Schema Markup & Schema Testing Tools

When you add Structured data or Schema Markup to your content it helps the search engines to better understand your content. You can add Schema to your articles, products, pages on your website and more. This helps your website to stand out in the search results.

To know if you are implementing the Structured Data the right way on your website you can use Structured data testing tools. These tools help you to find out and resolve any Schema Markup issues. There are many schema checkers available and you should use the tool which is best for you.

Schema testing tools

Google Rich Result Test
This tool allows you to use smartphones or desktops to test your URL or code. From the structured data implemented this tool helps you to determine if Google can detect rich experiences. Rich experiences refer to visuals or interactive features. It helps to evaluate the structured data written in RDFa, JSON-LD and Microdata.

Google Structured Data Testing Tool
This tool helps you to validate RDFa, JSON-LD and Microdata. It is one of the best schema markup checkers available in the market. You just have to paste the URL or code snippet you want to test and the tool will notify you about any issues.

Schema.Org
This tool is for content marketers who want to use structured data in their code but do not have technical knowledge. It allows you to test the website when you demand and identify the issues. It displays the code along with the testing results so that you can easily see what needs your attention.

Google Search Console’s Structured Data Report
Along with this tool, Google also provides a Schema Markup Report. This gives you a clear picture of your website’s Schema Markup. If your site is configured using Google Search Console then you can see the actual number of Schema elements on your website. This way you can address all the issues at one time rather than one at a time.

Microsoft Bing Markup Validator
This tool helps you to find the markup errors in your structured data and also suggests improvements. You can check JSON-LD, RDFa, OpenGraph and Microformats. However, this tool cannot be used to validate HTML structured data. This tool is available for free.

Yandex.Webmaster’s Structured Data Validator
This is a free tool and allows you to evaluate your website’s Schema Markup. It helps you to check OpenGraph, RDF, Schema.org and Microdata. It ensures that the search engine can correctly recognise metadata on your web pages. It also checks if the requirement meets the requirements of Yandex services.

JSON-LD Playground
Use this tool to find out if your code is implemented correctly with the JSON standards. You can enter the URL or the markup code to get a report. JSON-LD is used to implement Structured data by many and this tool helps you to determine if the syntax adheres to the standards.

SEO Site Checkup’s Microdata Schema Test
This tool helps you to check your HTML Microdata. It helps to make sure that your structured data is without any errors. To test you have to share your URL.

RDF Translator
This tool helps to convert your data formats into other structured data types. It can easily convert half a dozen data types from RDFa to JSON-LD. It allows text inputs or conversions triggered by URI. For developers, it also offers a simple REST API.

Structured Data Linter
This tool helps you to validate your structured data in HTML pages, especially in microdata, JSON-LD and RDFa formats. You can easily paste your URL, or code or upload a file to test. It offers the visualisation of snippets for Schema.org. It also offers vocabulary validations for Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol GoogRelations, Data-vocabulary.org and more.

Google email Markup Tester
You can paste the HTML you use in your emails into this tool to know if it meets the standard specifications. This tool can test your markups and the structured data that is extracted from your emails and find any errors. With any invalid input, you will be able to see the specific errors.

Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator
This is a shmena.org markup for creating data for articles, breadcrumbs, how-tos, FAQ schema and events. This tool allows you to perform a Rich Results test and identify and correct any errors in schema markup.

Microdata Tool
This is a free tool and can be used to test your HTML5 microdata. The tool is a simple drop-in script that can be included on your page for easy browsing and testing. You can use this tool without any web server or internet connectivity.

Understanding Schema

Schema Markup or Schema.org or structured data is a vocabulary that helps search engines to understand the information in a better way. When the search engines understand the meaning and the relationship between the entities they can serve rich results.

Schema is the language used to represent data and the actual data is called structured data. It helps to organise your page’s content.

For example, product schema is used to give Google more information about the products listed on your website. This will help the users to see more details about the product in the search results.

For example, breadcrumbs on a website are a text path found at the top of the page. Breadcrumb schema will tell the users where they are in the site structure and how many clicks will take them to the Home page.

Different types of Schema

Google understands 32 types of schema. They are as follows:

• Book
• Breadcrumb
• Article
• Carousel
• Course
• Dataset
• Employer Aggregate Rating
• Event
• FAQ
• Fact Check
• How-to
• Home Activities
• Job posting
• Image license
• Learning video
• Math solvers
• Movie
• Education Q&A
• Podcast
• Estimated Salary
• Q&A
• Practice Problems
• Recipe
• Speakable
• Software App (Beta)
• Video
• Subscription and paywalled content

Benefits of implementing Schema

The Structured data should follow the Google Webmasters Guidelines and Structured Data policies. Implementing Schema Markup can improve the visibility of your website in 3 ways:

• Structured data can help search engines better understand and index your data than the unorganised data you would use. Google has supported an increase in the number of structured data to accommodate the widely used RDF (Resource Description Frameworks) syntaxes. Schema Markup can be embedded into an HTML page using RDF, Microdata and JSON-LD.

• Structured data helps to implement a site structure that is independent of its design. Disorganised classification of data can result in several different URLs for the same product on the website. If you put your website together using structured data then the structure of your website will be clear. It will be easy to understand for the users and the search engines.

• Structured data helps you to link automatically through machines. Now the different types of data that can be useful to the user can be presented. The search engine is easily able to make more sense of the data.

How can Schema affect your search rankings?

Schema Markup is not a ranking factor but it helps the search engines to better understand a page’s content. This will not lead to any changes in the search rankings. If the Schema Markup is helpful in improving the visibility of your website then it could affect your rankings.

When Google sees structured data on your website it does two things:

• It vets your data to ensure that it is authoritative data.

• It ranks your data.

It also focuses on one main objective and that is to make it easy and as convenient as possible for users to find useful and relevant information. Google will like structured data or a schema website. Adding structured data will not improve your ranking but it will help to show rich snippets. Rich snippets are not a ranking factor either but they are interesting and may attract more people to click on them.

For example, brand schema can be used to build trust among users therefore you should add this schema to your website.

Is Schema important for SEO?

You can add the Schema Markup to your pages using Microdata, RDFa or JSON-LD. Schema is a best practice that you should implement on your web pages. It may take time and effort but it can provide many benefits.