Did you know that almost a third of all website traffic across the world comes from search engines today?** Marketers around the world are striving to strategize robust SEO plans that are rich in quality, keywords, and content, along with targeted distribution and link building.
While all the above aspects remain crucial, today’s SEO market places equal or higher focus on the technical side of things.
One such core aspect of technical SEO is Schema markup, also known as structured data. If you aren’t familiar with these concepts, this blog is meant for you. If not, no worries; we’re still going to break it down for you. We’re diving deep into structured data and how schema markup impacts your SEO ranking.
Additionally, we’ll focus on the benefits of implementing schema markup while also broadening your understanding of the importance of schema markup during a website migration.
What is Schema Markup
Structured data or schema markup is basically the language for search engines to read and process content on web pages. In technical terms, it uses code or semantic vocabulary that assists search engines in identifying and categorizing web content.
Sure, search engines are powerful tools with advanced algorithms. Nevertheless, they need a push to read, characterize, and categorize different content. The reason is obvious – search engines aren’t humans, and, thus, they have additional backup requirements to understand web content.
For example, when you read a list of ingredients and quantities, you (a human) automatically understand that it’s a recipe. However, search engines need to be coded into their vocabulary to understand the meaning of the content. Applying schema markup helps search engines do just the job!
Why do you need to add structured data to your page
As explained above, structured data helps search engines understand your web content. Adding schema markup (or structured data) to pages enables engaging search results for users, encouraging more interactions with your website. This is known as rich results.
For example, 80% of Food Network pages enabled search features that increased their website visits by 35%. Rotten Tomatoes implemented structured data to 100,000 unique pages and drove 25% higher CTRs for pages with schema markup as compared to those without it.***
So, that’s the kind of leverage you get when you add structured data to your web pages.
How to add Schema Markup to your website
- Choose your Schema type – whether FAQ, article, product, event, etc.
- Generate your markup with the help of a tool, manual coding, or Schema.org’s vocabulary.
- Insert the markup (we recommend using JSON-LD) code into the HTML <head> section
<head>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org/",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "My Article Title",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "John Doe"
}
}
</script>
</head>Code:
* **Microdata:** Use HTML attributes (e.g., `itemtype`, `itemprop`) to add schema markup directly into your HTML elements [1, 9, 11].
* ```html
<div itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Article">
<h1 itemprop="headline">My Article Title</h1>
<p>By <span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name">John Doe</span></span></p>
</div>4. Validate your markup
Benefits of structured data for SEO and user experience
Implementing schema markup or adding structured data to your website content has more than one benefit. It’s a top-tier SEO goal you wouldn’t want to miss if you want your site to rank higher and improve sales. Here are a few of the many benefits of adding structured data:
Search engines can understand web content better
As mentioned earlier, schema markup is a code for search engines or a standardized vocabulary developed by top search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex. Therefore, these search engines can easily understand your web content with structured data, letting algorithms do their magic to display appropriate content to your users. This solidifies search intent and helps search engines get more efficient as per their mechanism to understand Schema Markup.
Prepare for AI-search and AEO
Today, search engines are getting more and more comfortable with artificial intelligence to deliver relevant results to user queries. Implementing Schema Markup backs up your web page content for search engines to better understand them. This helps in linking your content to your target audience, thus building an effective user experience.
Additionally, machine learning is a part of AI, and hence, using semantic structured data, you can develop your content knowledge graph. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) aligns with AI-driven search by structuring content for instant, accurate responses in voice search, chatbots, and generative AI results. It focuses on structured data, clear formatting, and authoritative information to improve visibility in search engines that prioritize quick, direct answers.
Develop a brand-selling approach
Your business is your brand. How you sell it depends on the strategies you implement. With Schema Markup, you can exercise better control over your brand. You can decide how you want your brand to appear in searches, giving you full control over your brand’s shape and management.
Implementing Schema Markup gives you the power to mitigate the threat of feeding inappropriate information to search engines, thus escaping algorithms that misinterpret or brand information.
