Customers use “search” to research, engage and buy. Search Engines like Google, Siri, and Alexa, are the gatekeepers to your data – your virtual front door. Their goal is to provide relevant answers. Your goal is to attract your target audience. Applying Schema markup to your digital data ensures that it is explicitly understood by these gatekeepers. The outcome? Higher quality organic traffic which results in greater engagement, conversions and ultimately, revenue.
Schema App, an innovative semantic search company, puts Schema Markup into the hands of Digital Marketers – so that they can translate their content into the language of search engines and gain unprecedented value as a result of doing so.
Understanding Schema markup (.pdf whitepaper)
What is Schema Markup and how does it benefit your business? (video)
How We Work…aka our Values
We are Excellent to One Another
If we all had the same strengths and ideas … we’d be missing out. Our differences make us strong and competitive and our diversity makes it fun to work here. We want you to bring your whole self to work!
We respect each another and believe in the power of the teamwork and inclusivity, so we collaborate, leverage each other’s strengths and share responsibilities – even the dreaded task of emptying the dishwasher!
We Value Speed, Agility, and Follow-Through
When we say we’ll do something, you can count on it getting done. We design with the ideal in mind but we move FAST and know when to prioritize progress over perfection. Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.
We “WOW” our Customers
Your success brings us joy – Seriously! There are a lot of high fives when we know you are rocking it! We love exceeding your expectations. We put our energy into building what you need and incorporating your feedback into our plans.
We Love to Learn
We are constantly learning and exploring new ways to delight our customers and when we discover something great, we share our knowledge … with each other, with our customers and with the market.
We are Honest and Transparent
As individuals, it would be great to be perfect, but that’s just not life. When we are honest and transparent about our strengths and weaknesses, great things happen – innovation increases and so does collaboration and quality.
Our customers can count on us to do the right thing- even if that means pointing you to another service provider who can serve you better.
We Give Back
It feels good to give back to our community, so we volunteer, make monetary donations, provide free services and mentor.
We strive to be the most comprehensive structured data tools on the market.
We are your structured data experts.
We love hearing from you.
Meet our Leadership Team
Mark van Berkel, creator of Schema App
Mark van Berkel is the co-founder and COO of Hunch Manifest and the creator of Schema App. He is an expert in Semantic Technology and Semantic Search Marketing. Mark built Schema App to solve his own challenges in writing and validating schema markup. Mark loves solving complex problems. He is a system thinker, hungry to automate repetitive tasks, a digital marketing expert, and technology leader. Before starting Hunch Manifest, he spent 15 years as an SAP solution architect and consultant for companies like Panasonic, Shell, and GE. He has a Masters in Information Engineering (Semantic Technology), and an MBA From the University of Toronto.
Martha van Berkel, CEO Schema App
Martha van Berkel is the co-founder and CEO of Hunch Manifest (the creator of Schema App). She is responsible for all customer-facing functions, including Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, HR, and Facilities. In addition to being the face and voice of Schema App, she is a visionary, who possesses the unique ability to create and define new markets, get customers excited about opportunities and onboard them. Before Schema App, Martha spent 14 years at Cisco as an intrapreneur, product manager, leader, and program manager. A highlight from Cisco was leading the creation and adoption of Service APIs with AT&T. She is a seasoned leader, knows how to build teams, sell ideas, and explain complicated technology in simple terms. Martha holds a B.Sc in Mathematics and Engineering from Queen’s University and a certificate in Strategy & Innovation from MIT.
Our Journey
Mark studied semantics in University and after completing his MBA, wanted to develop a software business where he could apply his learnings. He started down the early adopter path and created an online marketplace between homeowners and contractors. He figured that if he brought them together, he could create value for both parties. Martha, while balancing other activities at the time, was able to devote some of her energy into trying to recruit contractors into the program. Although the marketplace was a great idea, the contractors struggled to see the value of having a presence online, so Martha and Mark redirected their focus to helping small businesses market themselves online instead.
Mark developed an “online maturity model” that coached small businesses in the tasks they needed to complete to mature their online capabilities. The tasks were in the areas of directory listings, email marketing, and online analytics. Unfortunately, most of the businesses they worked with either didn’t have the aptitude or the interest to do the heavy lifting themselves, so they started to do it for them, thus becoming a marketing agency. While the agency work paid the bills, it was not the semantic software product Mark had dreamed about.
While attending a conference for semantic technologies, a comment made by an industry guru planted the seed for what was to become Schema App. Barbara Starr, joined by Google and Best Buy (an early adopter of Schema Markup) observed that there were people who understood SEO and people who understood semantic technologies, but very few people understood both. Mark knew both, so he decided to become a Schema Specialist and built a tool that was inclusive of the entire schema.org vocabulary. They started doing Schema markup using JSON-LD for their small business clients using their new tool. At that time adding markup wasn’t delivering rich results – it was even too early for Google, but six months later in August 2015, Google said that they would support JSON-LD.
This presented a new opportunity, so Martha and Mark stepped back to evaluate their options. Focusing exclusively on Structured Data would be new, complicated, and fun. They decided to go “all in” and Schema App was born. Since then, the company has been going gangbusters. Customers from all over the world have reached out to them eager to explore how Schema App can help them to improve their online success.