Category: SEO

  • Schema Markup: Boost Your Website’s SEO and Visibility

    Schema Markup: Boost Your Website’s SEO and Visibility

    In today’s crowded digital landscape, having great content is no longer enough. If search engines cannot understand your pages, your content may never reach the right audience. This is where schema markup comes in. By adding structured data to your website, you help search engines interpret your content accurately, making it more likely to appear in enhanced search results.

    But what exactly is schema markup, and how can it benefit your site? In this guide, we’ll break down the fundamentals, explain why it matters, and show you how to implement it effectively.

    What is Schema Markup?

    Schema markup, also known as structured data, is a type of code added to your website that helps search engines understand the meaning behind your content. While humans can easily recognise a recipe, a product listing, or an event, search engines rely on this to identify these elements accurately.

    Think of this as a pair of glasses for search engines – it clarifies your content and ensures nothing gets lost in translation. With the right markup, your pages can appear as rich results in search engines, displaying extra details like ratings, cooking times, event dates, or product prices.For example, a recipe page with schema markup may show not only the title and URL but also star ratings, prep time, and calories right in Google’s search results. This not only improves visibility but also encourages users to click through to your website.

    In short, schema markup transforms your content from something search engines simply index to something they can interpret and showcase more effectively.

    Why Schema Markup Matters for SEO

    Implementing schema markup is more than just a technical exercise — it directly impacts how your content performs in search results. When search engines can clearly understand your content, they are more likely to display it in rich results, which stand out from standard listings.

    Rich results often include images, ratings, prices, event details, or FAQs, making your page more attractive and clickable. This can lead to:

    • Higher click-through rates (CTR): Users are drawn to pages with additional visible information.
    • Better indexing: Search engines can categorise and display your content more accurately.
    • Increased visibility in voice search: Devices like Google Home and Alexa often rely on structured data to pull precise answers.

    While schema markup alone won’t guarantee a #1 ranking, it complements quality content and domain authority, making your pages more competitive in search results. Simply put, structured data helps search engines help your users.

    Ready to boost your site’s SEO performance? Explore professional Search Engine Optimisation services to implement schemas effectively and improve your visibility.

    Types of Schema Markup

    Schema markup comes in many types, each designed to describe different kinds of content. Implementing the right types ensures that search engines can fully understand your pages and display them effectively in rich results. Here’s a more detailed look:

    WebPage

    The WebPage schema tells search engines that a page is a standard webpage and provides basic information about it. This is a foundational markup, often used site-wide, and can be combined with other schemas like BreadcrumbList to clarify page hierarchy.

    Example: Your homepage, an “About Us” page, or a service page can all use WebPage markup to establish their role on the website.

    BreadcrumbList

    BreadcrumbList schema adds a trail of links showing the page’s location within your website’s structure. This helps both users and search engines understand the site hierarchy.

    Example: For an eCommerce site, a product page might show Home > Category > Subcategory > Product in the breadcrumbs. When marked up, these breadcrumbs can appear in Google’s search results.

    Organisation

    The Organisation schema provides structured information about your business, including your name, logo, contact details, and social media profiles. This helps Google display enhanced results like Knowledge Panels.

    Example: Adding Organisation schema ensures your business appears correctly in search results and Google Maps, improving credibility and local visibility.

    Article & BlogPosting

    Article and BlogPosting schema enhance news or blog content by specifying details like the headline, author, date published, and images. They are essential for publishers who want to appear in rich search features.

    Example: A blog post about SEO tips could use BlogPosting markup to display the title, author, publish date, and even featured images in search results.

    Product & Offer

    These schemas are vital for eCommerce. Product schema provides details like product name, description, SKU, and brand. Offer schema adds pricing, availability, and sales info. When combined, they often display as rich product snippets with star ratings, price, and stock status.

    Example: A product page for headphones could show price, availability, and reviews directly in Google search results.

    Review & Rating

    Review schema lets search engines understand user ratings and reviews. Pages with reviews can appear in rich snippets with stars, boosting click-through rates.

    Example: A restaurant page could display star ratings from multiple reviewers in search results, helping it stand out from competitors.

    Event

    Event schema highlights upcoming events such as concerts, workshops, or conferences. It can include date, location, ticket price, and organiser information.