Shine brightest in the crowd with rich results
Once Google understands your web content, it displays it in the form of rich results (known as rich snippets) on the SERP. Standard search results display titles, URLs, and the meta description. However, a rich result includes eye-catching images to grab the user’s attention to your web page search result.
Google’s got 32 types of rich results. This categorizes your content into local business, event pages, articles, recipes, and more. Depending on the type of business you want to promote, you can use the respective type of structured data on your web pages to make them appear on the right SERPs. You can also use tools like Schema Markup Validator or Schema.org to verify if you implemented your structured data correctly. We’ll talk more about that in detail later.
Build a stronger content strategy
If you’re a marketer, you’re probably ticking off everything on the checklist of a strong SEO game plan, including on-page SEO tactics. But so are your competitors. So, what gives you the edge?
Utilizing Schema Markup in your content strategy can be your way up the road. Ideate your content from the viewpoint of targeting it for rich results. This should open the way to relevant ideas that showcase your content on Review Snippets or Product pages. You can start by looking up Google’s guidelines for structured data to generate the appropriate type of Schema Markup with the help of Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or other similar tools.
After the markup generation, you can add the structured content to your pages to appear as rich results. Additionally, you can aim higher and link the topic covered in your web page content to Wikipedia or Wikidata for the respective topic within your Schema Markup. This brings greater visibility to your content, covering relevant and broader audiences.
How Schema Markup works
Like any other tech setup, Schema Markup, too, need instructions to operate. These instructions are in code format. Such structured data is also called Schema encoding types. Typically, there are three different encoding types for structured data:
- RDFa
- Microdata
- JSON-LD
Traditional ways to write Schema code come under RDFa and Microdata types. These two Schema encoding types require greater effort and, therefore, can be vulnerable to errors.
JSON-LD, however, is the one Google trusts and recommends using for best results in terms of structured data.
While the former two are added as content properties, the latter is an independent aspect and works on its own as the ending code in the HTML footer.
Utilizing JSON-LD makes your job simpler. It ensures your code is clean, free of error, and works efficiently. It helps display relevant web content to your users while also clarifying it for search engines. Clean code is the key to better on-page optimization, leveraging stronger search engine trust while delivering a good user experience.
But wait a sec! Are you worried about having to learn coding for Schema Markup?
You don’t have to. Several Schema Markup generators allow markup generation. However, if you believe in building it from scratch, you can simply visit Schema.org for the same.
What can you mark up (Types of Schema Markup)
Schema Markups depend on the type of business you do, and therefore, there are various types of Schema Markups sectioned into categories. The most common of them are creative work (Recipe, TV Series, Book, Movie, etc.), embedded non-text objects (Video, audio, image objects), places, local businesses, restaurants, persons, events, organizations, FAQs, reviews, etc.
You add structured data or Schema Markup to every action, object, or industry. As such, Schema.org’s vocabulary is currently a library of 811 types, 1485 properties, 14 data types, 89 enumerations, and 499 enumeration members.
Be assured that you can use more than one Schema on a single web page. For example, on your service page, you can apply the review, FAQ, offer, and price schemas.
Here are a few examples of the most commonly used Schema types:
- Breadcrumb List - This markup deploys a clear picture of how a page should fit into website navigation. It unfolds into a chain of breadcrumbs on your page, displaying different levels of action to process to a certain page. These levels come in an ordered position where the first position should be your homepage.
By implementing a Breadcrumb List on your page, you’ll generate a breadcrumb chain in the search results.
- Blog posting – Blogs or articles are what make up this markup. It’s a great idea to add structured data to your blog posts on your website to reap the benefits of the Article markup.
- Website search – Searches aren’t limited to search engines (Google). Searches can appear on your website, too. When you have a search bar on your website, implementing a Website Schema Markup and working on the Search Action will generate a Sitelinks search box in the search results.
- WebPage – It’s a foundational markup helping search engines analyze and understand the structure and purpose of your webpages. It considers the primary topic, content type, and relevant associations to generate the metadata about a particular page, helping search engines categorize and display your webpages on SERPs.
