What Is Schema Markup for SEO?
Schema markup (also called structured data) is standardized code from Schema.org added to a web page that tells search engines what a thing IS, rather than making them infer it from the text. It marks a price as a price, a rating as a rating, a recipe as a recipe, which makes the page eligible for rich results in search listings.
Schema markup bridges the gap between how people read a page and how machines interpret it. When your page says "29 a month," a person reads that as a price. Without structured data, a search engine sees a number in a sentence. Schema lets you state it plainly: this is a Product, this is its price, this is whether it is in stock. The most important point is that the RIGHT schema type depends on what you actually sell: - A store item uses Product schema with price and availability, so a listing can show the price and "in stock" directly. - An online course uses Course schema, with the provider and what the course covers. - A mobile app uses SoftwareApplication schema, with its category, platform, and rating. - A blog post uses Article schema, with the author, headline, and date. - A page that answers a list of common questions uses FAQPage schema. - A recipe uses Recipe schema; an event uses Event schema; a business location uses LocalBusiness schema. Be honest about what schema does and does not do. It does not improve your rankings directly. What it does is make a rich result POSSIBLE, and the search engine still chooses whether to show one for any given query. Worse, schema that contradicts what a visitor actually sees on the page, marking up a price you do not display, or reviews that are not real, can get a site penalised rather than rewarded. The rule is simple: only mark up what is genuinely on the page. Most sites add schema as JSON-LD, a small block of code in the page head that does not change the visible content. Microdata and RDFa are older attribute-based alternatives, less common now.
Why it matters
Structured data is how a search engine, and increasingly an AI answer, knows what your page is about with confidence instead of guessing. A store, a course creator, and an app developer each need a different schema type, and matching it to the product is the difference between being eligible for a useful rich result and being ignored. The same discipline that makes good schema, saying clearly what a thing is, who it is for, and what is true about it, is the discipline that makes clear page content in the first place.
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
Does schema markup improve my rankings directly?+
No. Schema is not a direct ranking factor. It makes a rich result possible, and the search engine decides whether to show one. Rich results can lift click-through rate, which may help indirectly, but the markup itself does not move you up the page.
Can schema markup ever hurt my site?+
Yes, if it contradicts the visible page. Marking up prices you do not show, or ratings that are not genuine, is treated as misleading structured data and can lead to a manual penalty. Only mark up content that a visitor can actually see on the page, and test it with Google's Rich Results Test.