If you use an SEO plugin like Slim SEO or Yoast SEO, it will output schema data for your website, to let search engines understand the structure of your website and the information on the web page. Based on the schema data provided, search engines can show the content on search results pages in a more appealing way with rich results.
However, these SEO plugins are not specialized for schemas. So their schema markup output is pretty basic and sometimes lacks information. If you want to improve these schema data, add more properties, or change any details, you'll need a professional schema plugin like Slim SEO Schema.
What is Slim SEO Schema?
Slim SEO Schema is a powerful yet lightweight plugin to add structured data markup (in JSON-LD format) for your posts, pages, or any custom post types in WordPress to help Google better understand your content. It has a visual schema builder with support for a comprehensive list of schemas.
Slim SEO Schema also supports custom fields plugins like Meta Box or ACF; and many page-builder plugins like Gutenberg, Oxygen, or Bricks.
See more details about Slim SEO Schema. In this article, I'll show you how to use Slim SEO Schema to improve the schema markup of SEO plugins like Slim SEO or Yoast SEO.
Using Slim SEO Schema to overwrite schema data
When you first install Slim SEO Schema, it automatically creates a comprehensive list of default schemas for you, which you can use to overwrite the schema code provided by SEO plugins:
These schemas are used for providing rich results in the search engine results page (SERPs):
- WebSite and SearchAction schemas: to create a sitelinks search box
- WebPage with Breadcrumbs to create navigation in search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Article with Person as the author and Organization as the publisher of the article
These are basic schemas that are used by most SEO plugins like Slim SEO or Yoast SEO. By adding them to the plugin settings page, Slim SEO Schema allows you to overwrite the schema code in the JSON-LD format of these plugins. You can change a property value, or add more properties to a schema if you want.
Each schema has a list of properties with predefined values. These predefined values are dynamic (like site title or current post title). The plugin automatically sets these values best so you don't have to manually write them yourself. While it works in most cases, you can change them manually with any value or with dynamic variables.
Connecting schemas
While dynamic variables are a powerful feature of Slim SEO Schema, sometimes you want to set a whole schema as a property of another schema, like:
- Setting a Person schema as the author of the Article
- Setting the WebPage schema is the main part of the WebSite schema
- Setting the Organization is the publisher of the Article
Doing so is impossible in schema plugins, but Slim SEO Schema! This is an important feature in Slim SEO Schema that allows you to connect and reuse schemas to build a unified schema graph.
Taking a look at the screenshot above, you'll see the WebPage schema links to the WebSIte and Breadcrumbs schemas.
By connecting schemas like that, you can define complex schemas with a lot of properties and then link them together to provide a comprehensive graph of details to search engines. So each schema property might not be a simple text, but also a reference to a more complete set of information.
Which SEO plugins does Slim SEO Schema support?
Currently, Slim SEO Schema supports overwriting the schema code of Slim SEO (of course!) and Yoast SEO. For these plugins, the schema codes are merged into a unified graph, making it only one in the website's source code.
For other SEO plugins, Slim SEO Schema still allows you to define and output schemas for custom post types or pages. However, they don't overwrite the existing schema output as well as don't merge them into one unified graph.
Conclusion
Schema or structured data is an important aspect of SEO. It's recommended to provide as much information as possible to search engines to understand your website and web page, to show rich results on the SERPs.
Using Slim SEO Schema helps you improve the schema output from other SEO plugins by overwriting a property value or adding more properties. With dynamic data and the ability to connect schemas, it's an indispensable tool for those who want to improve their website's SEO rankings.