Schema markup is a set of labels you add to a web page to tell search engines what the content means. A human reader sees a name, a price or a date and understands it at once. A search engine only sees text, and has to guess. Schema markup removes the guess by saying clearly: this is a company, this is its logo, this is the price of the product.
The vocabulary behind it
The labels come from schema.org, a shared vocabulary created by major search engines and maintained by a community. It defines types, such as Person, Organization, Product or Book, and properties, such as name, url, price or author. When you mark up a page, you choose a type and fill in its properties. The most useful types are described in the most important schema.org types.
What it looks like
The recommended format is JSON-LD, a small block of data placed in the page that visitors never see. This is a minimal example describing a company:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Example Studio",
"url": "https://www.example.com/",
"logo": "https://www.example.com/images/logo.png"
}
</script>What schema markup can do
- Make pages eligible for rich results, such as product listings, article details or event information, when the type is supported by Google.
- Clarify who is behind a site, by describing the company or the author as a distinct entity.
- Connect your pages and profiles, so that search engines can recognize that they belong to the same entity.
What it cannot do
Schema markup is not a ranking factor on its own, and it does not guarantee rich results or a Knowledge Panel. Search engines decide what to show. The markup must also describe what is really on the page: hidden or invented data can lead to penalties.
How to start
- Decide which entity or page you want to describe first, usually your company or yourself.
- Generate the code with the free application on this site, for example the Organization generator.
- Check it with a validator, as explained in the schema markup validator guide.
- Place it in the head of the right page, following how to insert schema markup in the head of your website.