    Example: A concert venue could have structured data for each event, making it more likely to show in event-specific rich results on Google.

    FAQPage & QAPage

    FAQPage schema allows you to mark up a list of questions and answers, making them eligible for rich results with expandable sections. QAPage schema works for community Q&A or forums.

    Example: A product FAQ page could display the top questions directly in Google’s search results, giving users immediate answers.

    LocalBusiness & Place

    For local businesses, LocalBusiness schema is essential. It provides business type, address, phone, opening hours, and geo-coordinates. Place is broader and can describe locations like parks, landmarks, or museums.

    Example: A café can use LocalBusiness markup to appear in Google’s local pack with opening hours and location.

    Creative Works

    This includes Book, Movie, MusicRecording, Recipe, and TVSeries. These schemas are for media content, allowing rich search features like review stars, cooking time, or streaming availability.

    Example: A recipe page with Recipe schema could display prep time, calories, ingredients, and user reviews directly in Google search results.

    By using multiple schema types strategically, you increase the chances of your content appearing in various rich results, enhancing visibility, CTR, and user engagement.

    How to Add Schema Markup

    Adding schema markup to your website doesn’t have to be intimidating. While it involves a bit of code, there are simple ways to implement it and make your pages eligible for rich results.

    1. Choose the Right Schema Type

    Before adding a schema, identify the type that fits your content. For example:

    • Blog posts → BlogPosting
    • Product pages → Product and Offer
    • Local businesses → LocalBusiness
    • FAQs → FAQPage

    Start with the schema that will give the most value in search results for your users.

    2. Use JSON-LD Format

    There are three main ways to implement schema: RDFa, Microdata, and JSON-LD. Google recommends JSON-LD because it is easier to implement, keeps your code clean, and is less prone to errors. JSON-LD is usually added within a <script type=”application/ld+json”> tag in your page’s <head> or <body>.

    Example of simple JSON-LD for a local business:

    3. Add Schema Sitewide or Page-by-Page

    • Sitewide: For schemas like WebPage or BreadcrumbList, you can add the markup globally through your CMS, theme settings, or via Google Tag Manager.
    • Page-specific: For schemas like Product, Article, or FAQPage, you’ll need to add the JSON-LD directly to the relevant page. Many CMS platforms allow a custom script field in the page settings for this purpose.

    4. Use Schema Markup Generators

    If you don’t want to write code manually, there are free generators like TechnicalSEO.com Schema Generator or Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. Input your content details, and they will produce JSON-LD markup ready to add to your site.

    5. Test and Validate

    After implementing schemas, it’s crucial to test it:

    Always fix errors – warnings are optional, but can help improve your markup. Proper validation ensures search engines can read and display your structured data correctly.

    Need help adding schemas to your website? Check out our professional Web Development services to get your pages fully optimised and eligible for rich results.

    How Schema Markup Works

    Now that you know how to add schema markup, let’s explore how it works behind the scenes.

    Communicating with Search Engines

    Schema markup acts as a “translator” between your content and search engines. It provides context to your pages, helping search engines understand the type of content, key elements, and how users might interact with it.

    For example, a recipe page without schema may only show a title, URL, and meta description. With Recipe schema, search engines can pull prep time, ingredients, calories, and ratings to display a rich snippet. This extra clarity can boost visibility and click-through rates.

    Enabling Rich Results

    When search engines read schema markup, they can create rich results: enhanced listings on search pages with images, ratings, breadcrumbs, event dates, and more. Rich results are visually appealing and occupy more space on SERPs, increasing the chance of user clicks.

    Example:

    • Simple search result: Shows title, URL, and meta description.
    • Rich result with schema: Adds star ratings, images, FAQs, or event info.

    Improving Indexing

    Search engines use schema to better categorise and index your content. By explicitly defining page elements, search engines are more confident about the relevance of your pages, which can indirectly support SEO and increase visibility.

    Supporting Voice Search

    Schema markup also helps with voice search on devices like Google Home, Alexa, or Siri. Structured data allows these assistants to extract precise answers from your pages, enabling faster, more accurate responses for queries like “Where is the nearest café?” or “Show me vegan cookie recipes.”

    Want to make your content work harder and reach more users? Explore our expert Content Marketing services to optimise your pages with effective schemas and boost search visibility.

