The One Where We Discuss Schema With Beth Barnham

In this week's episode, we chat with Beth Barnham, Technical SEO Specialist at Liberty Marketing about all things schema.

Where to find Beth:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/bethbarnham

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Episode Sponsor

This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for its eCommerce SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running working with brands like Bloom & Wild and Not On The High Street. They are running an exclusive Shopify SEO roundtable for eCommerce leaders on September 23rd with limited spaces available. If you're interested, reach out to them via thisisnovos.com or message their co-founder Antonio Wedral on LinkedIn.

Where to find Novos:

Website - https://thisisnovos.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos

Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/

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Episode Transcript

Areej: Hey, everyone, welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO podcast, I'm Areej AbuAli and I am the founder of Women in Tech SEO. Today's episode is all about schema. And joining me today is the brilliant Beth Barnham, who is the Technical SEO Specialist at Liberty Marketing. Hey, Beth!

Beth: Hey, Areej. Thanks for having me.

Areej: I'm so excited that we had a pitch come through about schema. So, thank you for pitching yourself forward.

Beth: No, that's cool. It's really exciting and it's one of my favourite topics. So, anybody who knows me will know that I talk about it a lot because it's just really fun. And I like to just have a lot of fun with everything. That's all there is to say.

Areej: So, can you tell us a little bit more about you and how you got into the world of SEO?

Beth: Yeah, sure. So, I'm a Technical SEO Specialist at Liberty Marketing based in Cardiff at the moment, but I've got an agency background. So, when I finished uni, I knew that I wanted to work in digital marketing but wasn't really sure where. So, I kind of you know, digital marketing is kind of a massive sphere, isn't it? So, I went to an agency that as a graduate style scheme, and I worked through PPC, content, social media and SEO. And originally, I thought that social media was going to be what I wanted to do and ironically, I hate it now. So, I found SEO was something that I. I liked understanding how people got to where they did online without having to kind of pay for it. So, I knew I didn't focus on that element of it when I was in that agency. It paved the way, as a lot of SEOs say, and you just kind of find your way. Then I worked at another couple of agencies before I ended up at Liberty. And Liberty is kind of carved out my technical side, which is something that I love. And I just want to get as much exposure and understanding of tech as I can. So that's why the Women in Tech SEO is brilliant, because it gives you that exposure to other women in the industry. But also, there's a lot of chat with the tech side of things as well. So, it's perfect.

Areej: Yeah. And how do you find working agency side?

Beth: Well, I can't compare it with anything because I've only really worked agency-side apart from other non-digital jobs. So, I love it. I love the variety and my mind is really busy. So, I like to I can work in one industry in the morning and another in the afternoon and I get that exposure to all different industries, and I learn loads of different things that I wouldn't do before. So, I like that. And I like the difference and speaking with clients and just having like-minded people around. Sometimes you don't get in the house if it's a smaller team. So that's kind of my reason for an agency. But yeah, it's quite biased because I've only ever really been an agency.

Areej: I did agency for five years before moving in-house. And there's so much that you learn when your agency side. With SEOs who are starting, for example, I always advise them to start with the agency side, because you're just going to pick up so much and as you said, like the variety of different websites and industries and projects that you can work on, you don't get that exposure when you're in-house.

Beth: Totally. And I worked for an agency that was small before my current job. And that was more of a digital marketing role. So, it gave me exposure to kind of account management, different types of content and social. So, it told me what I did like and what I didn't like. So then that kind of led me to a bigger agency where I could just focus on one area. So, yeah, I think it's good.

Areej: And speaking of people who are starting, like, what advice would you give specifically to women who are starting in the industry?

Beth: I think it would just be to if you know that digital is something that you want to do, just read a lot, get in touch with, there's a lot of communities out there, obviously Women in Tech is one but there's a lot, there's a lot of resources. Twitter is a great place to start, as well as a lot of people on SEO Twitter that will help you if you've got a problem or you want to learn more or you want to just understand a certain issue or how to get into the industry. But I think the biggest thing maybe, I think probably for women is to be happy in knowing that you can do it. So even if you start and you don't know anything, because we've all been there and I was guilty of it when I first started I looked at people in the industry and I looked at people at Brighton SEO and I thought, you know, I don't know anything because these people know everything, they're doing all these talks. And I think one thing to remember is just that everybody starts somewhere, and you have to believe in yourself that you're going to get better even if you don't know, you know, what you think you should know. You probably know more than that as well. So just stick with it. And if you're interested in digital, then it will come because there's so much to learn, so much to know that you can just get involved in it and it will just you soak up the knowledge because I think we're all learning, aren't we? I don't think everybody knows everything that there is to know about Google, it changes every day. I think sometimes we question it ourselves. 

