Glossary
Schema markup is structured data added to a page in a standard vocabulary, usually as JSON-LD, that states explicitly what the page is about (an organisation, an article, a product, an FAQ) rather than leaving a machine to infer it.
It adds a parallel, machine-readable statement of the same facts: this is an article, published on this date, by this organisation, which is this specific entity. Systems that would otherwise guess can then read.
Schema is not a ranking factor in itself. What it enables is eligibility: for rich results, for confident entity resolution, and for being parsed cleanly by systems that assemble answers. Those are real benefits, and they are not the same as a position increase.
Structured data that describes content not visible on the page is a guideline violation and is routinely ignored or penalised. The markup should describe the page, not decorate it.
For most sites that means one Organization record with a stable identifier, referenced by the page-level types rather than repeated, plus Article or FAQPage where those genuinely apply.
Not directly. It makes a page eligible for rich results and helps systems resolve entities and parse content confidently. Those can affect how often a page is clicked or cited, which is a different mechanism from a ranking increase.
JSON-LD. It is the format search engines recommend, it sits in a single block rather than being woven through the markup, and it is far easier to validate and maintain than microdata.
Schema markup is structured data added to a page in a standard vocabulary, usually as JSON-LD, that states explicitly what the page is about (an organisation, an article, a product, an FAQ) rather than leaving a machine to infer it.
