Schema – And its Importance to Your Local Business Website
We can help a website rank better on popular search engines, by making sure that we include our businesses contact information like business address, telephone address, physical location etc. This is pretty much obvious and most people do that. The problem is that most business owners don’t do it in a way that the search engines can understand, or in nerdy terms, they don’t add schema markup to the pages.
Well, schema is a collection of HTML tags that webmasters use to markup web pages for the major search engines(Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex). In simpler terms, Schema informs the search engines what your data is about, not just what it is. Generally, the information on your website gets indexed and brought back in search results. But with schema markup implemented, some of that information gets indexed and returned in a modified and structured way. Suppose a user have the word “digital marketing” in a page. The search engine sees this just as two random words. But if the user have the correct schema implemented, you can tell the search engine that “digital marketing” is actually part of the many services offered, thereby giving it meaning. The search engine then displays a better structured search result for the user.
So, how is this important for a local business website?
If you’re a local business aiming at customers in a certain geographic region, then the use of Schema markup can be a good way to drive organic traffic. For starters, Schema gives the users a better quality search result, meaning that they get a much better idea about your site just by looking at the search result snippet. This was a point of concern for people when Schema.org started. They thought that if the user gets information from the search engine result page itself, they won’t have to visit the site and it will reduce organic traffic. But this was statistically proven wrong, as sites with schema markup saw an increase in organic traffic. The structured search result was seen as an indicator of a well-organized website, in the mind of the user.
Another reason why you should use Schema is to get ahead of the competitors. Only about half of the websites out there actually use schema mark up. And small local businesses usually don’t bother about it. By employing schema, you’re able to stick out in the local search results and drive traffic towards your site. But schema isn’t a one-word solution for all your SEO woes. But it definitely is a step towards betterment. If you’re looking to extract a little bit more out of your online marketing attempts, which you should be, then a chore that takes less than 30 minutes to carry out, such as this one, is worth capitalizing on.
Every single detail that you can give the search engines with your markup is one more step towards helping them to “learn” more about your website and your business, and everything that you make them understand can only improve your local SEO efforts.
Founded in 2015, Elegant Web Services is a full-service Internet Marketing, Web Design agency based in Sydney, creating winning solutions for businesses and professionals who want to build or improve their presence online.
