With the rise of AI-enabled search engines, Schema Markup has become more important than ever.
By adding Schema Markup, alternatively known as Structured Data, to your website, you can help search engines understand and contextualize your content. In doing so, they can better match your content to user queries and help your content stand out in search as rich results. These are just two of the many benefits of implementing a robust Schema Markup strategy.
While most enterprises have become aware of the concept of Schema Markup, implementing it at scale remains a challenge. Many have tried to roll it out internally only to see little success.
Let’s weigh the pros and cons of doing Schema Markup internally vs. hiring Schema App. Understanding the advantages and potential drawbacks of each approach will help you determine which is best for your business.
Pros of Doing Schema Markup In-House
There are two key benefits to managing your Schema Markup in-house: Convenience & Security.
Convenience
If you already have an internal team member that is an expert in Schema Markup, they can spearhead your initiative and create a Schema Markup strategy for your business. Using such an approach may help you get a head start and allow you to avoid bringing in an external specialist to manage your Schema Markup process.
Easier to Manage Security
If you partner with an external vendor, your company might need to conduct a security review on the vendor to ensure compliance. If you decide to integrate their tools or software with your content management system, you will also have to verify their ability to manage any sensitive information.
Doing your Schema Markup in-house makes it easier to manage security and compliance. Since everyone involved in the project works directly for your organization, they will already be aware of your policies and regulations.
Cons of Doing Schema Markup In-House
If your organization decides to manage their Schema Markup internally, you could potentially encounter challenges such as:
Lack of Schema Markup Expertise and Internal Resources
Schema Markup is a very technical subject with a steep learning curve. You’ll have to learn the Schema.org vocabulary, master writing the JSON-LD code, add the markup to the necessary web pages and manage it proactively as the content on your pages change.
Furthermore, if you want to maximize the efficacy of your Schema Markup, you will also need to work on your strategy, connect the entities across your entire site to develop your knowledge graph, and more. In other words, you have your work cut out for you.
Schema Markup can be a tough subject for in-house employees to master, especially if they have other day-to-day search engine optimization tasks and responsibilities to manage. If you don’t want to divert your team from their current work, you could hire an external Schema Markup expert.
Dependency on IT Team
Schema Markup is code that you must add to your web pages to help search engines understand the content on your page. One of the biggest issues that many organizations face while trying to implement Schema Markup internally is the dependency on their already overworked IT team.
Some common challenges that arise include things like
- Implementation delays
- Lack of Schema Markup knowledge, resulting in coding errors
- An inability to keep the code up-to-**** due to competing priorities, resulting in schema drift
If your SEO team is dependent on your IT team to execute your Schema Markup strategy, it can impact your team’s agility and time to results.
Deploying and Managing Schema Markup at Scale
If your website consists of ten pages, adding and managing Schema Markup is not an insurmountable task.
But when you have hundreds or even thousands of pages across your site or you manage several sites in different languages, managing your Schema Markup can get tedious, especially if the content on your site is constantly evolving.
Many organizations struggle to manage their Schema Markup internally due to these scalability issues. Some organizations might choose to build a custom plugin to combat this issue. However, the costs involved to build and maintain this custom solution can be significant.
Complex Web Architecture
Traditional content management systems (CMSs) like WordPress, Shopify or BigCommerce have Schema Markup plugins that allow users to automatically add Schema Markup to their pages.
However, many large enterprises tend have a more complex web architecture, which doesn’t work with most Schema Markup plugins in the market. For instance, if you are using multiple CMSs or a headless system like Salesforce Commerce Cloud, it can be tough finding the optimal way to add Schema Markup to your site.
Pros of Hiring Schema App to Implement Your Schema Markup
An alternative to doing Schema Markup in-house is hiring an external Schema Markup solutions provider like Schema App to help you manage your Schema Markup. Depending on the solution, the costs can vary widely. However, an investment like this can help you overcome many of the internal implementation challenges.
The pros of hiring Schema App to manage your Schema Markup process include:
Access Schema Markup Expertise
Finding time to learn and manage Schema Markup on top of other competing priorities is tough. But if you want your Schema Markup to be effective, you need to manage your markup proactively.
At Schema App, we have over ten years of experience in Schema Markup, and unlike other SEO platforms, we focus solely on implementing and managing Schema Markup for our clients.
Many organizations struggle to get in-house Schema Markup expertise and resources to manage their markup effectively. We help enterprises overcome this challenge by providing them with industry-leading technology paired with a dedicated Schema Markup expert that takes you from strategy to measurable results.
Furthermore, we ensure your Schema Markup is connected to other pages on the site and external entity definitions, thereby creating your very own knowledge graph. That way, search engines can not only understand your content but also contextualize it.
Your in-house SEO team no longer has to spend time learning about Schema Markup by partnering with Schema App. Instead, they can focus on what they’re good at and partner to create amazing results from their Schema Markup strategy.
Reduced Dependency on IT
Another challenge that enterprises face when implementing Schema Markup is the dependency on IT.
Once you integrate your CMS with our Schema App Editor and Highlighter, we’ll ensure the markup is automatically deployed correctly to your site. You won’t need to wait on your internal IT team to create, deploy or update your markup, which reduces delays.
Your team can execute their Schema Markup strategy with agility, thus achieving expedited results, all by working with us.
Implement Schema Markup at Scale
When you work with Schema App, your organization can overcome its scalability issues using Schema App’s Highlighter, a tool that creates templates for similar page sets and deploys the markup to those pages dynamically. It can even address schema drift by updating the Schema Markup as soon as the content on a page changes.
With the Highlighter, your organization can effortlessly deploy Schema Markup across thousands of pages and keep it up to ****.
Deal with Complex Web Architecture
There are few Schema Markup solutions in the market for organizations with complex web architectures.
At Schema App, we work with our customers to automate the deployment of their Schema Markup regardless of complexity. Whether you have multiple tools, country sites, sites with different languages, complex web architectures, or high security and data processing requirements, we can manage it all. We’ve helped global teams like Sonova implement and manage their Schema Markup across 19 different country sites.
Our platform seamlessly integrates with any website or CMS to deploy your Schema Markup.
Measure Performance and ROI
When teams get bogged down by competing priorities, they often forget to measure the results of their efforts or struggle to measure the return on investment of their marketing strategy.
At Schema App, we always tie our efforts back to results. Leveraging Schema Performance Analytics, we’ll perform quarterly business reviews with your team to provide detailed insights on how your Schema Markup is performing.
Cons of Hiring Schema App
The sole con of hiring Schema App is:
Cost
Our solution may cost more than a plugin, but with over 10 years of Schema Markup experience and a team of dedicated Customer Success Managers, we deliver measurable results to our customers through our solution.
Our ability to deploy custom markup at scale dynamically, work within complex web architectures, and measure results set us apart from other solutions in the market.
Maximize the Impact of Your Schema Markup with Schema App
Implementing Schema Markup into your website can help search engines better understand your content and empower you to achieve rich results. However, implementing this SEO strategy can be challenging, especially if you lack the expertise or tools to manage it internally at scale.
If you are trying to implement Schema Markup but have challenges getting the expertise or managing it at scale, we can help! Get in touch with us to learn more about our enterprise solutions.
Gracia Chua is the Demand Generation Manager at Schema App. Schema App is an end-to-end Schema Markup solution that helps enterprise SEO teams create, deploy and manage Schema Markup to stand out in search.