- FAQ Page – Your website’s FAQ page should have the FAQ Page markup, allowing search engines to add those particular questions to their SERPs along with your result. This displays additional content in the SERPs and brings greater visibility to your content.
How to verify a Schema Markup
Once you’ve added the structured data to your web page, the next step is to check if you’ve done it correctly.
In the case of JSON-LD, it’s quite straightforward – right-click on the page, view the source, and look for the elements tab to type “LD+JSON” to check if your code has been implemented.
In the case of Google Tag Manager or Schema App, you can take the help of Google’s Rich Result Testing Tool to deploy your code for rich results. Additionally, you can employ the Schema Markup Validator (SMV) to check for any errors.
Another option is to utilize Google Search Console. It reports on rich results and/features connected to your structured data. This process may take up to a few days to a month, depending on how often Google crawls your website.
In terms of dynamic Schema Markup, however, using JavaScript requires you to utilize Schema Markup Validator for the results. The tool loads the HTML and processes JavaScript. However, all tools should work should you utilize inline HTML or JSON-LD for creating Schema Markup.
What is a website migration
Moving from one platform to another, one environment to another, or changing the website domain name is the process of website migration. In terms of SEO, migration means a transition where a fundamental change or upgrade is made to the URL structure.
The common factors influencing a migration are location, UX, architecture, content, platform, or layout – all these come under site migration.
What are the various types of website migrations
A combination of all or some of the above-mentioned factors for migration could result in a hybrid migration. The more factors that influence your site migration, the riskier and more complex the migration process can get. Let’s grab a broader understanding of the different types of site migration:
- Website merge – You may need to merge multiple websites for your business purposes. Reasons could be anything like establishing an e-commerce page for your customers while keeping your main site intact. Or, you may want to step into the competition with a stronger grip on your preferred domain. Or, simply for cost-cutting purposes.
- Platform change – Reasons like the need to boost business growth, site speed issues, frequent downtime affecting SEO and UX, lack of flexible e-commerce capabilities, etc., could induce brands to move to a new CMS. Migrating to a new platform can expand your business, enhance functionality, and focus on a wider audience for revenue growth. However, it’s crucial to be mindful of crawling and indexing issues along with poor 301 redirects during such migration journeys.
- Content change – Content is key! Businesses thrive on smart content marketing. Poor-quality content can adversely affect your brand. Web content migration helps upgrade your online presence, allowing your brand to evolve with industry trends. This migration process could also include eliminating outdated blogs or irrelevant content pages, or moving existing content to another section within the same site.
- Structural change – When a business needs to change its main navigation page or internal link hierarchy, a structural migration is the answer. Such migrations also come in place in cases of adding or removing breadcrumb navigations.
- Design/UX change – Improving your UX might require changing or upgrading your website design. The goal is to make your site attractive as well as improve performance. However, such a migration process should have an SEO expert throughout the journey to cater to probable crawlability issues that can affect indexing and site ranking.
Does a website migration affect SEO
Yes, migrating data or a platform from one to another can affect how search engines identify your site. Search engines need signals such as URLs, content structure, and links to read, understand, and rank your site. Any change to this hierarchy can cause significant damage to your hard-earned SEO rankings, such as:
- Drop in numbers – Search engines may not recognize your site temporarily or permanently if they encounter issues during migration. Such issues could be missing metadata, duplicate content, or crawling errors.
- Loss of traffic – Poor implementation of redirects can cause visitors to land on broken pages that result in the downfall of organic traffic.
- Broken links – Outdated internal and external links can adversely affect user experience, thus impacting SEO performance.
This is why you need an SEO expert in the team to implement SEO best practices before, during, and after migration.
Why is structured data important during site migration
While you now understand that migration affects your SEO ranking, let’s gather deeper knowledge about how structured data impacts migration:
- Maintaining SEO – Structured data sends proper and clean signals to search engines for them to understand your post-migration site content and structure. This is crucial for maintaining search rankings and organic traffic.
