[FAQ]

Hey,

I’m trying to get a handle on the more technical side of SEO. I keep running into the term “schema markup” or “structured data.”

My understanding is that it’s extra code I add to my pages (like my product pages or blog posts) to help Google understand them better.

But I’m not clear on the benefit. How does this actually improve my SEO? Does it directly boost my rankings, or is it more about how my site looks in the search results? I’ve seen some of my competitors have star ratings, prices, and even FAQ dropdowns right on the Google results page, and I’m guessing this is related.

Is this something I should be prioritizing? It seems complicated.

[Jeff Bullas]

You’ve correctly identified one of the most powerful SEO techniques available.

Short Answer: Schema markup improves SEO by translating your page’s text and image content into a structured format that search engines understand, which allows them to display your content as a “rich result” with star ratings, prices, or video thumbnails.

While it doesn’t directly boost your rankings, it makes your existing listing far more compelling and informative to users.

This should absolutely be a priority because it gives you a direct way to influence how your content is presented. First, you use this structured text to explicitly label the existing content on your pages; for example, you can wrap the text of a customer review on your product page in Review schema or tag your blog post’s image with ImageObject schema. Second, by adding this code, you are giving search engines a script to read, one that precisely describes what your text, videos, and images are about. Third, Google then uses this information to build rich results, which are those enhanced listings with star ratings, video thumbnails, and FAQ dropdowns you’ve been seeing. This is not about ranking higher directly, but about making your text and video content so visually dominant and helpful in the search results that your click-through rate increases dramatically.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Author]

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