Areej: Yeah, we're always learning.

Beth: Yeah. Yeah, totally. There's never a day that I think, oh, well, I knew that. I didn't need to get of that this morning because I knew that, you know, I learn something every day. As cliche as that sounds great.

Areej: So, we're here to talk about all things schema. And I think just for people who might be fairly new to the topic, it would be good to get an introduction behind what is schema and how is it used across the Web?

Beth: Cool. So, schema is a form of structured data, which you can use on your website to make it reachable and communicate the intent of your page to search engines and crawlers. It helps in user experience and intent, so it serves the relevant information that you're trying to convey in a readable format. And search engines are getting smarter and smarter every day, so they love anything that smart and they can help their machine learning techniques and anything that they're trying to improve on. And it's important that schema is a form of structured data and structured data can be in any form, including RDFA, microdata and JSON-LD. But Google and other major search engines prioritise sites that use JSON-LD and supports available for that particular type. So, there is a lot of action that's needed in the industry to kind of upgrade and translate that. But there's a lot of websites that don't use structured data at all, I think the stat is 33% of sites that don't use it. And it's a really bel piece of code that you can put on your site because it can tell, as I said, it can tell search engines and crawlers exactly what the intent of your page is. So, if somebody is searching for a recipe or asking a question, it kind of says that search says to Google. And then your site says, you know what, I've got the answer. You can show them this in a little snippet. And that's essentially what it does. It's just providing the right information for the right intent, for the right search. 

Areej: That's a good way to summarise it. And, you know, what are some of the common types and properties of schema that you tend to come across, especially when you're working agency side so deal with a lot of different types of websites?

Beth: Yeah, I think the organisation is the most basic and that is one that we see a lot. And organisation for anyone that doesn’t know is essentially marking up what the organisation is. So, name, address, CEO, what the company does, the services, all that kind of stuff is within that type of organisation. But best practice is to have that on one page of the site. So, whether that's the contact page or the home page, whatever is relevant for that particular site. But a lot of websites that we see have it on every single page consequently Google doesn't know which page is your organisation page or whether it's a product page or how to differentiate. So, it's really important that when auditing the site, which I think we will go into in a little while, is to know the intent of a page and what schema is going to go to suit that purpose. And then that's what's going to help you get a rich snippet or something in the search.

Areej: Yeah. And I think, you know, that touches nicely into this idea of, well, what type of metrics should we be looking out for when it comes to, let's say we have implemented schema and now I want to know, OK, what metrics should I be benchmarking against or monitoring?

Beth: So, I think just looking at the search for, if you've got a particularly long-tail phrase, so if you want to know an FAQ question that's popular amongst searches and you want to fit into that top snippet, you can analyse the search to see whether there's a featured snippet that's taken, whether there's an opportunity there, how hard the opportunity is. And you can do that in keyword monitoring tools, the SEO monitor and SEMrush do it quite well. So, it can tell you exactly where there's a gap on there. And then what you can do is you can take that data and you can say, OK, we've got this FAQ page, is it going to work? Do we have a keyword volume that's going to match this? And what’re our chances of doing well here? But it is important to note that it's not a ranking factor at the moment that we know about. So, you might do all of this work, but it's not going to increase your rankings, but it might give you a featured snippet. So that's an important balance that we're trying to make there, so you might appear higher up first for those snippets and the different types of searches. But your rankings aren't going to improve.

Areej: And at what point should the websites or clients in general start prioritising the idea of implementing schema? Is it one of those quick wins that can be looked at at the start of a project or are it a type of bonus point that you can do after implementing a lot of foundational stuff?

Beth: I think it's predominately after the foundational stuff. So, I would always say, build the foundations, get that keyword research, and understand where you're going to distribute those keywords to ensure that each page’s intent is exactly as you would want it to be or exactly as searchers would want it to be, rather. And there are so many different ways of finding out that intent, using keyword research tools, using NLP tool from Google and making sure that you've got that nailed before you try adding schema. You can add schema, but you probably won't see the benefit of it if the pages aren't optimised for whatever the intent is. I think that's the key thing.

Areej: That's a really good way to put it where it's, you know, it's something that can be done. And it could be for some websites, quite low effort, but then they're not going to be able to see, you know, the advantage or the benefit from doing it if the foundation isn't there.

Beth: Yeah. There are a few quick wins, and it might work for some clients, but in a classic situation, it does depend on the client. And if the website has some good foundations and you think, yeah, they've got a really good FAQ page and people are searching for this, if it's a well-known brand, then absolutely go in and do that. But if it's not a well-known brand and you know, it's a strategy to work on the SEO, then work on the SEO first, see where you go in, and then something that you can add at a later date.

