Let me put it this way: 46% of Google searches are for local listings. If you are a business owner, you’d surely understand the significance of having your local listing amongst the top

SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

If you’re familiar with coding, you can implement and optimize a schema markup for your local business’s website. But if you are someone like me, the best route to go about it is to hire some decent SEO services in New York.

But if you’re up for the challenge, let me brief you about the significance of proper formatting and relevant structure data sets on your website (often referred to as schema markup).

Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room: What is Schema Markup?

Schema Markup: A Brief Rundown

Schema markup is a semantic vocabulary of tags added to a website’s code that improves its search result visibility.

Semantic, in search engine language, means understanding the context and intent behind

each query.

 You might be wondering: Who created Schema Markup?

Schema markup was first introduced in 2011 as a collective effort by major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex).

But what does this all mean?

It simply means that using the schema markup available from the official schema’s website (schema.org), helps your business website not only rank better but make the most of the rich results.

Getting too technical? The best route would be to hire SEO services in New York. One business you can’t go wrong with is ‘Skilled Digital Media’. Their search engine specialists are working around the clock since 2015 to help local businesses have better SERP rankings.

But before we move to the core of this article, let’s first understand why schema markup was created in the first place.

Why was Schema Markup created?

To put it simply, schema markup was created for you, the user.

Wait, what?

Yes, you read that right. Before the introduction of schema.org in 2011, there was a lack of a

common vocabulary that was shared by all the search engines. Due to this imminent lack,

the web at the time was not semantic (we discussed that above).

What that implies is any useful bit of information added to your website before 2011, was

often missed by search engines.

And that’s why, on June 2, 2011, all the major search engines at the time, including Google,

Yahoo and Bing, came together to create a common vocabulary for the Internet,

Schema.org.

But how does it translate to you as a local business owner?

If you have implemented schema markup on your website, users can see what your

business is about, your prime offerings, your best-selling products, effective costs and

discounts on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) itself!

 Neil Patel puts it beautifully, ‘Schema markup is like a virtual business card for your website’.

And that’s why either you need to understand these SEO nuances yourself or hire SEO services in New York (we’d vote for the latter, as that’d be inexpensive and time-saving!).

With that out of the way, let’s quickly understand the different formats of Schema Markups

that you can use for your local business listing.

Schema Markup Formats: Must-Know for Local Business Owners

As a business owner, we won’t overwhelm you with the details and specifics of all the different markup formats to implement schema on your local website.

However, knowing the subtle differences between the two most common schema formats would act as an added advantage for your business’ local listing.

●      Microdata

Microdata is a schema markup format that is inserted inline. In layman’s terms, we add this type of markup next to the data on the page.

For example, look at this code from the official schema.org.

 <div >

<h1> Heading</h1>

</div>

‘Itemscope’, a particular type of microdata, is added like an inline property to the opening HTML tag.

●      JSON-LD

JSON-LD allows you to embed structured data to your local business website using the

<script tag>.

For example, look at this piece of code:

“$id”: “https://example.com/person.schema.json”,

“$schema”: “https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema”,

“title”: “Person”,

“type”: “object”,

“properties”: {

“firstName”: {

“type”: “string”,

“description”: “The person’s first name.”

},

“lastName”: {

“type”: “string”,

“description”: “The person’s last name.”

},

“age”: {

“description”: “Age in years which must be equal to or greater than zero.”,

“type”: “integer”,

“minimum”: 0

}

}

} 

 Source

 Pro tip: If you want your business to rank better in Google’s search results, use JSON-LD local schema markup. It is a format that Google recommends for better SEO visibility.

 Closing Words

The idea of this blog post is not to make you technically sound better, but to pass on an understanding that local SEO schema can help your business website’s visibility online.

We are merely just scratching the surface. There’s a lot more to schema markup: Structure validation, monitoring, understanding rich results, schema categories, and whatnot.

That being said, let an organic search specialist take care of the technical part of your business’s website. eCommerce SEO services in New York can get expensive, and that’s where Skilled Digital Media comes into play.

They have a team of dedicated organic search engine specialists that can help your business to appear for every local query in your niche in New York.

So, what are you waiting for? Increase your business CTR (click-through rate) with Skilled Digital Media today! Until next time.