    Where Schema Markup Displays Rich Results

    Schema markup can transform the way your pages appear in search results by enabling rich results. Unlike standard search listings that show only a title, URL, and meta description, rich results can include extra information that makes your page more engaging and clickable.Some of the common areas where schema markup can generate rich results include:

    Recipes

    When you add schema markup to a recipe page, search engines can display cooking time, ingredients, calories, and even user reviews. This makes your recipe immediately more informative to users.

    Events

    Event pages with schema can show dates, times, locations, and ticket availability right in the search result. Users can quickly see if the event suits them without visiting the page first.

    Products and Offers

    Product pages benefit from review stars, pricing, availability, and promotions being displayed directly in search results. This can improve click-through rates and give your page more visibility.

    Articles and Blog Posts

    News articles or blog posts can show featured images, publication dates, and author information. This increases trust and signals freshness, which can improve user engagement.

    Local Businesses

    LocalBusiness schema can enhance Google’s display of your business with contact details, location, and operating hours. This is especially useful for users searching on mobile devices.

    FAQs and Q&A

    Pages with frequently asked questions can display expandable answers directly in search results. This allows users to find the information they need immediately, reducing bounce rates.

    Videos

    Video schema lets search engines show a preview thumbnail, duration, and description. Users are more likely to click when they can see exactly what the video offers.

    Breadcrumbs

    Breadcrumb markup shows a trail of pages in your website hierarchy. It helps search engines understand site structure and improves navigation for users directly in the search results.

    Voice Search and Speakable Content

    With the rise of smart assistants, schema can help content be read aloud via text-to-speech (TTS) using Google’s Speakable markup. This opens opportunities for voice search results.

    Using schema markup across these areas increases your chances of appearing as a rich result in search engines, making your content more visible, trustworthy, and engaging.

    Unlock the Power of Schema Markup

    Schema markup is your secret weapon for helping search engines truly understand your content. By adding structured data, your pages can stand out with rich results, attract more clicks, and improve indexing. Whether it’s products, articles, events, or local business info, the right schema gives search engines the context they need to showcase your content effectively.

    Getting started is easier than it seems. Use JSON-LD, pick the right schema types, validate your markup, and watch your website become more visible and engaging.Don’t wait – add schema markup to your pages today and turn ordinary search results into eye-catching, clickable listings that drive traffic and growth.

  • How Web Optimization Experts Boost Marketing

    How Web Optimization Experts Boost Marketing

    In previous blogs, the Seek Marketing Partners team has spoken at length about the great work that our website optimization experts do for our clients. We’ve also offered many marketing tips to our readers – either something aimed specifically at helping businesses succeed online or some more traditional marketing wisdom.

    The one thing we haven’t yet addressed is how website optimization experts and your marketing team can work together to create amazing results, and how SEO experts can boost the results you see from your online marketing efforts. However, today is the day that we address that oversight, and show you how the two disciplines can work together to great effect…

    Are you ready? Then let’s get started!

    1. Website Optimization Experts Boost Marketing and Improve Site’s Visibility

    SEO experts have the ability to boost your online presence.

    We’ll be delving into some of the other benefits of hiring SEO experts and having them perform Search Engine Optimization on your site later in today’s blog – but let’s not forget the primary task that a website optimization expert is looking to accomplish too… First and foremost they will be working to make your site more visible and more appealing to search engines – and that definitely can have big benefits for your business and digital marketing efforts.

    If that site optimization work is done successfully, the end result will be your website moving up in the search engine rankings – and as the search engine optimization experts at Seek Marketing Partners know, the closer you can get to the top of the list (especially if you can make page one, or more specifically the TOP of page one), the more traffic you’ll see on your site when website optimization experts boost marketing.

    2. Expert Web Optimizer Makes You More Trustworthy

    Building trust is essential for growing your online business.

    When we talk about ‘trust’ here, website optimization experts like the Seek Marketing Partners team should know that there are in fact two different things to consider. One is how much faith the humans running web searches put in the websites they see at the top of the results they’re given, and the other is how much the search engines themselves believe that your various pages (and your site as a whole) are a reputable source of quality information.

