JSON-LD Schema Structure for Local SEO

New SEO Schema Markups Released and Tested

First it might be helpful to explain what schema markup is. Back in 2011, the main search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing embarked on a collaborative project to develop code markup to help search engines understand what a specific website (or page on a website) is about.

Implementing on-page markup helps search engines understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results. This shared markup vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters to decide on a markup schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts. Search engines want to make it easier for people to find relevant information on the web.

City Ranked Media has been using schema markups on our clients’ websites since they were first released, when only 1,500 websites nationwide were using it. Initially there were less than 20 different markups. Fast-forward to today, and there are hundreds of markups available for use.

Why Schema Markup is Important for SEO

Schema markup is important because it helps the search engines understand what a particular page, your website, and/or what your business does. This markup was invented to help the search engines provide a more enriching experience to end users, but it’s up to your web developer to correctly deploy schema markup on your website.

There are literally hundreds of types of schema markups, so understanding what types of markup to deploy on a website can either help or hurt a website’s ranking.

City Ranked Media’s use of Schema Markup

As mentioned earlier, City Ranked Media has been using schema markup on client websites since the beginning, and as new schemas are released, we’ve tested and implemented these on client websites.

Keeping up with new schema releases, and testing these releases on select clients before an implementation becomes standard, has always been an important SEO strategy for us. In keeping with this proven process, City Ranked Media began testing a new format of schema called JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) in Quarter 4 of 2015.

For this newest testing, City Ranked focused on schema markup that would directly benefit businesses that offered services and products. Particular attention was focused on helping search engines understand a client’s:

• Physical Address
• Correct Business Name, Address, and Phone Number(s)
• Business Reviews
• Multi-Location – for clients that operate more than one business location
• Opening & Closing Hours, and Days of Operation
• Alternate Business Names

This schema also helps search engines understand a client’s services and products offered, including:

• Specific names of services and/or products for better ranking associated with corresponding keywords
• Reviews associated specifically with different services and/or products
• Availability of a service or product
• Geographic area of service or product available

It additionally helps search engines better understand a client’s website structure by:

• Achieving multiple clickable site-links on search engine results page for better engagement of search engine users
• Providing a better website structure and supporting structure to increase link-juice to main service pages, targeting highly competitive keywords

Furthermore, schema markup helps search engines better understand a client’s service area in order to:

• Achieve rankings outside of client’s immediate area by implementing markup to let search engines know where a client travels to, or where prospects travel from
• Target mobile and GPS-enabled devices for local SEO rankings
• Use existing search engine programs to help reinforce these service areas

Finally, schema helps search engines understand a client’s entire internet footprint; they tie on-page and off-page SEO efforts together through standardized JSON-LD markup to show the search engines all efforts being done in one place.

The Outcome of this New SEO for Local Search Rankings

City Ranked Media developed a new and proprietary way to structure JSON-LD markup. This markup was tested with several clients’ websites with many of them seeing increased results for targeted keywords and landing pages.

This new code structure showed extremely positive results with search engine rankings when compared to competitor websites not utilizing this structure. For example, one client achieved a 376% increase in SEO results when compared to over 300 competitive websites in the State of Washington (according to Google Analytics)