Have you ever landed on a Google result that includes star ratings? This bit of additional information is called a rich snippet, and the code used to tell the search engine to find that information is called schema markup. When you add schema to WordPress, you can increase the chance that your site gets those eye-catching rich results!
While there’s no direct ranking boost from schema markup, rich snippets help make your site more visible in the organic search results, which is always a good thing.
What do schema markup and rich snippets look like?
Schema markup is behind-the-scenes code that you add to your WordPress site. Humans won’t ever see it, but search engines like Google use it to better understand your content and add something called rich snippets, which look like this:
Stars aren’t the only rich snippets you’ll see, either. For instance, you might see a recipe search result with the number of reviews, calories in the recipe, and the amount of time it takes to complete the dish.
This type of rich snippet is great for food blogs.
Depending on what type of content you have, you’ll add different schema markup. Schema markup most commonly shows up in the following:
- People
- Products
- Reviews
- Recipes
- Software applications
- Events
- Videos
- Articles
- Local businesses – We have a guide for business addresses and other schema info.
- Books
So how can you add schema to WordPress for your content? Just follow this guide:
Step 1: Install a schema markup plugin
Several developers have plugins to help you add schema to WordPress. I like the All In One Schema Rich Snippets plugin because of its reputation and support for most rich snippets:
To start, install and activate the plugin on your WordPress site, then find the Rich Snippets tab on the left side of your WordPress dashboard.
Step 2: Configure and add schema to WordPress
Technically, the schema markup functionality is already added to your WordPress site. However, you can configure what shows up. After that, each post or page you create requires you to specify if you’d like to show the schema markup on your search results.
On the Rich Snippets page, you’ll see a configuration tab. Underneath, all of the schema markup types are shown.
When you click on one, such as Item Review, several fields are shown, specifying which rich snippets show up on the frontend and on the search results.
You don’t have to change anything on this page, but it’s a good idea to know which snippets are showing. In addition, you can remove some of them if needed. For example, you might not want to have a rating or a review date:
The customization tab provides colors for you to adjust. Once again, you have the option to leave the presets, but you may want to match the snippet box to your website’s branding. This snippet box will appear towards the end of your WordPress post, so that’s what you’re customizing. It actually has nothing to do with the way your schema markup looks in the search engines.
After everything is customized, click on the Update Colors button.
Schema markup works wonders for eCommerce websites. You can highlight products through blog post reviews and feature your customer ratings right in the search engine. However, I would recommend removing this checkbox if you have WooCommerce running. The WooCommerce plugin already comes with schema support, so it conflicts by adding a duplicate schema.
Step 3: Create or edit a post
As we talked about before, the schema markup doesn’t appear for a post/page unless you activate it individually. Therefore, go to Posts > Add New, or find a post you already created to add schema to WordPress.
Composing your content is the same as always. Type in your title and fill in the text editor with whatever you want. You’ll then want to scroll below the text editor to find the schema markup tools.
Step 4: Configure rich snippets on the post
Once you find the Configure Rich Snippets module, select the drop-down menu to see your options. For this tutorial, I’m making an Item Review.
Each schema markup option is different, but the Item Review schema asks for the reviewer’s name, item to be reviewed, and a rating.
After publishing or previewing the post, you can see the rich snippet towards the bottom of the post:
If you want to test whether or not your schema markup is working, you can plug your post’s URL into Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
As a second example below, you can see how different the schema markup is for recipes. For example, you have to fill in fields for the time required, nutrition, and ingredients. It even has a spot for an image.
That’s how to add schema to WordPress
While schema markup might not have a direct effect on your WordPress site’s SEO, it’s still a great way to make your content more visible in the organic search results, so it’s worth taking the time to add it to your site.
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