    The ultimate ‘dream’ goal for any search engine is to have anyone who runs a search find exactly what they’re looking for with the first result they click on. As any website optimization expert worth their salt will tell you, in each and every case the results that are returned for a given search term, and the order in which they are presented, is determined by an algorithm. Two of the many values that search engine algorithms track are called ‘Page Authority (or ‘P.A.’) and ‘Domain Authority’ (or ‘D.A.’).

    ‘Authority’ is essentially how much the search engine believes that a given page (and your web domain as a whole) ‘knows what it is talking about,’ and trusts it to be a source of reputable, useful information. Pages and domains with high authority are seen as more likely to be relevant to a user’s search, and so a high P.A. and/or D.A. can positively influence where you sit in the rankings. Our success in SEO as a digital marketing agency is evident because we know techniques that can help build authority for a given page or domain. With that page or domain’s authority comes a better reputation, more trust from the various search engines, and a better ranking.

    We can’t ignore human behavior here either. Humans trust that their search engine of choice does a good job and that it will weed out malicious, fraudulent, or otherwise harmful pages – at least from the top echelons of the results pages. As a result, humans have an implicit trust in the websites they find at the top of a search engine’s organic (i.e. non-paid) rankings… It’s that feeling of ‘if they were cowboys or con artists, they wouldn’t be there.’ Because of this implicit trust, website optimization experts boost marketing and positively influence your reputation with possible clients – online and off – via their work.

    3. Experts Can Get Your Customers Where You Want Them to Be

    Because they are able to influence where the various pages within a website rank, website optimization experts are also able to direct traffic to a certain degree, and influence the routes people take – both to get to and move around within – your website. Good website optimization experts have the ability to create awesome pages that Google and other search engines will love. Pages that they will want to put towards the top of their rankings, and show to the human beings that you want to buy your products or services.

    These pages are likely to be trusted by the people that click them – we discussed why in point two above – but their real job is to get the human beings ‘through the door’ and onto your site. Once there – just like you’d have signage in a supermarket showing people where the thing they want to buy is, as well as special offers and sales displays to motivate impulse buys – good website optimization experts are able to use a mixture of web links to various ‘money pages’ on your site – as well as marketing techniques like calls to action and fear of missing out (FOMO) – to direct visitors on to places where they can spend money, and motivate them to do so.

    4. Experts Help to Create a Steady Stream of New Prospective Customers and Leads

    SEO success depends on expert website optimization teams.

    As the Seek Marketing Partners website optimization experts like to say: “Content is king” in SEO – and as we’ve seen above, if you want to rank well then your site needs to provide real value to the people that visit it. The way you do that is through good content that has also been well optimized.

    How can having a website optimization expert work on your content help your digital marketing efforts? Well, search engines love content that is always relevant, because there’s a constant stream of people searching for it. Sure, fidget spinners and Gangnam Style were huge back in their day – but those trends died off and nobody’s Googling them in 2020. Instead, you want something that isn’t tied down to a particular point in time and is always useful – so-called “evergreen content.”

    If your graphic design experts create a highly visible content for a product that people are always looking to buy, or tap into one of those search terms with a great piece of well-optimized content… BOOM – you’re on page one for a term that gets a high volume of searches right now, and that will also keep getting those searches as time goes on. That steady stream of searches can then translate into a steady stream of leads and business inquiries for you.

    5. Optimization Experts Can Keep You in Your Customers’ Minds

    We’re sure in the past that just like the website optimization experts at Seek Marketing Partners, you too have been interested in buying a product or service from a company, not been ready to make a decision or a purchase there and then, but signed up to a website’s mailing list as a reminder to yourself. You may also have signed up after making a purchase to stay up to date with new products or offers that may be introduced.

    As part of the “directing traffic” work that we talked about in point three, one thing that a website optimization expert can do is direct people to sign up to your newsletter – meaning that they will then get regular updates and reminders about your existence and their intention to buy from your email marketing efforts.

    Search optimization experts, however, know that there are even more channels that they can be reached through too. Once they make that first search and click your link, you’re in their web history – and the following should hold true (at least until they clear their cache…):

    Any time a user types a partial match to your website address or the search term they used to find you, they should show up as an autocomplete option. Because they’ve visited your site or performed a related search, if you’re running a PPC search engine or display network ad campaign your ads should be included in the marketing mix presented to them as they browse websites in general, and if you’re running YouTube ads they should see those too.Just think of all of that repeated exposure that you don’t have to lift a finger for, all coming from a single search and click… Website optimization experts boost marketing by earning that click in the first place. The way you do that is by having a website optimization expert work on your site so that it is trusted by both the search engines and the humans that use them, and so that your link is riding high in the rankings – ready and waiting when that click comes.