Beth: And let's say, you know, brand new clients, brand new project. How do you go about updating a website schema?

Beth: So initially I would do a full tech audit for the client if they were brand new and I'd find out what's going on with the site. I'd never suggested some schema without doing it, I guess it's like going to the mechanic and not looking under the bonnet. You have to have a look at everything to make sure that everything is working or not working as the case may be and where there's opportunity. So that would be my first port of call. And then after that, I would do a full audit of the schema. So, I'd pull a crawl from either Screaming Frog or Site Bulb and I'd have a look where the structured data is present on the site, whether there are any errors, whether there are any warnings, what the type is, so if it's Microdata or RDFA or anything else, whether there are any problems with that. And then I pull out the URLs that have anything that isn't JSON-LD and I would pass that on to the client or the developer. And say this is something that we need to convert if it's relevant for that client. And then anything that is an error, I'd have a look at the code just to see what the error is and why the tools are saying that. And usually, when this is the case, I'd look manually on the page as well and go through the structures data tool and the rich snippets tool and also the validator on schema.org. And I just make sure that basically, all the tests are telling me the same thing. And if there's a problem, then I will go through the code and see what the problem is and see if there's something that we can quickly fix and then tell the client what the situation is there. And then once it's finished or if there are no problems, I would then go through each URL, and I'd pull the crawl from one of the tools and pick up where the schema isn't present on the site and where there's an opportunity. So, if it's an eCom site and there's a lot of products on there, is there a possibility to have products schema on there? Is there a category page where we could put the collection page schema on there? An FAQ page and all of these different things and I'd look through the search gallery to make sure that I'm not missing out on anything that potentially I haven't thought about. And I'd always just look at all the resources that are available just to make sure. And then I'd get writing. By this time, I would probably consult the client and then get writing once everything was good. And then after that, once I'd written it, I'd test it and speak to the client about how we're going to implement it, which I think we're going to go on to.

Areej: Yeah. And when you're working with clients, again, touching just on the point that when you do that agency side it can feel a little bit challenging sometimes to be able to get Buy-In for it, not just for the implementation, but even for conducting signing off retainer on time to conduct the audit and have engineers from the sign-off updating the schema. How can you get that buy-in and how can you get that sign-off, emphasising the importance of making these changes?

Beth: Yeah, it can be really difficult, but I always use examples, so if I've got a particular client in a particular industry and I've got an example of what it looks like, so whether that's a client of mine already or if I just look at the search to see what's out there, I'll just show the client what they could look like. And sometimes I'll just mock-up a bit of code quickly and I'll put it through the Google results test. And that spits out what your schema would look like in the search. And you can just take a screenshot of that and show the client, look, this is your FAQ page in an accordion on the SERPs or whatever it might be. And that helps them to see and to visualise it. And so, what I like to do is, is to give clients as much visual as possible, because sometimes these clients are just in the world of their brand or marketing or whatever role they've got, maybe they're just a manager, they're not technically minded, maybe they're not focused on SEO. After all, they're digital marketing as an umbrella or something like that. So, to go to them and say, yeah, I think we should put schema on the site, they're going to say, what are you talking about? So, it's just really important to give them that visual and say this is what it could be this is why we use it, and this is how it's going to help you potentially using case studies or examples from the SERPs that we can see already.

Areej: Yeah, this is such a great idea. And I think the more visual it is, the more the client can understand this is what they could potentially have. So, yeah, that's a good idea. And also, I guess, being agency side as well, you probably have several case studies where, you know, other clients through implementing this have managed to achieve that number of features, things along those lines that you can bring up and mention.

Beth: Yeah. And there's a lot of examples that we can kind of mock-up. So, on our team, we're quite lucky to have a couple of guys who are quite technical. So, if I need a hand with anything or if I don't have a specific capacity, I can always go to the team and just shout. So, our team dynamic is really good like that. So, we kind of share that as well. So, if they've had a client that's done well, but I've not had one in this specific area, but I'm still trying to maybe do a pitch or work with a client to get that buy-in. I can always work with someone from our team, which is nice because you don't always get that. So, it's very lucky.

Areej: Yeah. And I'm sure even the client would appreciate it at one point because some clients are smaller than others and some don't have a lot of technical resources from their end. And so, it's like the more support and the more recommendation and the more detail we can provide with these recommendations, the better.

Beth: Exactly. That's it. And it's great to see when we work with clients, particularly those who aren't as technical-minded, it's nice to see the account grow because they trust us to do that. And that's what it's all about I guess when you when you've got an agency and having that relationship is really important and that trust is something that you just can't take for granted.

Areej: And so, on the point of implementing schema then. So, we have our recommendations, we've gotten buy-in, the client knows more or less what they're signing up for...