Why Schema.org Plugins Don’t Cut it for Serious Digital Marketers

I am often asked by digital marketers how Schema App compares to other SEO and Schema.org WordPress Plugins. This drives me NUTS! In my opinion, WordPress plugins do a disservice to digital marketers who are serious about using Schema.org to drive great online results and bring awesome value to their customers. Here’s why:

Why Plugins Suck for Schema.org Markup

Plugins alone do markup on a page by page basis. While the markup is accurate (and usually very basic), it is on an island leaving the schema markup incomplete. Why is that bad? Well, Schema.org was created as a language for search engines to better understand the context of content. In order to provide context, one must understand how the “thing”, or entity being described relates to other things. Plugins miss this completely.

For example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you will want to define the parent organization and its locations. The relationship between the two is important. If that same business has distributors or suppliers, you would want to call out that relationship. If the type of business you are optimizing is not defined by Schema.org, then you will want to use a Wikipedia reference to clarify it further. This linking of data enables you to declare the relationships between things, and allows you to build a company’s knowledge graph.

This linking is what makes Schema.org an exciting step in the journey towards the Semantic Web. Schema App is created to enable this connected web and provide SEO strategists with ample ways to connect their entities into the web, or knowledge graph. Connecting the entities can get messy. This is why hardcore schema markup experts do their markup manually. It’s also why we created Schema App. Schema App allows Digital Marketers to manage the entities and not have to worry about maintaining the code.

Umm…Schema App has a WordPress Plugin?

Now to be fair, Schema App does have a WordPress plugin. Schema App’s WordPress Plugin is just one small part of our fully featured suite of tools. It works with our Schema App Editor to deploy JSON-LD markup to your WordPress site automatically. With our Schema App Editor + Schema App WordPress Plugin, you can create rich, detailed, and connected markup for your entire website and deploy it automatically. For those looking for just the basics, our plugin on its own does basic markup on all pages and posts.

My Biggest Pet Peeve

My biggest pet peeve is that plugins are tactical. They add markup, and that’s it. They don’t give you the ability to manage the markup, to customize it, to connect it to the world wide web, Wikipedia, etc. As a result, plugins are failing digital marketers. There is so much more to schema markup. I want to see schema users rise above the tactical markup for rich snippets, and embrace the full power of structured data, to create beautiful knowledge graphs of connected data. When digital marketers embrace this future state, they will recognize the immense value its creates. The rich results will deliver the higher click through rates, and their clients will see new traffic on their sites for people who are looking for what they do, or something very related.

Finally, when we do schema.org markup right, we get to use the detailed data model to enhance other things, like our Google Analytics. Semantic analytics provides custom reports to your clients mashing together what the pages are about with their traffic. A great way to see what is truly driving traffic and conversions. Semantic analytics is a way to differentiate your agency while providing awesome value to your clients.

Take Full Advantage of Structured Data

If you are serious about using the full power of structured data, I encourage you to think beyond the plugin. Try a professional tool that delivers on features and differentiates you with advanced applications of Schema…..and I would be over the moon if you chose Schema App! Set up a call with our technical experts today to get started.