Bots Read, Too: How Schema Markup Can Drive SERP Visibility & Entity Recognition

The world of digital marketing is one of constant change. To stay ahead of the constantly changing landscape, we need to not only create strong, helpful content for users but also translate that content into the language of the search engines. 

The Rosetta Stone that makes that translation possible is Schema Markup. Not only can it drive important SERP features like those star ratings, but it’s also important in making a website AI-ready and in establishing a brand’s authority by building entity-based relationships.

In this post, we’re going to dive into what schema is, how it’s driving further visibility in an era of traffic drop-off, how it connects to Google’s understanding of entities and its Knowledge Graph, and how it can help websites prepare for an AI-laden future state of the web.

What Exactly is Schema Markup?

At its foundation, schema markup is a standardized vocabulary (from Schema.org, which was a collaborative effort by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex launched over a decade ago) that is added to a website’s HTML. You can think of it as a notecard or a set of labels we use to explicitly tell search engines what the content is and what it means. Instead of letting Google guess at meanings and relationships, we are providing it with precise information, which enables us to move beyond just keyword matching to a deeper, contextual understanding.

There are a few ways to implement schema (JSON-LD, Microdata, RDFa), but JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is both my and Google’s preferred method for a few reasons: 

• It’s a cleaner implementation with a single block of code
• It’s great for nesting related information and defining complex entities
• It’s easier for a human to understand the relationships being built

Schema’s Role in Google’s Rich Results & Features

Many digital marketers already know that schema plays a vital role in winning Rich Results (all of those enhanced search results showing star ratings, review counts, dates, cook times, prices, etc). These absolutely offer a huge benefit by increasing your visibility in SERPs and making listings more attractive, which often can boost click-through rates (CTR). Numerous case studies have demonstrated significant increases in CTR after implementing relevant schema. 

However, the power of schema extends beyond just visual enhancements. The underlying mechanism is entity understanding.

Entities: The Heart of Modern Search

Google’s algorithms have been shifting from a “strings” (keywords) focus to a “things” (entities) approach for a long time (since at least 2012). A keyword is just a string of characters that Google has to assign a meaning to, whereas an entity is a unique, well-defined, and distinguishable thing or concept. Entities could be anything from a person, place, organization, event, product, or even an abstract idea. 

When you write a blog post with a focus on the keyword “apple,” Google has to determine if you are talking about the fruit or the international company. While Google can often interpret the context well enough, why would you leave that understanding to chance when you can be explicit in the true meaning of what you’re writing about? 

Schema markup is how you can provide that clarification. These entities can be further connected and defined by building out connections between other entities. If we connect the “apple” fruit entity to the “Granny Smith” entity and connect the “Apple” company entity to “Steve Jobs,” Google can surface more relevant information when it decides what a user is looking for. 

Google stores its vast understanding of these entities and their relationships in its Knowledge Graph, a massive, machine-readable encyclopedia of the world. Google builds this Knowledge Graph with a wide variety of sources, including: 

• Publicly available information that it finds in its crawl of the web
• Structured data markup (Schema) found on websites
• Authoritative public datasets like Wikipedia, Wikidata, and the CIA World Factbook
• Licensed data for specific information like stock prices, weather forecasts, and sports scores

Building Your Own Knowledge Graph & Connecting to Google’s Sources

Now we move on to the fun part: connecting your brand entities to each other and related topics. By clearly defining our entities and their relationships, and linking them to external, established entities, we can increase Google’s understanding of our content, products, and brand. By utilizing properties such as @id, sameAs, and knowsAbout, we can connect the puzzle pieces together.

@id (Unique Identification & Internal Connections): 

The @id property assigns a unique identifier to an entity in your JSON-LD script. It allows us to define an entity once and then reference it elsewhere on our website, thus creating an interconnected web of data showing how different entities (e.g., our Organization, its founder or authors (Person), its Products, their Reviews) are related to each other.

sameAs (External Profiles & Disambiguation): 

The sameAs property allows us to link an entity that we’ve defined on our site to its equivalent representation in external knowledge bases. This helps us further link together the different profiles a brand has built across the web into a singular entity. Key external sources include:

• Wikipedia pages
• Wikidata entries
• Official social media profiles
• Google Business Profile
• Google Knowledge Graph IDs

knowsAbout (Relationship Building): 

The knowsAbout property allows us to further connect an entity to topics on which it wants to be seen as knowledgeable. For example, if we are building the entity for a small digital marketing agency, I’d want to add a knowsAbout property that links to the Wikidata pages on search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing to further build the relationship in Google’s eyes.

Future Proof Your Website & SEO

The past shift towards entity-based understanding, the current rise of AI in search (Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode), and the future continued focus on anticipating the user journey all make a schema strategy more critical than ever. 

We already know that the LLMs that power AIs are utilizing schema for a variety of reasons, including grounding responses and giving the models more clarification without the need for parsing. Microsoft’s Copilot has been confirmed to utilize schema for further understanding, and it has been implied that Google’s Gemini makes use of schema for grounding answers.

Implementing strong, robust schema is no longer just an SEO tactic, it’s a strategy of its own to ensure that content is discoverable, understandable, and usable by the next generation of search.

Schema Implementation Best Practices

So, you’ve read this whole post and now you’re wondering, “How the hell do I build and utilize schema for my brand?” Well, you’re in luck because we have a few tips on how to approach the more practical side of schema development:

1. Prioritize the Schema You Build

Start with the foundational pieces of schema. Every website should have Organization (usually on your homepage or About Us page), WebSite (often nested with Organization schema on the homepage), and WebPage (on every page) schema. From there, you can move on to Person, Article, Product, Service, Recipe, Event, and beyond. For each page, identify the main entity (the Article on an article page, or the Product on a product page).

Remember that the usage of schema is still primarily focused on winning Google Rich Results, so ensure that you are targeting all of the features that your website may be eligible for.

2. Be Specific & Thorough
Here are three ways to do this:

• Choose the most specific schema types that are available (e.g., use Restaurant, Dentist, or OnlineStore instead of Organization)
• Be sure to use all of the required properties for Rich Result eligibility, as well as any of the recommended properties that are relevant
• Nest your schema! Think of your schema like layers of cake, you can continue to build upon each other to give further specificity. For example, a single piece of Product schema could have Review, Offer, MerchantReturnPolicy, Certification, Organization, and more, all nested within it, if relevant.

3. Test & Validate

Schema can be tricky and finicky, with a single missing comma invalidating the whole piece. Make sure to use the Schema Markup Validator for general syntax and Google’s Rich Results Test to ensure that the page is eligible for Rich Results.

4. Deployment

There are several methods for deploying schemas, including manual placement, CMS plugins (such as Yoast), and Google Tag Manager. Learn more about the best way to deploy schema here.

Looking Forward with Greenlane Search Marketing

Schema is one of the many dynamic areas of digital marketing with constant updates to available schema types and the Rich Results that they support. 

By embracing schema markup not just as another box to check on a technical SEO audit, but as a stand-alone strategy that enhances a website, you’ll be able to help search engines and AI systems alike to better understand, interpret, and showcase your content. 

If you have any questions on this post or would like our team at Greenlane Search Marketing to build a schema strategy for you, contact our team and find out if our Technical SEO Services are right for you!