  • How Link Building Services Help Boost Your Organic Traffic

    How Link Building Services Help Boost Your Organic Traffic

    Over the course of the last couple of years, it feels like the Seek Marketing Partners team have talked about SEO at length – and yet, one of the things that our team does every single day has gone surprisingly unmentioned here on our blog. Today we put that right by giving you an in-depth look at link building services. We’ll explain what inbound link building is, what it does, and how it helps businesses succeed online…

    Professionals meeting over coffee, representing the relationship-building core of link building.

    What is Inbound Link Building?

    Put simply, the end goal of high quality link building services is to create meaningful, useful connections to your site elsewhere on the internet. Because these connections are links that lead from another site back to your site, they’ve become known as ‘backlinks’. There are a number of different types of backlinks and a number of different ways that they can be created – so in a way, there is an art to providing link building services.

    However, it’s also important to know that backlink building isn’t just about how many backlinks you can create or earn – there is a right way and a wrong way to go about link building too, as backlinks have an ‘in-built’ quality to them. A good provider of link building services will know how to do things properly and will provide you with good-quality backlinks as a result.

    A bad or inexperienced provider of backlinks is more likely to try to woo customers by promising large numbers of backlinks, and they’re more likely to include so-called ‘toxic backlinks’ in the links they create for you. The more of these toxic backlinks that you have pointing back to your site, the more the benefits brought by any good-quality backlinks you have will be undone.

    The message here is that age-old chestnut ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is’ – so beware anyone who promises you large numbers of backlinks over a short space of time – they could be relying on toxic backlinks to reach their quota, which could mean their link building services doing more harm than good to your online marketing efforts.

    How do Good Link Building Services Help Your Business?

    However, if you put a responsible team like Seek Marketing Partners in charge, the high quality link building services and expertise that we offer can really help your online or digital marketing efforts succeed, and bring in more leads, more sales, and more revenue for your business.

    How is that so? Well, because link building services are a key part of any SEO service. You see, the backlinks that are created and lead back to your site influence two important SEO metrics – ‘Page Authority’ and ‘Domain Authority’, also known as ‘PA’ and ‘DA’ respectively. In turn, your authority scores are one of the more important things that Google and other search engines look at when determining where they should rank your page (after your content itself and whether or not people stay on your page after they click to go to it).

    Put simply, that means that the more quality backlinks that the people providing your link building services can get leading back to a specific page on your site (or your domain as a whole) the more likely you are to rank highly.

    A higher ranking is proven to mean more web traffic to your site or an online store – and with more traffic comes more leads, more sales opportunities, more repeat custom, and more revenue.

    Two professionals collaborating on a laptop, representing the partnership focus of link building.

    Top 5 Techniques of Quality Link Building Services

    So, that’s why good quality links are important, and in the next part of today’s blog, we’ll discuss some key backlink services that can be used side by side with on-page optimization to create good quality backlinks. These are by no means the only ways to create good backlinks, but we do consider them to be the more important ‘core competencies’ that anyone providing links – whether you’re outsourcing to an agency like ours, or taking the task on yourself – should know how to do.

    1. Directory Link Building

    Seek Marketing Partners provide manual link building service for your business. All across the internet, there are a multitude of business directories. Some are designed to target and serve a specific locality, others are set up to serve a specific industry or type of customer, and yet others are more generic. The key thing is that most of these directories allow you to set up a profile, and if you can include your URL somewhere in that profile, that will count as a backlink for you.

    However, we’ve started this list with directory backlinks because it’s one of the services we provide most often – and it’s one of the authority link building services that we provide most often because it’s the easiest method to trip up with and find yourself creating toxic backlinks. That being the case, our advice is to not attempt directory backlinking alone – you really are better off leaving this method in the hands of a good service provider such as Seek Marketing Partners – as we have mature and maintained whitelists of trusted directories that we can go to and post to without fear of toxicity, and without needing to put in hours of research to verify a directory’s legitimacy beforehand.