- Improving user experience – Structured data is the key to getting rich results for your site content in the form of rich or featured snippets. This improves CTRs and enhances user experience.
- Better indexing opportunities – Clear signals from structured data allow search engines to index your web pages faster, resulting in quicker visibility in SERPs.
- Mapping content and data – With structured data, you can rely on a clear structure and mapping of content and data during the migration process.
- Post-migration rituals – Structured data helps monitor your site performance after a successful migration process by sending clear signals to Google.
Before we move on to the next section, let’s also briefly go through how you can implement structured data during migration:
- Make sure to implement structured data during the early stages of migration. This ensures a clear definition of the new website structure and content.
- Ensure that you select the appropriate Schema Markup depending on the content type of your website.
- Use tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to test and verify your Schema Markup implementation.
- Don’t forget to implement 301 redirects to redirect all old URLs to their respective new counterparts permanently to allow search engines to identify the newly migrated content.
- Also, don’t overlook the process of updating your sitemap to recognize the new website structure and URLs.
Ensuring structured data integrity during migration
Moving on, you now have a clear understanding of what structured data is and website migration and how one impacts the other. Therefore, you need to establish a seamless balance between the two, which requires you to audit the existing Schema Markup and map structured data to the new site.
It’s highly crucial to reduce the risks during website migration. Here’s what you need to prep before migration:
- Conduct a website audit – Utilize tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, or AHrefs to gather insights on traffic sources, backlinks, and keyword rankings.
- Create a migration checklist – This list should include the steps to prepare for tech updates, a powerful content strategy, and a plan for testing phases after migration.
- Back up your website – Ensure to create a complete backup of your old website, including databases, files, and configurations. This helps you restore the old site in case of any issues during migration.
- Set clear migration goals – Before migrating, make sure you know the purpose of your migration – better site performance, enhanced branding, or improved user experience.
Auditing existing Schema Markup
As mentioned previously, auditing your existing Schema Markup is important to ensure proper migration and maintain SEO rankings. Here’s how to do it:
- Utilize tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or Schema Checker to study your current pages.
- Detect errors or discrepancies in your markup.
- Make a report of all your data and plan to make the required changes or updates.
Mapping structured data to the new site
After migration, it’s essential to ensure that the new site implements the same Schema Markup used in the old site. If you do not map your current structured data, chances are search engines won’t recognize your new site like the old one, which can lead to loss of organic traffic. Here’s how you can map your old Schema Markup:
- Establish a mapping of the old to the new Schema Markup.
- Make sure all relevant pages have the essential Schema Markup on the new site.
- Verify the Schema Markup using your preferred tools for auditing purposes.
Tools to validate schema markup
- Schema Markup Validator (SMV): Based on Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool, SMV is a Schema Markup checker. Powered by Google for the Schema.org community, this tool can validate structured data embedded in web pages. It can extract JSON-LD, RDFa, and Microdata Markup, report a summary of the structured data, and identify errors in the code.
- Rich Results Testing Tool: This tool aligns with Google Search Console and can list down all rich results eligible for a single page and preview how these rich results could appear on SERPs. Note that this tool only validates Schema.org Types eligible for rich results in search.
- Schema App’s Analyzer: This tool validates markup site-wide, going up to more than 10000 pages. You can utilize the analyzer on any page and discover Microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD, despite dynamic loading.
- Google Search Console: This popular tool can validate your markup as well as monitor its impact on your overall site performance.
Automating Schema deployment via plugins or custom solutions
SEO experts always prioritize quick updates and organized data to rank your website on search engines with ease. For this purpose, Schema implementation is the way to go. It helps achieve dynamic media and rich snippets on SERPs. Appearing in rich snippets on SERPs increases engagement, along with organic search results.
Schema Markup plugins or add-ons are nothing but quick solutions to the Schema adding mechanism. Popular CMSs offer a wide library of Schema Markup plugins that offer different functionalities. Such plugins usually focus on products or recipes, while the rest cover Schema types. However, plug-ins generally attend to basic markup types with very limited custom options.
