What are the advantages of utilizing a schema markup for businesses? In this Q&A-style session, learn from the co-founder and CEO of Schema App. What is necessary to rank high in search results and maintain visibility?
In an SEJ podcast interview with Loren Baker, Martha van Berkel, co-founder and CEO of Schema App, had a clear response: “You must adapt your material into the language of search engines.”
The language in question is schema.org. This makes it simpler for search engines to grasp the content on your website.
But learning a new language, let alone creating a schema markup, can be scary.
For this reason, Martha and her husband Mark van Berkel founded the Schema App, a tool that simplifies structured data to assist businesses of all sizes in strategically structuring their content. Martha elaborates on the advantages of schema markup for businesses, the concept behind Schema App, and her successful leadership experience in this interview that takes the form of a Q&A.
Getting Started In SEO
What led you to a career in SEO?
After earning degrees in engineering and mathematics, Martha van Berkel said, “I began working for Cisco in California. In the course of my time there, I moved from providing technical assistance and project management to founding a new company, managing products, and ultimately overseeing the product management team for Cisco’s global support website.
When we learned that visitors were utilizing Google to browse our website and locate important support materials and resources, I was first introduced to SEO. We were stunned internally that nobody was using our on-site search! Our initial offering as an entrepreneur was a tool for managing the web presence of small and medium-sized businesses.
I had to master all the fundamentals of SEO to construct the product and offer services. We concluded that semantic search marketing and structured data were our areas of passion in 2015, and we immediately plunged back in to become authorities on both how to use structured data and how to do it at scale. I Adore how much of my technical training and change management expertise from my early days at Cisco are incorporated into the work I perform at Schema App with structured data at scale.
The Journey With Schema App
The Schema App has grown so much. What has the process been like for your team?
MvB: “The Schema App team has my utmost admiration. Since launching Schema App in 2015 and beginning our transition to scalable, advanced schema markup, we have come a long way. Now that we have a team working across Canada, we can provide our scalable end-to-end enterprise schema markup solution with professional assistance and quantifiable outcomes. The trip has been fascinating. I was certain that 2020 would be the year that schema markup would be among the top five SEO tactics to use in 2019. Since then, progress has persisted. Building meaningful relationships is what we want to do, both as a company and with our customers and data. We used to fulfill this aim collectively in our office, but as a flexible first culture, we now create deep ties wherever we work”.
What is your favorite feature within the Schema App, and why?
MvB: I adore our highlighter. Why? Because you can efficiently create complicated, hierarchical markup at scale without using any code.
Additionally, the new material is dynamically optimized as the content on the page changes! Poof! Scalable schema markup without coding
I believe that the Highlighter is the ideal blend of sophistication and scalability, having built JSON-LD, generated it page by page, and dealt with the challenges of doing something at scale across a company like Cisco.
How do you see the Schema App evolving in the future to keep up with recent changes in the SEO industry (algorithm changes, voice search, great resignation)? How will this empower entrepreneurs?
MvB: “Agility to shift/update/respond when there are changes is one of the primary values we provide our enterprise clients. ROI is another key value.
We’ve designed our solution and our knowledgeable support to enable us to collaborate with clients to anticipate and adapt to these developments.
For instance, we frequently consider mixed types of rich outcomes to provide diversification if one becomes volatile.
Should we discover that one is doing better than the others, we may also adjust the setup of the rich result.
“I’ll concentrate on demonstrating ROI from structured data to our customers in light of the great resignation and as we start a year of recession. We’ve included Schema Performance Analytics into our tools so that our clients may see the results.
My goal as CEO of the Schema App is to foster an atmosphere where my staff can flourish so that they look forward to going to work each day, are continually learning, and recognize the value they add to our customers.
This means that we will keep making investments in our semantic technology capabilities, flexible first policy, and culture of creating deep connections. In addition to benefiting from a highly motivated staff, businesses that can foster an environment where people can thrive will also be more productive and it will show in how they connect with their clients. It’s an exciting moment to be a team leader and have the ability to establish a supportive and courteous work environment that produces outstanding results”.
Scaling Schema For Enterprises
What do you think is the most underrated Enterprise SEO tactic today?
MvB: “I am astounded by the low adoption of structured data by businesses. Why? Since you can customize how your results appear and how you direct customers to your website from the SERP, it is an area of SEO where you have some level of control. I also understand why it is difficult because I grew up in an enterprise setting: a lack of IT resources, too many competing objectives that overwhelm the SEO team, and the enormous amount of work required to implement it at scale across the site, business divisions, stakeholders, etc. I appreciate my position at Schema App because of these difficult obstacles (which I experienced daily at Cisco). We created it to address these issues and concentrate on delivering SEOs outcomes that would ultimately benefit them“.
