Discover Schema best practices for ecommerce DTC stores to enhance visibility, click-through rates

Understanding JSON Schema

JSON Schema is a coding language that annotates and validates JSON documents. It helps search engines understand what a webpage is about, how it connects to other pages on the site, and can transform web results into Rich Snippets. While Schema doesn't directly improve SEO, it can enhance click-through rates by making your SERPs more visually appealing, ultimately driving more traffic to your website.

Think of JSON Schema as a digital information pamphlet handed to search engines when they visit a webpage with valid Schema markup.

What are Schema Best Practices?

Schema Best Practices refer to the best possible (to our knowledge) way to implement and utilize Schema on a website. This includes taking into account the rule sets provided by JSON Schema, as well as Google's preference in accepting specific Schema types.

Not all Schema types are accepted by Google.

Below are two links to contextual articles that help us understand how to best use Schema, the guidelines are also included below for ease of use.

Understand How Structured Data Works | Google Search Central

General Structured Data Guidelines | Google Search Central

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How Does Baotris Use Schema?

Baotris uses the following Schema items at present:

• Local Business Schema is implemented on homepages
• Organization Schema to define your business entity in SERPs/for Google
• Logo Schema for homepage and Contact Us pages
• Blog Schema is implemented on blog posts
• FAQ Schema is implemented on any page that has FAQ's present on it

Multiple Schema types can be on the same page, we want to avoid duplicating the same Schema on the same page, however. This means having 2 Local Business Schema results on one page, with both representing the same business location, is inefficient. It is ok to have multiple locations defined in Schema so long as you are actually presenting two different physical locations, though.

Google Guidelines for Content & Schema

• Follow the Google webmasters quality guidelines.
• Provide up-to-date information. We won't show a rich result for time-sensitive content that is no longer relevant.
• Provide original content that you or your users have generated.
• Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page. For example, if the JSON-LD markup describes a performer, the HTML body must describe that same performer.
• Don't mark up irrelevant or misleading content, such as fake reviews or content unrelated to the focus of a page.
• Don't use structured data to deceive or mislead users. Don't impersonate any person or organization, or misrepresent your ownership, affiliation, or primary purpose.
• Content must not promote pedophilia, bestiality, sexual violence, violent or cruel acts, targeted hatred, or dangerous activities.
• Don't mark up content that engages in illegal activities or promotes goods, services, or information that facilitates serious and immediate harm to others. Marking up content that provides information about such content for educational purposes is permitted.

Content in structured data must also follow the additional content guidelines or policies, as documented in the specific feature guide. For example, content in JobPosting structured data must follow the job posting content policies. Content in Practice problems structured data must follow the Practice problems content guidelines.

Implementing Schema Best Practices

To make the most of Schema markup, follow these best practices based on JSON Schema guidelines and Google's preferences for specific Schema types:

1. Use appropriate Schema items: Implement Local Business Schema on homepages, Organization Schema to define your business entity in SERPs, Logo Schema on homepage and Contact Us pages, Blog Schema on blog posts, and FAQ Schema on any page with FAQs.
2. Avoid duplicating Schema types: Do not use the same Schema type multiple times on one page, representing the same information. However, it's acceptable to have multiple locations defined in Schema if you're presenting different physical locations.
3. Follow Google's content and Schema guidelines: Ensure your content follows Google's quality guidelines, provides up-to-date and original content, and doesn't mark up irrelevant or misleading content.
4. Relevance and Completeness: Your structured data must accurately represent the page content and include all required properties for your rich result type. Providing more recommended properties can improve the result quality for users.  For example: users prefer job postings with explicitly stated salaries than those without; users prefer recipes with actual user reviews and genuine star ratings (note that reviews or ratings not by actual users are considered spammy). Rich result ranking takes extra information into consideration.Here are some examples of irrelevant data:- A sports live streaming site labeling broadcasts as local events. - A woodworking site labeling instructions as recipes.
5. Location: Put the structured data on the page that it describes, unless specified otherwise by the documentation. If you have duplicate pages for the same content, we recommend placing the same structured data on all page duplicates, not just on the canonical page.
6. Specificity: Try to use the most specific applicable type and property names defined by schema.org for your markup. Follow all additional guidelines given in the documentation for your specific rich result type.
7. Optimize images: When specifying an image as a structured data property, make sure that the image is relevant to the page that it's on. For example, if you define the image property of NewsArticle, the image must be relevant to that news article.All image URLs must be crawlable and indexable. Otherwise, Google Search can't find and display them on the search results page. To check if Google can access your URLs, use the URL Inspection tool.
   

Additional Tips for Success

To optimize your ecommerce store's visibility using Schema, consider these additional tips:

1. Focus on the main purpose of the page: Include the main type of structured data that reflects the page's primary focus, making the page eligible for multiple search appearances.For example, if a page is mainly about a recipe, make sure to include Recipe structured data in addition to Video and Review structured data. This is an opportunity for that page to be eligible for multiple search appearances (recipe rich results, video search, and review snippets). If the page only contained Video structured data, Google Search wouldn't know enough about the page to also display it as a recipe rich result.
2. Ensure completeness: Include all visible structured data items on the page, such as multiple reviews, to accurately represent the content that users expect to see based on the search results.For example, if you include multiple reviews, make sure that you include all of the reviews that are visible to people on the page. If a page didn't mark up all of the reviews on a page, this would be misleading for people who expect to see all of those reviews, based on the appearance of the page in Search results.

Conclusion

Implementing Schema best practices can help ecommerce DTC store owners boost their website's visibility and click-through rates on SERPs. By following the guidelines and tips provided in this blog, you can improve your store's online presence, attract more customers, and ultimately, increase sales.

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