Most of these plugins don’t offer customization. However, within the Schema.org vocabulary, Google utilizes a handful to display rich results. If you leverage the entire vocabulary, more comprehensive information can be signaled about your content. This helps search engines align with search intent.
Monitoring and maintaining structured data
Tools and strategies help you monitor and maintain structured data on your web pages. Utilize appropriate tools to ensure your structured data is accurate, consistent and that there is an integrity maintained from the process of acquisition to analysis.
Google Search Console is an excellent tool for identifying and fixing issues with structured data as well as managing large volumes of data.
Schema Markup support in Drupal
Drupal offers modules to support structured data or Schema Markup, allowing site owners to mark up content so that search engines understand their content and display richer results. Let’s explore the modules Drupal offers for Schema Markup:
The Schema.org Metatag Module
This module adds a bunch of Schema types to your website. It can be a website, person, article, event, review, organization, and so on. As per your requirements, you can choose the best Schema type for your website and content. Here’s how you can configure the Schema.org Metatag Module:
- Log in to your Drupal website
- Install the Schema.org Metatag Module
- Enable the module and the Schema type(s) that align with your requirements
The Schema App Drupal Module
This module is compatible with Drupal versions 10 and 11. You can use this module to deploy advanced and accurate Schema Markup without the need for an IT expert or technical Drupal team. Here’s how this module works:
- Download and install the module
- Author the Schema Markup with the help of the Schema App Editor
- The module receives the markup from the Schema App and stores it on the server
- The module utilizes Drupal hooks to include the markup to the page during real-time on-page load
- This module refreshes every 24 hours to identify any latest changes to the markup
Drupal’s testing framework (PHP Unit)
This process gets somewhat more technical than the previous two.
- Unit tests – Write unit tests with the help of Drupal\Tests\UnitTestCase class for functional verification of the Schema Markup code.
- Kernel tests – Write kernel tests using Drupal\KernelTests\KernelTestBase class for functional verification within a limited Drupal environment.
- Functional tests – Deploy functional tests using Drupal\Tests\BrowserTestBase or Drupal\FunctionalJavaScriptTests\WebDriverTestBase for testing your markup in a browser environment.
Additional Drupal Tools and Modules
- Configuration inspector – This inspects configuration values and schemas.
- Schemata module – It creates schemas, especially for the Drupal REST system.
- JSON Schema Validator (Opis) – This one is an integration between Opis JSON Schema and Drupal for JSON data validation against a JSON schema.
Common pitfalls and solutions in Drupal migrations
It is no news that migrations are complex and can get riskier depending on the nature of the migration. However, with proper planning and execution, you can prevent common pitfalls like data loss, functionality issues, and extended downtime. Let’s explore this section in detail:
- Loss of data: Improper data handling or insufficient backups can lead to loss of data during migration. Make sure to backup your entire Drupal site before migration. You can even use tools like Migrate API for secure data transfer.
- Extended downtime: If you migrate during busy hours, it can cause heavier downtime. Ensure careful planning to migrate during off-peak hours to minimize this issue. Utilizing staging environment for new site testing before you go live is recommended.
- Functionality issues: Testing of all modules, themes, and third-party integrations is crucial to avoid functionality issues post-migration. Don’t overlook testing all functionalities, including custom modules.
- Ignoring security: Security is highly crucial during migration. Not looking into it can leave your site vulnerable to threats. Make sure to utilize regular security updates and strong passwords for site protection.
References for statistics
- https://www.statista.com/topics/1710/search-engine-usage/#dossierKeyfigures
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data
Final thoughts
Schema markup is crucial for SEO and, hence, becomes an important aspect during website migration. Make sure to create a migration checklist and process it accordingly while being mindful of your structured data.
Drupal’s modules to support structured data are a bonus for Drupal site owners looking to bring their content to rich results for better visibility and increased engagement. Look out for the common pitfalls and make sure to be ready with the solutions to mitigate them.
Looking for a Drupal partner to help with migration while adding structured data? Talk to us!
