So, before you get involved in this, let me tell you the short answer for this question, does adding schema.org markup improve your content ranking position in Google search results?
Before I answer that question, let me stress on a very important thing, schema.org markup is a code you put in a webpage to provide more details to help search engines return useful and informative results to search users.
So, the answer is: No!
Yes, sadly; the direct relation between adding schema.org markup and ranking position in search results is unknown, it’s still mistry!
It seems Google won’t share this kind of information, they never been open about this. From the other hand, there is no enough researches or case studies to reveal the truth.
If you search Google for schema markup, you will reach a ton of articles and blog posts:
- Mentioning schema markup and how it can benefit your website.
- About getting started with implementing schema markup.
- About how to implement schema markup by adding some scary code straight to your pages.
- Recommending WordPress plugins that helps you add the markup.
However, there is still no hard evedent of direct relation between a high ranking spot in search results and if a webpage includes shcmea.org markups or not.
So, most of those who wrote artiles about schema.org benefist and implementation were talking about what they have no idea of, really! Only very few articles I read were actually valuable.
Don’t Be Selfish!
For me, this was a different story, I haven’t wrote about how to add schema markup to give people examples! Instead, I’ve spent several hours, weeks, and months working on a solution, something that do give real value, and put that to work.
Schema isn’t going to increase any webpage ranking position in search resutlts, schema.org markup isn’t about that!
Stop being selfish and help in making search engines better!
I believe adding schema markup is a good call, so I’ve done it to most of my sites. Even here at the Famous Blog, it’s all marked up.
I went ahead and developed Schema.org plugin for WordPress users to make it super easy for publishers, news agencies, writers, and bloggers to add schema.org markup to their content, by simply doing nothing extra.
So, What else Schema markup is good for?
That’s a good question!
Schema markup can increase your organic search traffic, indeed!
This is proven, I’ve personally done it, still doing it, and been helping out many people with their websites every day in the last 4 years of my life!
You can definatly try it out, marking your content with different types of schema.org markup (example: Review, Product, Recipe, etc.), these types may lead Google to display Rich Snippets in search results, and it is worth it.
And, if you are into a simple WordPress review plugin, you must check out the Schema Review extension for Schema plugin, which is made for Authors and Editors reviews. So, if you like to review things, get that plugin. It should increase CTR of your search results, which means more traffic and conversion.
Want more advanced reviews features?
Get WPRS, a schema review plugin that will give you the power of building a complete reviews site.
I’ve been working closely with SEOs and internet marketers who reported 300% increase in their site search traffic, and others who wasn’t been able to make a single dollar sales before implementing schema.org markup to their sites.
Return on Investment of Adding Structured Data
- 30% Increase in Click through Rates on Search Results with a Rich Snippet (Search Engine Land 2011)
- 31.3% of websites have structured data (acm queue 2015)
- ~+4 Increase Search Rank Positions compared to domains without schema.org (Search Metrics 2014) * This is hard to correlate directly,since additional ranking may be because of domains who have adopted schema.org have also done better overall SEO optimization
- ~36.6% of Search Results Include at Least One rich Snippet (Search Metrics 2014)
- Rich Snippets With HTML Microdata And RDF schema.org – U.S. 2014 (Search Metrics 2014)
- Search Results in Position 2 with a Star Rating Rich Snippet Captures 76% of Clicks over position 1 result (Blue Nile Research 2015)
- Significantly increased search traffic for pages that are semantically enriched (Jarno van Driel, 2015)
- Increased Business Intelligence and data driven content strategies (Semantic Search Marketing Google+ Community Hangout, 2015)
- Study: 300 Google Sitelinks Search Boxes – Triggers and Trip-Ups Analyzed (Moz 2016)
- We Analyzed 1 Million Google Search Results (Back Linko 2016)
While the data over the years has showed that there is value in adding structured data to your site, much of it revolved around whether or not you could get a rich snippet in search results and the increased click through rate, and ranking position of those results.
Can wrong implementation of Schema impact on rankings?
This question has been answered in Quora, my answer is: No!
I’ve seen a lot of sites with wrong schema.org markup implementation, duplication, and many errors, no complains!
To Markup or Not To Markup?
You are either one of those:
1- You got hit by schema?
Good news…
I’ve introduced a new plugin to wp.org to deal with schema.org markup
-> Get the Schema Plugin
That plugin will take care of a stressful extra daily task, done for you.
2- You don’t care about schema?
You are good, maybe you will be left behind when schema.org markups become a ranking factor. But any ways, you are a happy person for now, no worries, you can catch up later!
Success story?
If you have added schema.org markup to your site and got great results or even not very good results, I would love to hear about it!