In order for search engines to find and understand your website, it’s increasingly important to ‘speak’ to them in a language they can readily understand. There’s not much point in giving a Chinese person instructions in Greek – your message will be lost. Similarly, search engines understand certain types of signals better than others – they rely on structured data to make sense of your site’s content and indirectly improve your search visibility by generating rich snippets, featured snippets, and relevant Knowledge Graph results.

1. Finding A Schema Markup That
Speaks Your SEO Language
Octos.com.au

2. In order for search engines to find and understand your website, it’s
increasingly important to ‘speak’ to them in a language they can
readily understand. There’s not much point in giving a Chinese person
instructions in Greek – your message will be lost. Similarly, search
engines understand certain types of signals better than others – they
rely on structured data to make sense of your site’s content and
indirectly improve your search visibility by generating rich snippets,
featured snippets, and relevant Knowledge Graph results.
Octos.com.au

3. What can structured data achieve for your site?
• Around the world, at this very moment, millions of entities are scrambling for their slice of online
search real estate - your site is just one of those millions of entities. The Knowledge Graph is
Google's way of sorting information about millions of well-known real world entities: people,
places, and organizations. Google's algorithms pull information about entities from many online
sources. But for some types of information, the best data source is the entity itself.
• By adding structured data markup to official websites, people and companies can now customise
their own data (logos, social profile links, and company contact numbers) in the Knowledge
Graph.
• Comparing the two Knowledge Graphs below (red rooster and Google), you can see that Google
(not surprisingly) has structured its data to ensure that its Knowledge Graph is optimised,
containing lots of rich information about the organisation.
Octos.com.au

4. Octos.com.au

5. Google and search engines have always relied on structured
data, structured markup and rich snippets to understand your content
and potentially enrich your search result snippet, with a view to
boosting your click-through rate from the organic results to your page.
Until recently, Google has always insisted that structured data isn’t
used in the ranking algorithm that determines search ranking. But
Google’s John Mueller recently admitted that, in the future, structured
markup is likely to directly affect rankings.
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6. How can I structure the data on my site?
Octos.com.au

7. As this new influence on rankings emerges, think about how you can stay ahead of the curve by
optimising and structuring your data with a suitable Schema markup.
The Schema vocabulary is compatible with many different encodings, including RDFa,
Microdata and JSON-LD. More than 10 million sites – including applications from Google,
Microsoft and Pinterest – already use Schema.org to markup their web pages and email
messages, and structure their data. It covers entities, relationships between entities and
actions, and can easily be extended through a well-documented extension model. Search
engine spiders and other parsers can recognise Schema markups, to make sense of the sites.
Some schema markups can be implemented for all types of site; but others are more site-
specific. When you are ready to bring some structure to your data, find the right Schema
Markup theme for your entity. The list below will point you in the right direction.
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8. What’s the right Schema markup for my site?
Suitable for e-commerce sites:
1. Schema Product & Offer Markup
The Product and Offer markups can be used together to make product
information appear in the SERPs, including price and status information.
NOTE: For price to appear in Google SERPs, the Offer markup must be used.
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9. 2. Schema Rating Markup
The Rating schema is great for e-commerce sites but also works well
for local business sites, such as restaurants. These markups will help
generate star rating rich snippets in the SERPs. When an item has an
aggregate rating (1-5 scale), derived from multiple ratings, use the
AggregateRating schema.
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10. Suitable for publisher sites:
3. Schema Article Markup
The BlogPosting or NewsArticle schemas are great for publisher
websites. Smart use of these markups can help your content appear in
Google News and in-depth articles search suggestions.
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11. Suitable for local business sites:
4. Schema Local Business Markup
Local Business and Postal Address markups can be implemented on
sites with brick-and-mortar locations to indicate your physical address,
opening hours, payment types accepted and to boost your local listing.
NOTE: There are many tailored industry-specific schemas, such as
TravelAgency and SelfStorage.
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12. Suitable for event sites:
5. Event Schema Markup
This markup is perfect to generate event rich snippets for sites that
organise and promote events, musical concerts or art festivals.
Suitable for recipe sites:
6. Recipe Schema Markup
This markup is perfect to generate event rich snippets for sites that
organise and promote events, musical concerts or art festivals.
Octos.com.au

13. Suitable for personal sites:
7. Person Schema Markup
If you are aiming to influence Knowledge Graph results about an
individual, use the Person markup.
Suitable for all sites:
8. Organization Schema Markup
This markup will help generate brand signals that can improve your
Knowledge Graph and website snippet presence in the Search Engine
Results Pages (SERPs). Specify your logo, social profile
links and corporate contact information for best results.
Octos.com.au

14. 9. WebSite Schema Markup
This markup will help generate brand signals that can improve your
Knowledge Graph and website snippet presence in the Search Engine
Results Pages (SERPs). Specify your logo, social profile
links and corporate contact information for best results.
10. Breadcrumbs Markup
The BreadcrumbList Schema allows you to mark up the breadcrumbs
on your site to create breadcrumb-rich snippets for your pages in the
SERPs.
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15. 11. Site Navigation Schema Markup
The SiteNavigationElement markup can give search engines a better
understanding of your site structure and navigation. It can also be
used to influence and improve organic sitelinks.
12. Video Schema Markup
This schema is ideal for a site with embedded or hosted video content.
Google typically displays video rich snippets for YouTube videos, but
this markup will generate video rich snippets for your Web pages in
Google Video Search.
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16. 13. Schema Software Application Markup
Leverage the SoftwareApplication schema markup on your software
apps to enable rich snippets for your apps.
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17. With structured data markup, your content will benefit from an
enhanced presentation in search results and Google will import vital
information from your site into the Knowledge Graph. If your web
pages don’t have schema markups, it’s time to introduce some
structure to your data.
Did you find a Schema markup in the above list that fits your needs?
Or is there another Schema markup that you think we should add to
the list?
Share your Schema markup stories in the comments below.
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18. Thank you