What is Website Schema & Does It Still Matter in 2025?

Safe to say, the guys at Google are pretty good at what they do. They’re masters of AI, advanced language processing, voice recognition, augmented reality…

And their search engine algorithm? About as clever as it gets.

Google is very good at understanding content. It sees beyond keywords to figure out what content is about and how relevant it is to a user’s search term.

But — despite getting an A* in pretty much all regards — sometimes Google can still struggle to pull out small, granular pieces of info from a webpage. This is where website schema comes into play.

Here, we explain what website schema is and how to use it. We also explore why — if you’re not using schema markup on your website in 2025 — you may just be missing a trick.

What is structured data?

Structured data, as the name suggests, is any data that has been organised into a logical and defined format. For example, data in a table with rows and columns could be described as structured data.

The opposite of structured data is scattered information that lacks formatting. This is known as unstructured data.

What is microdata?

When coding a website, we can give structure to the unstructured data scattered within webpage content. We do this by adding special tags to label it up. These tags are known as microdata.

For example, content like a product name, product description and price can all be wrapped in microdata tags. This helps crawlers, like search engines, understand exactly what that content is.

What is schema?

Schema.org is the most commonly used vocabulary for structured data.

It’s the result of a collaboration between Google, Bing, Yandex and Yahoo. These search engines use Schema.org to improve their search results and create a better experience for users.

Enhanced search result elements, like prices and review ratings, are only possible because of Schema.org vocabulary and the process of schema markup.

What are rich results?

Enhanced elements in search results are known as rich results or rich snippets. They’re very effective at boosting your click-through rates (CTR) from search engine result pages (SERPs).

At a time when AI answers and zero-click results are a concern for business owners, rich results are still a reliable way to attract users to your site via SERPs.

Why are structured data and schema markup important?

When you implement structured data and use schema markup for your website, you’re more likely to get rich results associated with your website. As we’ve already mentioned, these rich results help you stand out in SERPs and are linked to higher click-through rates.

Another benefit of schema markup is that it can help your pages appear in featured snippets (at the top of Google search results) and in voice search results too. Schema also has positive benefits for SEO.

Schema and SEO

Schema markup doesn’t directly impact search engine result page (SERP) rankings. It isn’t a ranking factor. But it can impact your SEO performance.

Schema helps Google and AI algorithms better understand what a webpage is about. This is particularly useful if there’s some ambiguity around your webpage topic — for example if you’re writing about Bamboo (the HR software) and not bamboo (the plant).

When Google and other search engines understand what your webpage is about, they can display your content for a greater range of relevant keywords.

There are other SEO benefits too. Rich snippets make your website stand out in SERPs. You attract attention and encourage clicks, which boosts your CTR.

What’s more, by providing users with extra information before they even land on your website, you improve engagement and reduce bounce rate. Coming to your website via a rich snippet result, users have a pretty good idea of what they’re getting and are more likely to stick around.

This can positively impact your rankings over time.

Types of website schema to use in 2025

Choosing the right type of webpage schema helps search engines better understand your content. Here are some of the options available.

Product schema

This type of webpage schema is used on e-commerce and retail websites. It allows you to showcase key product details in search results. These include:

• Price and discounts
• Unique selling points (USPs), like free delivery or free returns
• Stock availability
• User star rating
• Store location
• Product carousels

Product schema goes beyond a meta title and a meta description to give users extra info that entices them to click.

Review schema

Another type of web schema that works well for e-commerce sites, review schema adds star ratings to search results. You can feature product or business reviews to give users the reassurance they need when deciding whether to click on your website or that of a SERP competitor.

Local business schema

You can use local business schema to improve local SEO and provide additional information to users in both Google Search and Google Maps. You can highlight your business hours, reviews, phone number, address and business name. You can also enable people to book a table or an appointment from within your Google listing.

Organisation schema

Organisation schema markup highlights business details to search engines. This can include your business name, logo, address, contact details and links to social media profiles.

Other types of web schema

The types of webpage schema we’ve listed above are some of the most common. But there are currently a whopping 811 different schema types. We’re not going to list them all here — but we will reference a few additions that tend to come in handy.

• Event schema: This type of schema highlights event details such as date, time, location and ticket price.
• Article schema: This schema optimises news articles and blogs for rich results and allows them to be featured in Google News.
• FAQ page schema: With this schema, you can format an FAQ page so questions and answers appear as a collapsible menu in SERPs.

How to implement schema markup on your website

To add schema markup to your website, head to Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper and follow this step-by-step guide:

1. Select the type of schema you want to use, enter your website URL and click Start Tagging.
2. Your webpage will appear on the left, with data items for markup on the right. Highlight the text or element on your page that you want to mark up and select the appropriate tag.
3. When you’re done assigning tags, click Create HTML. This will generate the code you need (in JSON-LD markup by default).
4. Copy and paste the code into the appropriate place in your website’s code.
5. Validate the schema markup using Google’s Rich Results Test. Here, you enter your URL to confirm to find out whether there are any errors or warnings associated with your markup.

And — if all that seems a little too techy — let your web design and development agency do the hard work for you. Here at Radical, we can implement schema markup on your website to improve site visibility in SERPs.

Best practices: how to use schema in 2025

Here are some best practices for implementing schema on your website in 2025.

• Focus on pages that benefit from rich results. This includes pages like product descriptions, articles, local business pages and FAQs.
• Only use relevant schema. Make sure the schema type you choose matches the content of your page. Then, add as much relevant information as possible.
• Use JSON-LD schema format. There are various schema formats you can choose from. But JSON-LD is the one recommended by Google. This format is easy to update and debug and it ensures clean code.
• Test frequently. You can test your schema with tools like Rich Results Test. This shows you whether your schema is working as intended.
• Update frequently. As you update your website and offering, ensure that your schema remains relevant and up to date. Otherwise, you damage the user experience.

Want to make a bigger splash in SERPs?

In 2025, there are still plenty of really good reasons to use schema markup on your website.

It can mean rich results, featured snippets, improved visibility in SERPs and a higher click-through rate. And with benefits for SEO in the long-term, implementing schema markup is an easy way to get better results from your website.

Other things that can boost your SEO and get you moving into those SERP top spots? A well-designed, beautifully coded, mobile responsive website. An exceptional user experience and fast site speeds. High-quality content and backlinks.

Here at Radical, we can help with all the above. Our team are experts in website design, development and support.

Want to make a Radical difference to your website? Give our friendly team a call to chat about your project.