We’ve highlighted in bold the most important and best tl;dr (Too Long Didn’t Read) parts of this definition as a time saver for you busy bees. Let’s start with the definition of schema in general from the Miriam-Webster dictionary.
“a mental codification of experience that includes a particular organized way of perceiving cognitively and responding to a complex situation or set of stimuli”
So that’s a general definition of a schema, in the world of the internet it has a specific meaning. Before we dive in, it’s important to note that there are a few different synonyms you’ll run into (depending on who you’re talking or where you’re listening/reading the references). They are:
- Schema.
- Structured Data.
- Rich Snippets.
- Rich Results.
- Microdata.
- Open Graph Protocol.
All of the above terms (while having technical differences) are used interchangeably depending on who is saying it. An example: Google used to call these Rich Snippets in documentation and online references, then they changed their own terminology to Stuctured Data and sometimes will refer to these as Rich Results.
Not confusing at all! 🙄
While all of this sounds super fancy, we can boil this down to a more specific defintion as it applies to the Internet and Websites. In the context of the internet including Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok (and others), Schema is:
A roadmap or set of rules, that tell search engines how to display and rank your content. This is what website schema is. Website schema describes the content of your website and makes it easier for search engines to understand it. Without schema, search engines like Google can’t accurately index your website’s pages, which means they won’t show up as prominently in search results.
Schema.org is a working standards group that defines the protocol for actually implementing structured data. These are the agreed upon rules for all types of Schema (or Structured Data). From schema.org
Over 10 million sites use Schema.org to markup their web pages and email messages. Many applications from Google, Microsoft, Pinterest, Yandex and others already use these vocabularies to power rich, extensible experiences.
Founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex, Schema.org vocabularies are developed by an open community process, using the [email protected] mailing list and through GitHub.
A shared vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters and developers to decide on a schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts. It is in this spirit that the founders, together with the larger community have come together – to provide a shared collection of schemas.
What is Schema.org?
Schema.org is a reference website that provides documentation and guidelines for using structured data mark-up on webpages. Structured data mark-up, also known as microdata, is a way of adding additional information to webpages in order to make them easier for search engines to understand.
This helps search engines provide more informative results for users when they search for something online.
The schema.org website provides a collection of schemas, or descriptive tags, that content administrators can add to their HTML code in order to give search engines more information about the page’s content. These tags are written in a language called JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data), which is designed to be easy to read and understand by both humans and machines alike. By adding schema markup to your website, you can help search engines better understand the content of your page and provide more relevant results for users who are searching for related information.
This can help boost your SEO rankings and increase traffic to your site from organic searches. Using schema markup can also help improve the visibility of your website in other ways, such as by providing rich snippets or featured snippets in search engine results pages (SERPs). Rich snippets are enhanced descriptions that appear alongside regular SERP listings and can include additional information such as ratings, reviews, images, videos and more. Featured snippets are special boxes that appear at the top of SERPs with direct answers to user queries based on the content of your webpage.
Overall, using schema markup on a website can help you get more visibility in organic search results and provide an improved experience for users who are looking for specific information online.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema.org
- https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-is-schema-beginner-s-guide-to-structured-data/
- https://www.searchenginejournal.com/technical-seo/schema/
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