A few days ago I made my first post on Active Rain talking about image optimization for real estate websites. Among other things, the article mentions schema markup. Since it went live I’ve been getting lots of responses (thanks by the way) that can be summarized as “this is great but what the hell is schema markup”. Fair enough. Earlier in the week I called schema a “system of code that can be read by all major search engines designed to help sort through different types of data so the right information is displayed in the right context.” Days later I stand by that definition but it’s time to go deeper and explain how schema markup or structured data can benefit real estate web sites.

Word of caution. Schema is complicated and can be frustrating. I absolutely recommend it to all my digital marketing clients though typically address “lower hanging fruit” like Google My Business pages, custom analytics or goal tracking, and on page seo before implementing structured data. That said, because schema is a little bit more difficult to install, less people are using it and those that do have a greater opportunity to connect with potential home buyers.  

What Is Schema – A Better Explanation

Technically, the terms “schema markup” and “structured data” are interchangeable. Think of schema as a brand name and structured data as a kind of product description. The analogy isn’t perfect but it explains that schema is a system of code that structures your website data in a way that’s easier for search engines to read. Remember search engines can collect and display information but they never actually know what it means. Schema code sorts your content into predetermined categories for different types of business and websites guaranteeing search engines process your information the way you intended.

Why Should You Care

You should care about schema because Google cares about schema. From Google’s developer site:

All major search engines have endorsed Schema. It is truly universal and isn’t going away anytime soon. Properly annotated sites usually experience an immediate boost in rankings and are eligible to appear in knowledge graph results.

So What Does Schema Actually Do

Structured data is entered as code and appears as rich text snippets in search engine results. This is shown to raise a site’s ranking and improve click through rates from search engine results pages. It also gives agents significantly more control over how their business is presented online. 

How Does It Work

Remember search engines don’t actually speak human. Schema code acts like a translator by marking up data so the search engine knows what type of information it’s dealing with. These annotations allow you to decide what you’d like to emphasize when your site appears on the results page. You can tell a site is using structured data when things like star ratings, photos, and hours of operation appear in search engine results instead of or in addition to the regular meta description.   

Schema be installed no matter how your website is configured. Properly formatted blocks of code can be copied right from Schema.org for you to paste beside whatever content you choose to emphasize.

The actual code itself works by first establishing a broad category for a certain set of data, then gradually, sometimes line by line, adding more specific categorizations to each piece of information following logically from the original broad category until that entire section of website content is contextualized for search engines. That was a mouthful so how about an example. Below is a theoretical piece of web code from a fictional real estate agency. I’m going to focus on the part of a website with contact information so you can see how to highlight information that encourages potential clients to get in touch with you.

Without markup:

Best Real Estate Agency Ever

The only way to sell a house anywhere in the world. Call us today and make all your property dreams come true

1234 Fake Street

Toronto, Ontario

(987) 654-3210

With markup:

I know all that coding can look intimidating but there’s an underlying logic that makes structured data easy to follow and eventually implement yourself. Notice how the first line of code starts with “itemscope itemtype" and then refers to schema’s website. It’s telling search engines that whatever information comes next fits into the categories outlined in schema’s “local business” category. What follows are items in that category, called “itemprops” in schema’s coding language that correspond to things every local business has like an address and phone number.  Properly applied schema code acts like a translator between human and search engine. Once the search engine actually understands what type of information its dealing with it alters the appearance in the results page accordingly

For Listed Properties

This section is designed to avoid the main question real estate clients ask me about schema. It’s something like “Can I use the same code as my contact information for my listings” or slightly worse “I used the same code on my listings as my contact info why isn’t it working”. You cannot use the same code for your own business information for the buildings you’re trying to sell. Your contact info as a local real estate business is a different thing than information about properties for you have sale or rent. Thankfully there are schemas for buildings you don’t work in. Simply replace the itemscope postal address with one of many the many more applicable schema categories. Depending on your website you might use something general like “property” or more specific like “apartmentcomplex”. All of the subcategories in property related schemas are very friendly for real estate agents allowing you to highlight things like “propertyvalue”, include average review score right in your search engine result with “aggregaterating”, or promote an associated event like a showing using, you guessed it, “event”.  

Final Tips

Installing schema is not easy, especially if you have little experience with coding. Good news is it can be implemented in whatever language you’re most comfortable with, HTML, RDFa, and JSON-LD are all schema compatible. Even better news is that there are plenty of plugins that make adding the most basic schema to your site very simple.

There is such a thing as too much schema. Think logically about what you want to highlight and what information relates most to your objectives. Your contact information along with the price and location of a few properties for sale are no brainers but anything else depends on your site. There are schemas for things like the date a business was founded, what types of payments are accepted, and to help differentiate a company from its parent organization. These things can absolutely help in certain situations but are probably less important for real estate agents.

If you are going to use a plugin make sure to preview any changes before posting them live. Normally I wouldn’t’ bother writing this down because it’s like reminding people to take the cap off a bottle before drinking but the nature of schema markup means there’s a greater risk of a plugin altering your overall site appearance than usual. Schema Creator is a decent free option and while Yoast SEO plugin lets you edit rich text snippets without any coding.   

Lastly use this free tool from Google to test any schema you write yourself. Happy coding!