Let’s start with an obvious fact: eCommerce is no longer a novelty, both locally and globally. It has been booming for quite some time now and shows no tendencies of slowing down. The prospects are promising, and the idea of venturing into the world of online business is going through people’s minds all over the world, from modern megalopolises to remote islands and corners of the world.
Why does this need to be mentioned? It does not truly matter where they live and what their business line is; for their eCommerce to prosper, it needs to be visible to potential customers. What is more, it needs to be more visible than their competition is. Now that we agreed on this, let’s discuss why schema markup is significant and how it will help improve the SEO potential of your eCommerce.
A quick introduction
What is, in fact, a schema markup? In a nutshell, it is a way to mark up a website with a small code, all with the aim of boosting the position of a website in the SERP’s (search engine result pages). This code that is added to a website’s HTML has a purpose to help search engines provide more precise, informative, and above all, more meaningful results to the users. A simple example, it helps differentiate whether someone is looking for the movie Avatar or in fact a suitable avatar for their profile picture on a social network.
Universally recognized purpose
Let’s go back to 2011 and the early days of the schema markup idea. We’ll get a better idea of how universally recognized the importance of its creation indeed was. The experts from Bing, Google, and Yahoo, the largest search engines of the time and the biggest competitors, launched a joint initiative of creating a standard set of schemes to structurally markup data on web pages. The occasion where the biggest competitors in any line of work sit down together to work on a joint project is truly rare and thus even more significant. The rest is history, the one that is being written ever since.
Schema markup works both ways
The most significant universal potential of schema markup lies in the fact that it provides benefits for both eCommerce owners and their customers. It provides the owners a way to display the most important information about their business and current offer, which is precisely what both their regular and potential customers are looking for when typing in an entry into a search engine. This is just what the largest search engines had in mind when they discussed the importance of schema markup creation.
A virtual business card
One of the most frequent uses of schema markup is creating rich snippets of your search results. And, the more useful data it contains, the better the presentation of a particular eCommerce will be. The best way of looking at it is treating it as a virtual business card containing all the important details that will instantly catch a potential client’s attention. Things like address, ratings, and reviews, opening hours, current activity, and discounts, as well as an event coming soon, are some of the things that every browser likes seeing. Combined, they will improve eCommerce SEO and ensure that website stands out from the competition.
Finally, including a photo is one of the most effective ways of being noticed and improving customer conversion. For example, if the eCommerce in question is a pasta restaurant, including a photo of Spaghetti Bolognese will be immensely more inviting than just writing down that the dish is the featured plate for the upcoming Tuesday.
How to implement schema markup to an eCommerce website?
Now that everyone is entirely familiar with the crucial role schema markup may have in eCommerce SEO, implementing it successfully is the only thing left to do. And, this is where nothing should be left to chance for the entire process to be fruitful. The overall idea is to make it easier for the machine to recognize that the meaning of the data it came about.
For example, suppose the store owner puts his working hours on top of the eCommerce web page. In that case, the visitor will easily be aware of it. On the other hand, a search engine has no way of knowing the meaning of those letters and numbers. The only language it understands is code, and a proper markup will make things more transparent for the search engines.
Now, to add structured data, which is another word for schema markup, requires expertise. Since there are schemas available for virtually anything related to website presentation, it is strongly advisable that all the eCommerce owners who are not at least semi HTML experts hire professionals to do it for them.
One other thing to remember, adding structured data is a process, and the more complex an eCommerce website is, the longer it would take to make it perfectly readable to search engines. Still, all the effort and money invested will indeed prove to be worthwhile. The statistics show that only a third of websites use structured data. Coupled with the fact that Google’s search algorithm favors rich snippets, this is a huge opportunity for SEO ranking improvement.
In Summary
Regardless of the type of business, professionally implemented schema markup is bound to improve the SEO ranking of an eCommerce website. Search engines are there to please the users by providing the most valuable information available. The value of the information available solely depends on the business owner and the way data is organized on the website in question.
Furthermore, the easier the search engine scans a website, the larger the SEO advantage. If structured data is implemented to provide no ambiguity for the search engine about the content it scans through and contains only valuable information for the potential clients, it is a win-win situation. The rich snippet that comes as a result of such implementation will be informative and surely an attention grabber.
