over 3 stars!

Here are the essential product markup properties that we recommend:

Google recommends marking up individual product pages instead of a category or list of products. Read more about Google’s guidelines for product schema markup here.

If you’re looking to set up your product schema by hand there are a number of things to keep in mind. Be sure to follow all the Structured Data General Guidelines and abide by the Google Merchant Center requirements for structured data markup.

Once you’re comfortable with that, you’ll want to know which corresponding attributes and accepted values are supported by Google Merchant Center, and how to handle a single offer vs multiple offers with product variants.

If you’re new to schema markup, this can seem daunting.

Schema App for Google Merchant Center

Schema App has a much easier solution. To start, you’ll need to sign up for our Schema App end-to-end solution. This will give you access to our Highlighter, Editor, Schema Performance Analytics, as well as our Google Merchant Center integration.

With Schema App’s Google Merchant Center integration, you can start processing and generating JSON-LD Schema Markup from the product data in your Google Merchant Center account. This will allow you to quickly generate and deploy robust product Schema Markup to your product pages.

Note: The Schema App Google Merchant Center integration is not available for customers on our Pro subscription.

Here’s how you can use the Google Merchant Center Integration on the Schema App platform:

  1. Login to Schema App and choose the Active Project you want to set up.
  2. Go to https://app.schemaapp.com/merchantcenter
  3. Authenticate with Google – If you have Merchant Center authority, you can directly Authorize Access to Merchant Center. Once connected, Schema App will start processing and generating Schema Markup JSON-LD from the Product. You are done!
  4. Request Access – If you do not have Merchant Center access directly, you can request a colleague delegate the access. We provide an email template that invites them to connect the account. The system will generate a link to set up the authorization that expires after 72 hours.
  5. Request Access – your colleague will receive an email, click on the link, and proceed with the Authorization.

If you have any questions, please reach out to our support team.

Schema App Google Merchant Center

So long as you have set up one of our integration methods, this is a TWO-CLICK solution to completing all your product markup.

Considerations for Google Merchant Center Structured Data Markup

While structured data can help to showcase your e-commerce store and products in Google Merchant Center, there are some considerations you should keep in mind:

  • Don’t change your product or store landing pages based on the user, such as adjusting prices based on the customer’s location
  • Your structured data should be present in the HTML returned from the web server and not generated with JavaScript AFTER the page has loaded
  • Only mark up information that is shown to the user on your landing pages, which means even the prices in your structured data markup should match the values shown on the page

Maintaining schema markup for e-commerce products can be tedious as prices may change and supply may shift. That’s why Schema App offers dynamic structured data services that can update your markup in tandem with any content changes on your web pages. Learn more about our e-commerce solutions.

We’ve helped retailers from Keen Footwear to Home Hardware overcome website challenges and reach their e-commerce goals through structured data. If you’d like to learn more about what we could do for your online business, get in touch!

Start reaching your online business goals with structured data.

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