Boost your local SEO with site page scheme

March 14, 2023 Tech4seo 55 Views

Structured data is a standardized way of providing information on top of the actual content of the page to help search engines like Google understand it better. According to Google, these “explicit hints” about the content of the page, communicated through schema markup, also help make search results more engaging for users through rich search results. This is especially important for companies with multiple locations. In this case, the site page scheme would be applied to distinguish the landing page of each site.

A solid understanding of how structured data, and in particular schema markup, is used to achieve these results can help your business improve the search engine visibility of any location across hundreds or thousands of location pages.

In this guide, you’ll learn what a location page schema is and why it’s important, how it supports your local SEO and digital marketing goals, the unique challenges brands face when implementing schemas, and how to add it to your brand’s location pages at scale can .

What is the site page schema?

Schema is the vocabulary used to add structured data, a standardized format of information, to web pages in a way that helps search engines understand the content of that page. This allows search engines to better determine whether the page matches the searcher’s intent, the quality of the page content, whether there is rich content on the page, and more. These are powerful ranking signals that can help boost your search engine visibility or earn a featured snippet.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex created Schema.org where you can find documentation, guidelines, examples, and a schema validator.

The location schema contains all the markup relevant to pages dedicated to a local business. This includes the LocalBusiness schema type, which marketers can use to mark up a local page with information such as:

Accepted currencies and payment methods
opening hours
Brand or organization name
Address and area served
Content Information
Founder and founding date
Official name
Offers
And much more – see the LocalBusiness documentation for a full list

Other types of business schema markup

In addition to the broad LocalBusiness schema type, the vocabulary offers several specific types of business schema markup, including:

animal shelter
ArchiveOrganization
Automotive Business
childcare
dentist
Dry cleaning or laundry
emergency service
Employment Agency
entertainment industry
financial service
food facility
government office
HealthAndBeautyBusiness
HomeAndConstructionBusiness
Internet cafe
legal service
library
accommodationshop
Medical Business
professional service
radio station
real estate agent
recycling center
SelfStorage
shopping mall
SportActivityLocation
Save on computer
TV channel
Tourist Information Center
Travel agency

Well, here’s what schema isn’t. John Mueller made it clear that structured data is not a ranking signal:

There is no generic ranking boost for SD usage. That’s how it is as far as I can remember. However, SD can make it easier to understand what the page is about, which can make it easier to show where it’s relevant (improves targeting, potentially ranking for the right terms). (not new, imo)

— johnmu is not a chatbot yet ???? (@JohnMu) April 2, 2018

However, as he says, it helps search engines understand the content and when it’s relevant to a search query. In this way, schema markup is definitely a powerful part of a local SEO strategy.

Literature recommendations: 5 top features for local landing pages for corporate brands

Why do your local pages need structured data?

As Google says in its introduction to structured data resources for developers: “Google search works hard to understand the content of a page. You can help us by giving Google explicit hints about the meaning of a page by including structured data on the page.”

Structured data helps trigger rich results in search that are more engaging and can also improve click-through rates (CTRs). All kinds of special search results can be relevant to local businesses; For example, if your brand is actively hiring, you can use EmployerAggregateRating to view aggregate employer ratings from sites like Glassdoor and Indeed.

Image source: Google

The Event markup type can trigger interactive event listings to showcase upcoming sales, customer celebrations, fundraisers, and other events taking place at that specific location.

Image source: Google

Google shares case studies on how big and well-known brands have benefited from implementing Schema markup on their pages, including:

The Food Network optimized 80% of their structured data pages to qualify for rich snippets, driving 35% more visits.
Rakuten found that users spend 1.5x more time on pages with structured data markup.
nestle found that pages with rich search results had an 82% higher CTR.

Other types of page markup that can be useful for brands and franchises with multiple locations include:

Speakable to identify sections of the page and passages of text best suited for audio playback by voice assistants and accessibility devices.
FAQ to identify a list of questions and answers related to that specific business location and brand as a whole.
Image metadata to enable richer Google image search results and improve the visibility and engagement of your local photos.
Review and aggregate the rating to display a rating excerpt and/or combined rating results in one rich search result.