Now that John Mueller has suggested that Schema can help improve your rankings, SEOs are finally paying attention. The ranking benefits might be slight, but schema markup offers several other benefits.
The biggest challenge, however, is how to add it to your site. Here are some options.
How to add schema to your site manually
If you’re a developer, you can add schema directly to your web pages. You can do this in a couple of ways: by modifying your HTML or by adding a JSON-LD code snippet to your page. Google has no preference- they just want your data.
Some schema types are easy to add manually. I’m thinking of schema that will stay the same throughout your website’s life. For example: website, organization, and even local business schema data will always be the same. Why make this difficult? Just add it manually.
If you’re adding Schema manually, you’ll need to use Google’s Structured Data Tool. This can help you validate an existing webpage for properly formatted Schema. You can even use it to manually create Schema before you add it to a web page. This is particularly helpful when you have many types of Schema on a page. Sometimes they have to work together. This tool will help you untangle that potential mess.
Adding schema to your site with CMS plugins
Some CMSes have plugins that will insert Schema into your website for you. For example, the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress makes it easy to add website and organization schema. With a slight modification to your theme, the Yoast SEO plugin can also add breadcrumb markup to your pages. I’m sure other CMSes have similar plugins.
If you’re using a plugin to serve Schema, be sure to check its output with the Structured Data Tool. Sometimes plugins use outdated schema markup. Sometimes plugins break. Sometimes plugins lie. Before I use a plugin for schema, I always look for a live example in action and test it with Google’s tool.
This is especially true for Review Schema. Some plugins promise big but can’t deliver. In fact, if you do this wrong, Google might send you a nasty-gram through your Webmaster Tools account.
Adding schema to your site with Google Tag Manager
If you’re not using Google Tag Manager yet, now might be the time to start. Once you install it on your site, you can serve code without bugging your developer each time. It’s also the perfect way to serve Schema data to Google.
For static Schema (website, organization, and even Local Business), Google Tag Manager makes it easy. Just add it as a static code tag and tell GTM the pages you want it to serve on.
Where GTM shines is when you need to add dynamically generated schema. GTM can read your site’s DOM and use those elements to create JSON-LD-encoded schema markup. This works well for breadcrumb and even article schema.
GTM can be a little technical (so you might need a developer’s help). Thanks to GTM’s preview tool, you can keep trying things out until you get it to work. One thing I do is create the schema in the Structured Data Tool and then paste it into GTM. Be sure to test it (again) in the Structured Data Tool after you publish your schema on your live site.
Schema is always changing. Keep an eye on it. In fact, if you log in to your (old version of) Google Search Console, it will tell you if you have any schema errors.
The good news: Google is forgiving when it comes to schema. I’ve seen several instances of incorrectly implemented schema that Google still used. As more people implement it, however, I’d make sure mine was right. Clean up your schema so Google knows exactly what you mean.