Tell us honestly, how many SERP results do you check while looking for something? We’re sure it’s not more than 5!
And that’s the case with everyone. Whenever someone searches for a particular product, the search engine result page presents hundreds of web pages. Only the first few of them get a click.
Since there’s no way that people are going to browse through all the links, you need to put an extra effort to make your business website stand out from the crowd.
And the best way to ensure this is to include structured data markup in your online store.
Benefits of Structured Data Markup
The structured data markup helps to mark several elements on a web page so that Google can comprehend and analyse the data on the page. This, in turn, helps in presenting data in an attractive way on Google Search and encourages web traffic to click on the link.
Structured data markup actively helps in creating rich snippets. When you search for a service, product or business online, you may come across enhanced search results. These are called Rich Snippets.
Rich Snippets draw information from structured data markup. These provide more details in response to a search query. The details may include reviews and ratings, contact info, price, availability etc.
The additional information is highly beneficial in improving the click-through rate (CTR). Therefore, you must implement and optimize your e-store’s structured data.
Must-Have Structured Data Markups on an Ecommerce Website
If you go through the Schema.org vocabulary, you will come across an overwhelming number of schema types and properties that you can use on your site. These include but are not limited to products, recipes, places, events, etc. Not all of these are suitable for every business.
Pick the right one that you need for your business. Here are a few important types of a schema for an eCommerce website:
- ItemList
- Website
- Organization
- BreadcrumbList
- Product
Below, we will take a closer look at each of them.
ItemList
There are various types of schemas available to use on the product listing pages. However, the latest favourite of the developers and SEO professionals is the ItemList type. It features a complete range of products without violating Google’s guidelines.
This approach is considered as Carousel structured data. Here category pages identify with the summary pages.
Website
Website schema type enables you to add a structured data called a sitelink search box. Since eCommerce sites rely mainly on site search, this is an important schema to add. It will let the users search for their intended products directly on the search engine result page.
Make sure to use it on the homepage.
Organization
This type of schema provides information about your company. The info may include contact number, address, logo, social media profiles, name, etc. This schema type can be used on one page of your e-store.
The first step is to find out the most relevant page of your website. Usually, learned eCommerce website development company professionals recommend picking the homepage of the site as it is a generic page. Now add organization properties in the structured data markup of the page.
However, we must remind you that this schema is solely meant for online stores. If you own both online and offline stores, you need not use the schema. For that, you can use a LocalBusiness schema.
BreadcrumbList
BreadcrumbList markup provides more information about the site architecture to the visitors and the search engine. An example of BreadcrumbList schema will look like this:
Examplewebsite.com > men > shirts > white~colour
Pay attention to use the schema in a proper manner. Many often, people forget to add the last page to the ItemList Element. Don’t make this mistake.
Product
As your business grows, you may own a large eCommerce website with lots of product types available in the catalogue. Now, you need not feature all of these on Google shopping feed.
In such cases, you have to prepare a distinct product schema.org strategy for every product type that you want to feature on the shopping feed.
Remember that a product markup allows you to turn on all the automatic updates in Google Merchant Centre. Therefore, the structured data markup should match the feed data.
If you have grouped several products, you may strategize the product markup implementation in the following way. Instead of using different mark-ups for each product, use the Aggregate Offer.
How to Integrate Schema Markup into an Online Store
There are various formats available including JSON-LD, RDF, and Microdata. JSON-LD is often the best choice for the following reasons:
- It’s quite easy to work with JSON-LD as opposed to any other format.
- Search engines seem to prefer this format of integrating structured data markup.
If your eCommerce website is built using Magento, you can find several 3rd party extensions to integrate structured data markup. Seek assistance from the professional developers to integrate them.
Wrapping Up
Schema markup plays a crucial role in presenting additional information to the web traffic at the very first go. Implementing this will positively benefit your e-store sales.
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