Schema… Just the Facts Please

Lately, much has been said about Schema, both fact and fiction. Some purveyors have gone as far as claiming it to be the ‘silver bullet’, the end-all-be-all to organic search engine optimization. Just add Schema to your site and watch your organic traffic go through the roof. Such is not true.

First, what is Schema?
Founded by Google, Microsoft, and Yandex, Schema.org (often called Schema) is a semantic vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that can be added to your HTML (website code) to potentially influence the way search engines read your pages.

Will the addition of Schema help my organic search rankings?
According to John Mueller, Google’s Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst, “just to set expectations, structured data [Schema] generally wouldn’t be seen as a ranking factor — it’s just the search result that might be shown differently. Sometimes that difference is enough to make it worthwhile though. Also, think about what it is that you want to achieve with it, don’t just do it because it’s possible. (source)”

SEO industry giant Moz says the same: “As of yet, there is no conclusive evidence that this markup [Schema] improves rankings. (source)”

Can Schema hurt my site?
As Google says, “think about what it is that you want to achieve with it, don’t just do it because it’s possible.” Many RV website providers are “doing it just to do it” and haphazardly adding it to their clients’ sites. Having incorrect Schema may be worse than not having any at all as it sends the wrong information to Google.

In our extensive testing of other RV website providers’ Schema, they are all doing it incorrectly with multiple errors.

So what’s our approach?
All InteractRV websites are currently equipped with Schema, and free of errors. 🙂 We will continue to evolve our approach as the Schema landscape changes.

Please continue to communicate with your CSS/Account Manager if you have any questions.