In our earlier article, we have explained how to add rich snippets to your WordPress site. Rich snippets are structured data added to your site using schemas as per schema.org specifications. Google and other search engines can understand many schema types on a web page. However, it is wise to use few selected schema types that is suitable for your site’s content instead of trying everything available. In this article, we will explain top 5 schemas you should use in WordPress to skyrocket your click-through rate from search results.
Note: Nowadays, Google does not show structured data frequently in search results, especially FAQ and How-to schemas. However, this situation always changes and it is always a good idea to nicely present your content to readers for better user experience.
Top 5 Schemas for WordPress Site
Go to schema.org website’s documentation page and click on “Open hierarchy” to view all available schemas for a website. You can further click on single schema type to view the complete details for that.
Among hundreds of available options, here are top 5 schemas we feel you can easily insert in WordPress and get user attraction in search results.
- Breadcrumb
- Reviews
- FAQ
- How-to
- Product
Let us explain each of them in detail.
1. Breadcrumb Schema
Breadcrumb is a navigational structure to inform users and search engines about the relative position of a page on your site. Google, Bing and other search engines show breadcrumb in the search result pages instead of the URL.
Breadcrumb contains a list item, separator and an order for the structure. This is very useful for the sites with large number of categories and organized the pages under parent/child category relationship.
- Many themes like Newspaper offer inbuilt breadcrumb option that is easy to enable with single click.
- You can use dedicated plugins like Breadcrumb NavXT to insert customized breadcrumb for your site.
- Popular SEO plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math offers breadcrumb option as this is part of site optimization. The best part of using this option is that you can choose the primary category to show in the breadcrumb when you assign multiple categories to a single post.
2. Review Schema
There are many review sites available on the internet offering recommendations to users. This is also an easy way to earn handsome money from affiliate marketing by recommending the products you use to your readers. You can target to either create a complete review site or integrate review schema on your existing site. Review ratings in the search result can help you to boost the click through rate. In addition, users can also use the ratings to understand the popularity of your review.
WordPress has plenty of review themes and plugin for this purpose. Most of the commercial themes integrate review schema as part of the theme. However, we recommend using plugins like Schema Pro or other dedicated review plugins. You can setup global options to choose the review style and customize the look of each review post in the editor.
Otherwise, you can try free plugins like Spectra which comes with the popular Astra theme. In this case, you can use Review block to insert and customize the review on single post.
3. FAQ Schema
FAQ schema allows you to show a list of questions and answers to explain a product of thing. Though you can have a separate FAQ page to explain the purpose of your website, it is common to use FAQ schema within a post. It helps you to offer useful details in Q&A format so that users can understand the article’s content.
Yoast SEO offers FAQ block for Gutenberg editor that you can use to insert frequently asked questions on your page. However, you have to style the appearance of the block to blend with your theme’s layout.
Remember, there are many FAQ plugins available for WordPress like Ultimate FAQ. These plugins help you to create FAQ as a custom post type and insert anywhere on your site. However, there is no schema used for this purpose and hence you will not see the structured data in Google Search Console as well in search results. So, do not confuse with adding FAQ widget and FAQ schema.
4. How-to Schema
How-to schema is the best option for bloggers publishing tutorial articles. You can explain the step-by-step instructions using this schema and showcase them on the search results. It will appear similar to FAQ snippet with few other additional details. Again, Yoast SEO offers a How-to block for Gutenberg editor that you can use for this purpose. Otherwise, Rank Math or any other schema plugin for this purpose.
5. Product Schema
Adding review schema for third-party products is one option. However, showcasing your own products is the best way to get trust and attract users. Product page needs price, reviews, inventory and other details making it more complicated compared to other schema types. You have to use ecommerce plugins like WooCommerce to create product pages with all relevant details.
If you only want sell digital goods then try simple plugins like Easy Digital Downloads instead of WooCommerce. This will help you to avoid slow page loading due to heavy ecommerce scripts.
Schema Plugins for Gutenberg
Though plugins like Yoast offers blocks with schema for Gutenberg editor, it does not validate whether you have entered all required details for the schema. This will lead to errors in your schema and as a result your page will not show rich result in Google search results. You can validate pages with schema using the official Schema Markup Validator tool. However, this is a manual process and you need to fix the errors for each page containing rich schema in your site. The best way to avoid schema implementation mistakes is to use an automatic validation when you add the details. We recommend using plugins like Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg which will help you to validate the details when you insert the block.
The plugin allows you to add FAQ, How-to, Table of Contents and Review schema blocks. Whenever you insert any review block, you will see all missing data required for that schema block as show above. This will help you to fill the correct details and show your page properly in Google search results.
Final Words
Nowadays, adding structured data to your pages and showcasing them in Google is the major SEO work. This is the reason you can see many SEO plugins like Yoast offers these schemas as part of their framework. However, we recommend you not getting lost by trying too many schemas. Choose your favorite one and focus on building quality content with that format. For example, you can go with review schema if you are writing product review articles or choose How-to schema when you publish lot of tutorial articles.