    2. Web 2.0 Link Building

    Web 2.0 link building services will require whoever is providing those services to know how to write and edit text – so if you’re not comfortable with that we suggest outsourcing this, and if you’re outsourcing, make sure that the people doing the work have a good content writer on their team. When writing content for yourself, keep in mind the basic SEO knowledge like using stop words, title optimization, meta description optimization, etc.

    An additional bonus with web 2.0 backlinks is that the pages that are created as a result of the work are ideal for attracting traffic directly from Google and directing it to the pages that you want customers to visit on your site, meaning that you don’t have to rely on that traffic finding these important pages on their own.

    3. Link Building Using Blogs

    Blogs can be a powerful tool when it comes to link building services, and the great news for those of you that want to provide your own backlink services is that using these methods you’ll be dealing a lot more with people, rather than faceless online directories or posting platforms.

    A simple but effective way to create backlinks is by working together with relevant partners (for example your clients). Give them a call or send them an email, and offer them a shoutout on your blog including a backlink to their site, on the understanding that they will do the same for you on their blog. If both sides keep their end of the deal, both parties get a backlink – and if they don’t, you can simply un-publish the post to remove the benefits of the manual link building services you provided via your blog.

    Another option is ‘guest blogging’. It works in much the same way, but this time instead of someone else writing content for their site as they usually would and giving you a shoutout, YOU write the content too, as a one-off / occasional piece for their site.

    Guest blogs can be tougher to get published as they will require the consent of the partner whose site you’ll be posting on – and usually, they’ll need to sign off on the content too – but if a guest blog is agreed to, it puts a bit more control in your hands. You control what’s said and how, you control where the backlinks lead to on your site, and you might also control how many backlinks there are – and in the world of backlinks, those three choices are where the REAL power lies!

    Search performance dashboard, representing the improved rankings driven by strategic link building.

    4. Broken Link Building

    Broken link building requires a bit of luck and good timing – you tend to ‘happen across’ these opportunities rather than create them – but it works like this:

    You’re browsing through a relevant site or blog, and you find that a link for a given piece of information or a resource doesn’t work, or doesn’t deliver what it promises. If you happen to have a piece of content on your site that deals with the same topic as the broken resource, you can reach out to the owner of the site you’re browsing and tell them ‘Hey, I was reading your blog at [URL], and I notice one of the links is broken. I have a great piece of content live right now on my site that you could swap in – it covers the same topic and would be a great fit for the broken link – what do you say?’

    If they say yes, then that’s instantly another backlink leading to your site!

    5. Link Roundups

    Link roundups could be seen as ‘the long game’ when it comes to white hat link building services. Much like building a brand, results might not come immediately, but if you do the building process right, then your link roundup can be a powerful tool for inbound link building.

    A link roundup is a regular, periodic collection of the latest must-see news and new insightful content from within a given industry or topic. How does this relate to SEO link building services? Because you link out to every piece of content that makes it into your link roundup – giving them a backlink.

    ‘But guys, we want to earn backlinks, not give them out’ we hear you cry – and we understand. However, as we said, we’re playing the long game here, and we’re working on three levels. Firstly, people might be willing to give you a backlink simply to return the favour – ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

    Secondly, if you do a good job curating the content that makes it into your link roundups, you add value for the industry professionals that read it – if you do that, they might just want to link out to your awesome link roundup, and spread the word of its existence to other interested people… If you can do THAT successfully, then thirdly, your link roundup might develop a name for itself within your industry, ‘making the cut’ might become something people want to shout about, and link to as proof of their achievement – like making it into the newspaper or the first page of Reddit. And again, each time somebody does either of those things, you earn a backlink.

    Visual project management board, symbolizing the organized, strategic workflow of link building.

    Where Can You Find Quality Link Building Services?

    We hope by now that you understand just how crucial good backlinks (and the quality backlink strategy that creates them) are for your online presence. We also recognise that ‘knowing why you need something’ and ‘knowing where to get it’ are two different things – but thankfully, the latter of those two questions is easy to answer. If you’re looking for ethics, excellence, and expertise when it comes to inbound link building services then you should absolutely reach out to Seek Marketing Partners today – and you can do so via the details on our contact us page, or over LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram!