Schema Markup

Schema markup is a standardised vocabulary of microdata you add to your HTML to help search engines understand the meaning of your content. Instead of just seeing "a block of text", Google can recognise that the text is a recipe, the number 5 is a star rating, and the name "Jane Doe" is the author.

This added context lets search engines display your content as a Rich Snippet in search results — which typically leads to higher click-through rates.

While some SEO plugins can add basic schema automatically, the most valuable and specific schema usually requires custom implementation. You need to programmatically add the correct JSON-LD data based on the actual content of each page.

Chris Haines, an SEO director and content writer at Ahrefs, has published a comprehensive guide↗ on how to implement and use schema markup.